Oh. I guess he’s not dead.
Just kidding, he’s totally dead. That’s a weird, expensive gag. Also weird that they chose to run 2 issues of this title this month to close out. With the creative teams all blown up, this technically coulda been another issue of Sensational. Ah, well, doesn’t matter. Spider-Man’s dead and this is his last comic.
See? Would they lie to you?
I mean, of course they would. What a cop out. I mean, by pulling this stunt, they have robbed us of a final battle between Spider-Man and The Green Goblin! He’s just done, beaten off-panel, Spider-Man assuring us it was really tough. Good grief! You’d assume he’ll bust loose and they’ll get back to it, but you’d be wrong! Unbelievable. Also: What about that pesky ol’ Gather of the Five? If Norman got madness, what did everyone else get? Clearly that old guy didn’t know what he was talking about. Who got power? What happened to Greg’s wife!? This book doesn’t bother to say. And, I mean, maybe that’s not where the focus should be, but they spent so much time building that up! It really was just killing time. What a crazy turn of events. But this issue only just started.
It’s a pumpkin bomb in the rubble of The Bugle. And as Spidey bolts for it, it goes off, and it seems like The Bugle is about to collapse.
What, did you think they could end the entire first volume of Spider-Man without him having to LIFT A HEAVY THING!? The heaviest thing ever! Kirby did a bit where The Thing held up a brownstone in the 60s, but I think we can all agree Spider-Man holding up a skyscraper is a biiiiit much!
With the fate of Aunt May in the balance, no less! Oh, superhero comics. You’re just so like this.
JJJ will hate Spider-Man with renewed vigor! “We are getting back to basics, everybody!” As our man is slowly, inexorably crushed by the weight of an entire building, the news gets various man on the street perspectives about what’s going on. Shouldnt they be evacuating? A whole building is about to fall down. JJJ rants about how awful he is, and dares them to find one person in the crowd who thinks Spider-Man is a hero as we focus on MJ, begging Peter to live through this. And Spidey himself is still slowly being crushed, wondering all his struggles over the years have been for nothing. Because that’s how Spider-Man Must Lift A Heavy Thing goes. As we’ve seen. Over and over again. But he can only do the self pity part so long before it’s time to actually life the heavy thing.
As absurd as this is conceptually, Romita is just goin’ for it. I love the falling web cartridges.
Well, top that, future creators. He has lifted The Heaviest Thing. He’d have to push the moon out of orbit or something next time. But, of course, there’s always a next time. For the remainder of this time, a shaky Spider-Man swings for his life toward the hospital where Aunt May’s surgery is beginning. But he’s so weak he messes up and falls out of the sky, spending a page thinking about what’ll happen if he doesn’t make it. Even now, we’re just filling pages.
Despite everything, Spidey’s quiet desperation in that bottom panel worked for me as a kid, and still works for me now. Soon, in a waiting room, a completely spent Peter Parker is joined by Mary Jane, wearing a fabulous beret, to wait. She says maybe this isn’t the best time to mention it, but her new career is already taking off. That they’ll finally have the money to build the life they’ve always wanted. That they can take in Aunt May and see that she gets the best medical care in the world. And that Peter can quit killing himself for work, finally just focusing on his studies and Spider-Man. To which he replies that he’s done.
You know, kind of a random thought, but I like how Peter calling him “sir” doesn’t feel like a put on. You know? Like when Spider-Man has to call MJ “citizen” or something in public. Both of them would call Reed “sir.” I dunno, just something I thought. Let’s see JR. knock out this tender moment.
And, she’s back. One of the great sins of the grim-dark 90s repaired. Sure, the method was stupid, but sometimes you gotta make a bad story to achieve a good goal. Boy, is that a premise that’ll come back to haunt these pages…
Seems like he really means it this time. But what could they possibly do with this in the next volume? Oh, it’s stupid. Real, real stupid.
Well, that seems bad. But too late, the book’s over. What’ll happen to Override & Aura? Is Madame Web really dead (Whether the answer is yes or no, it’s no)? Who’s Matt Franklin? Does the world know Norman is The Goblin now? What’ll happen to Flash with his meal ticket gone? WHO WAS THE OTHER GREEN GOBLIN? No one seems to care. This is followed by a far less somber letter col. In trying to reassure people, they even point out that in 2 months, this title will be back, with the same creative team, “even shipping on the same week.” So not REALLY much of an ending. And yet, it really is an ending. This seems like a crazy thing to do. I mean, they were betting (And rightly, I assume) on the comic nerd obsession to carry readers from this very definitive ending into the next volume. But this is an ending. You could just stop here. That’s exactly what I did with X-Men. When Legion killed Professor X in the past, and all the X-Books ended with the world turning to glass and shattering, I knew they’d all be back a month later as Age of Apocalypse. And I knew they’d eventually come back to normal too. But I was tired of them and they gave me a very definitive stopping point such that even my stupid comic collector mentality was able to say “We can stop here.” And that was nothing compared to this. A happy ending! Anyone even remotely unhappy with the product could easily have closed this book and closed THE book on Spider-Man for themselves. But, one has to assume, having seeing the critical and commercial success the Heroes Return books got out of their shiny new #1s recently, someone decided Spider-Man needed a piece of that. And away we go.
I started reading comics around 1988. I was 9 or 10, in elementary school. As the dust settles on this era, if I understand cover dates properly, I had just turned 20. I had finished community college. I was getting ready to go to real college in January of 1999. And while smarter people than me pulled the ripcord on comics when they got bad in the 90s, I stuck it out. Would I be rewarded for my stubbornness with Vol. 2? Not… immediately… But before we move on to seeing how the next period works, I got some weird stuff to do…