Sure are a lot of guest stars in these early issues of the relaunch. Marrow, of all people. Returning the favor for her team-up with Spidey in Uncanny X-Men 346, presumably. So funny. Late 90s X-Men were all insane people like Marrow, the girl who grows extra bones and throws them at people, and Maggot, a guy whose body produces a bunch of big maggots he can control. Infamous characters still made fun of today. This issue has the great misfortune to be a fill-in by Bart Sears. Sears made his name with grotesquely over-exaggerated anatomy, which he then had the gall to “teach” in how-to columns in Wizard magazine (Called “Brutes & Babes,” because 90s). His figures only got more and more insane looking, and his steroid freak looking, monstrous approach to superheroes culminated in ruining the first 4 issues of Christopher Priest’s Captain America & The Falcon series just a few years after this, where his terrible art was so poorly received by both Priest and readers it kind of torpedoed the book’s chances before it could find its feet. And, sadly, he did this first. Scott Hanna inks and Mark Bernardo colors as we begin with a young couple having a moment when the guy is dragged into the sewer. That’ll spoil a mood.
Kinda funny how what Sears clearly thought were placeholder names for the other papers got left in. He was betrayed!
It’s like they shuffled Norman off the board for awhile and wanted another mysterious mover behind the scenes in place, STAT! We return to Peter & Betty, where Bets asks about how they deal with MJ’s hectic schedule, and refuses to discuss her status with Flash. Then Peter’s danger sense goes off, and he’s whacked in the back of the head and Betty’s dragged into the sewer. And then it’s time to see how Marrow gets into this.
What on Earth is Marrow’s posture in that first panel??? “Us Morlocks ain’t pretty to look at. Not like Nightcrawler, who looks like an actual demon, it’s totally different.” That awful, barely legible font is supposed to communicate how SAVAGE she is. This sort of thing was rampant at this time, and still happens to varying degrees. This dumb idea that certain kinds of people should have their own font has never really worked for me, but the further notion that people like Wolverine and Thing and Marrow need a TUFF looking font that no one can read is even worse.
God, this is hideous. “Peter! It’s Mary Jane! I had to say so because the audience might not have been able to tell! I decided to try out Black Widow’s late 60s hairstyle, don’t ask why!”
What is this brutal character assassination of Flash allofasudden? There better be extenuating circumstances, they spent way too long making him a more complex character to just throw it all away like this. Well, we get a page where Spider-Man and Marrow sneak out past their respective minders to go investigate the situation, which brings Marrow to some kinda police press conference that’s about to become a riot when Marrow makes the poor choice to get involved.
“These people are insane for mutant blood, let me verify their worst fears real quick. While continuing to hunch over all weird everywhere I go.”
Spidey left his nose at home this evening. Marrow tears out of the web and declares her intent to go find whoever did this and kill them (IF they’re human) and Spider-Man tries to talk her down. She makes an oblique reference to their previous encounter, knocks a bunch of oddly convenient oil drums over and heads down into the tunnels. Spidey gives chase, and flash seems to follow his hero to help.
Spidey and Marrow come upon a big chamber she’s surprised to say she’s never seen even though she grew up here, and there they find captured humans, Morlocks and Callisto, all ensnared by an unseen “him.” He appears in a cloud of bats. And it’s not Morbius, to my surprise…
That side ponytail on an otherwise bald head is now, officially, perhaps the worst character design element I have literally ever seen. “I’m a vampire and my name is Hunger, we’re phoning this one in.” Heroes attack, 80s-side-ponytail-but-that’s-all is too fast, he sees the victims fleeing, NATURALLY Betty is the one he almost gets, but his feet get webbed as he lunges for her. The baddie somehow still gets the drop on both heroes, getting them by the throat and saying he doesn’t know what a “vampire” is. Then Flash comes running in like an idiot and get slashed in the face, making hunger drop Spidey in the process. Marrow makes him contemplate putting one of her bones through Hunger’s heart, but I mean, obviously…
I try not to spoil things for myself when I don’t know or just don’t remember, but I looked this Hunger guy up, and… haha. We’ll see soon. This issue includes another letter from Brad Walker, presumably the future pro comics artist of the same name, who mentions he had been able to really enjoy Spider-Man for the last 5 years (Join the club, buddy!) but thinks the relaunch could change that. Then he talks for a long time about how, while Romita, Jr. is 2nd only to his dad in drawing Spider-Man, he’s been drawing him too muscular in recent years, and that Spidey should return to his slim, wiry build. While I do think Romita, Jr. really increased the mass on Spidey and most everyone else in the late 90s, a trend I remarked on a few issues ago, I think the record will also show Romita, Sr. drew a pretty beefy Spider-Man, too. Maybe moreso than people remember. I actually think, as Brad gets his wish, that it goes too far the other way. For decades now, everyone’s drawn Spider-Man with little twig arms & legs, and I know his strength comes from magic radiation, but it still seems like a guy who does what he does all the time should have a pretty well defined physique. You can’t swing your body around on a rope 6 hours a day and not build muscle. Maybe more of a dancer’s body or a swimmer’s body, but he shouldn’t be scrawny, and he usually is in the 21st century.