Did this cover get zoomed in on or something? Feels weird. Trapster being cut in half is what really gets me, it just doesn’t feel intentional. The opening splash and a following 2-page splash continue the battle, already on the cover, so we can do the flashback to how we got here. Hate it!
“Chum?” What year is it?
Johnny having a thing for famous supermodel Mary Jane Watson is actually pretty good. Turns out, all of NY is suffering a blackout due to something or other in the X-Men books, I dunno. Reed gets the building on auxiliary power and Spidey sees a video feed of Sandman getting out of a limo. Ben explains that that’s his “pet project,” due to him never fully believing Sandman renounced his criminal ways in Thing’s own comic, Marvel Two-In-One 86. And… and apparently he’s had a secret video somehow following Sandman’s every move since? That’s so terrible! And literally all he’s done since then is try to be a good guy, joining the Avengers, working with Silver Sable, and they’re still surveilling him??? What’s he gotta do? I sthis because he’s about to randomly turn evil again? I don’t remember this issue at all. Sandy is with that Senator Ward guy who’s obviously a bad guy, who’s hired Sandy for protections via the Wild Pack after what happened in PPSM 2. They’re trying to get Ward back to his hotel room in the dark.
Doesn’t feel like this can go on too long. Or end well.
Well, that seemed weird.
Weird indeed. Up in Ward’s room, Sandman is surprised by how in shape Ward is to take all those stairs so easily, and Ward seems to maybe be feeling around for how willing Sandy would be to returning to crime when their door starts to melt. Trapster, of course, with his solvents. Then Spider-Man shows up, saying he hoped Trappy would follow Sandman’s example after SM 92, but nope. As he begins to mix it up with Trapster, Sandman sucker punches him from behind, sending him right out a window and plummeting to the ground.
Ward fled while they were fighting, but they catch up to him, and are about to kill him when the Torch creates a wall of flame between them. So now it’s the FF and Spider-Man vs. half the Frightful Four, a group the FF repeatedly beat without Spider-Man, and which Spider-Man beat at least once without the FF, and yet this is somehow presented as a difficult battle. But also a pretty short one.
Well, that was easy. Despite… them trying to sell it as difficult…? But we’re almost out of pages, so it had to be.
Can you believe they’re doing this? I can’t. I mean, I really can’t. I knew they did it, I remembered as much, but… I still can’t believe they’re doing this. Beyond how stupid it is to try to create a love triangle between Peter, MJ & anyone, to have it be GWEN’S COUSIN… awful.