Can’t wait to see how much stuff Deodato swipes from other artists this time. The art team is joined by Mark Bernardo to close out this series.
Who’s coming to defeat these sadly extremely familiar villains who might as well be walking around today? What hero is coming to put an end to their plot? The Scorpion. He brutally dispatches the whole dumb gang before reporting to his commanders in a helicopter outside. Seems Venom isn’t the only Spider-Villain who can work for Uncle Sam. In NY, Peter sees the news of this in the paper, and figures he’ll have to fight Scorpy soon. He explains Scorpion’s deal to MJ, ending with the fact that his new armor and weapons made him so tough it took 3 heroes to beat him last time (SMU 13), and he wasn’t one of them, and he has no idea what to expect.
Continuing to rip off JR, great. Glad this is the last issue of this. At The Bugle, Marla comes to see JJJ, both of them worried about Scorpion. So they’re surprised when he calls on JJJ’s private line, to tell him about a press conference tomorrow put on by his new employers, Roxxon, that JJJ’ll want to be at. JJJ appears as swipes from Luke Ross and Romita, Jr. on this page. Scorpy working for an evil corporation instead of the government makes sense, I guess. So, we skip to this press conference, which Spider-Man is crashing.
Does The Bugle really need 3 reporters and its publisher here? Ken Ellis! Haven’t seen him in a while. This is his last Spider-Man comic, but strangely, he goes on to appear in a Punisher and a Cable & Deadpool, both many years from now.
Oh, so the US government is funding an oil company brainwashing a supervillain into being a national security agent run by a private company. It’s depressing how such a ludicrous premise doesn’t even sound terribly far fetched.
Definitely not wrong about that, pal!
Spidey punches Scorpy across the room as hard as he can while fleeing with the bomb which he scurries up the side of a building to throw as high as he can, so it can explode harmlessly. Along the way, Deodato swipes a standard Romita climbing Spider-Man (Could actually be either Romita), the Spider-Man off Joe Bennett’s cover of ASM 423 and a harder-to-source Todd McFarlane Spidey. Really going for it now! What a joke. Later, the Roxxon guy reports to a benefactor with a grudge against Spider-Man (Gee, who could it be?), and then Scorpy shows up and says he’s only doing this because they promised he could settle his own scores. I mean, naturally. A whopping ten days later, Peter & MJ go to a seminar Marla is going to give to the science dept at ESU, and Peter and JJJ get into it over him lambasting Spider-Man but not investigating Scorpion and Roxxon. But then armed goons with Black Tarantula’s logo on their checks burst in looking for Marla. Peter starts changing in a posture no human being has every used to remove a shirt as JJJ sees his beloved being carried off.
Inside, Spider-Man’s beating up all the goons. I can’t peg any of the figures as swipes except one stock Alex Saviuk pose. Then he sees a helicopter escaping and gets a tracer on it. Detective Trevayne shows up as Deodato swipes a Romita, Jr. Spider-Man head and the Spider-Man out of Luke Ross’s McFarlane swipe used as the TAC corner box, and make it sound like he’s going to interrogate Spider-Man…
Man, he swiped the same Spider-Man head on facing pages! This guy sucks so bad. We are suddenly, jarringly on a plane to Bolivia, where the goons and Scorpion have JJJ and Marla, and Spider-Man has inexplicably stowed away in the luggage compartment. Whatever, man, I’m just trying to get through this. Turns out, Roxxon is in bed with Black Tarantula.
I feel like this crap is undercutting DeFalco’s ending.
That’s the 2nd time Deodato has swiped that particular Joe Bennett Spider-Man, last seen in Deodato’s fill-in on TAC 252. This book is killing me. Who knows what I’m not even catching? Anyway, fight fight fight, a Bagley swipe, JJJ & Marla escape in the confusion, fight fight fight, a 2nd copy of the ASM 423 cover, fight fight fight, a pair of Bagley swipes, and then JJJ & Marla sneak into the plane that brought them here to radio for help.
Look art those terrible, terrible Spider-Men. That’s what you get when he’s not stealing.
Blah. Scorpion actually becoming a government agent would’ve been a lot more interesting. But I can’t expect much from Spider-Man Unlimited, and now, I no longer have to. The book died as it lived: irrelevant.