And here’s Joe Bennett with the wrap up. Not sure why he switched titles for this. Maybe they wanted him to get the important parts since he’s a regular. One assumes 5 will be gathered.
Well, that’s nice for him. We return to the present, where Peter has discovered a leak in the attic. As MJ comes up, he finds a bunch of his oldest Spider-Man shots have gotten wet.
Did… did she not sign the deal already? It sure looked like she did. Good grief. Elsewhere, Greg is trying to convince his badly scarred and miserable beloved to hold on, that the Gathering of Five will fix everything, then goes outside to brood about how it could go very badly. The problems of these minor supervillains sure are getting a lot of real estate in this, but you gotta make it 5 issues somehow, I guess. Meanwhile, Spider-Man is swinging around worrying about money in the rain, when a wet surface makes his web not stick and he falls to the ground, where he encounters a homeless man sitting in the downpour and reminds himself other people have worse problems. He makes the guy a web lean-to to keep dry and picks up the trail of some cop cars speeding to an incident.
This page indicates Bennett may not have originally been the penciler here, to me, he seems very rushed, a feeling that continues as we go back to Annie’s hospital room, where she’s pleading with Norman basically to kill her because her life is miserable and she doesn’t want to be a burden to Greg. Sheesh. Speaking of whom, guess who’s causing the problem Spider-Man was going to investigate?
DeZago makes references to TWO 1998 pop songs that are not evergreen as Override emerges on the roof, realizing he’s trappe dhimself (What did he THINK would happen??) and Spider-Man scales the outside of the building, reminding himself not to use his webshooters and hoping to get a photo that will pay for MJ’s books. Spidey sneaks up behind Override and kicks him off the roof, then saves him with a web to discourage him from overriding his webshooters. Good tactic.
It seems like we’re supposed to think those are fake cops sent by Osborn, but then we’re with Greg telling Annie how he escaped, how he got the money back, and now all he needs is for her to come back, too. We jump to the next day, where Peter is up fixing the roof when MJ comes to the attic looking for him. He’s able to present her psych books as a surprise gift. But, you know…
And they didn’t even gather any 5. Hilarious. What a bunch of filler. One assume there was a reason… Must’ve had a specific launch date in mind for volume 2 or something. But filler still sucks, and this was like 2 issues of story stretched to 5. It’s got nothing on some filler about 10 years later, tho. Which… I guess we’ll be seeing eventually. I can’t believe I made it this far, but there’s plenty left after volume one ends… and it’s about to!