One o the absolute craziest things about the comic book industry, in my opinion (And that’s a big setup) is how they absolutely cannot wait to ruin the endings of their own stories. Comics is a business about 3 months from now. Publishers are always hyping what comes next. Fans and media alike take it to heart and care more about what comes next. Hypothetical books that haven’t come out yet are always more important than the thing you just spent too much money on. Thee days, Marvel will be in the middle of selling a 48-part event series while selling you the next 48-part event series. It’s an insane, insane racket. To wit, this cover was in advertising months before this issue. The revelation that Spider-Man’s parents were gonna die was known in advance. 22 issues of build up just to step on the ending. All the better to sell “and you won’t believe what happens next!” By the time a mysterious, shadowy figure who kinda looked like Peter Parker started haunting the margins of Spider-Man comics, we all knew The Scarlet Spider was coming. Reading comics is like if every movie trailer said “And here’s how it ends!” Anyway. Spider-Man spends the opening 3 pages of this issue recapping the end of the last one, in case you didn’t buy it. This whole silly crossover is his quest for revenge, I guess they wanted to make sure you understood the emotional stakes.
On the next page, we see Spider-Man loading a machine gun, saying he’ll do it the way he should have a long time ago, shooting at a mirror. But, of course, that’s Chameleon, shooting “Spider-Man” in the mirror by turning into him. Chammy says this is all for Kraven. That Spider-Man can’t get away with what happened in Kraven’s Last Hunt. Dimitri sure didn’t seem too worried about that when he was impersonating JJJ, or running around in that hilarious captain’s hat, or any other time he’s popped up since 1987. This is a very DeMatteis-level sudden, nonsensical change of heart. I wonder if it was his idea. Michelinie said the parents story didn’t have an ending until it ended, and he bounced as soon as he told it, maybe that idea came from the incoming writer of ASM. Who knows? Peter Parker is throwing the first of many tantrums in the post-parents era.
“It would KILL her to find out the thing she figured out before I did is true! Kill her, I say!” MJ really nailing him at the bottom. Having already covered the miserable mess this is setting up, it’s not exactly fun to slog back into it. Peter goes to his parents’ graves in the rain and throws a tantrum at them for being dead. We see Chameleon in disguise hiring assassins, and then we get 2 pages of Spider-Man brutally attacking people for info about Chameleon, setting up his new status quo as a raging douchebag. When that doesn’t accomplish anything, he goes and rousts newly-introduced Connor Trevayne, introduced as “Officer” last issue, called “Special Agent” here, and soon to be “Detective.” Guy keeps busy! Trevayne says he’s heard about Spider-Man’s rampage, and intuits that it didn’t work, and says “the heavy handed method rarely works.” Tell that to Daredevil! Spidey tells him he’s looking for Chameleon.
So Spider-Man goes to the spot where Chammy has heavily armed goons waiting. They’re surprised to learn their target is Spider-Man, but when yer a goon, yer a goon all the way. Spidey still retains enough of his common sense to lure them into a nearby park and away from peoples’ homes before the shooting starts. Then, among the trees, he starts doing the action movie thing where he picks the guys off one by one silently.
How on Earth did he think this would go any other way? How many billions of goons has Spider-Man outsmarted over the years? He could’ve at least used an address that wasn’t his actual house! What a dope. He spends a page talking to a picture of Kraven, wondering what he’s going to do. It’s very silly. But that doesn’t matter, this does:
In another time, that woulda been an ending. Peter rescued by Aunt May’s love. But it’s 1994, and it’s all about grim dark angst and violence, so we got 3 more whole issues of this.