I believe it’s now officially the year 2000. That feels momentous on my journey through time, getting to the 2000s. Story is credited to “John Byrne and Howard Mackie” this month, so who knows who did what, really. This issue is… well, you’ll see. Peter gets home from Latveria to find the place looking packed up to move.
I think I’ve rambled before about how a distressing number of people think Peter Parker being an “everyman” somehow means his life should be a rolling disaster, but it’s true, and those people seem to include a lot of comics creators, so there was certainly no way the Parkers were staying in their posh apartment for long. But this is so random and sudden. It doesn’t feel like it was part of the plan. How long could Peter have possibly been gone? How could he not have had anything to do with MJ’s financials, especially since she “died?” Is he that irresponsible? I think he has a saying about that.
Remember how Anna was in Florida randomly? Now she’s back in Queens? And they said MJ lived a globetrotting lifestyle. Now, as it SO OFTEN DOES in this reboot, regular programming is interrupted to hock some crap John Byrne is doing elsewhere. From the guy who brought you the terrible Chapter One, and the certainly terrible Spider-Woman, both of which got too much attention in these pages, comes The Lost Generation, yet ANOTHER backward looking project from Byrne, a 12-issue maxiseries detailing a whole gaggle of newly created superheroes from the 50s no one remembers for some reason. What’s that got to do with Spider-Man? Absolutely nothing, but that doesn’t stop a time traveling historian from the future, Cassandra Locke, who features in Lost Generation from zapping into the Tricorp Foundation today. She seems to be invisible, and unsure what time she’s found herself in, but she doesn’t seem to know she’s invisible…
You see where this is going. Suddenly there’s a security alarm, and she once again thinks guards are after her, but they’re not, they’re running to some big machine, about which she thinks “every single technological advance mankind makes from this day forward is based on the work being done in this room today.” Seems unlikely! Seems basically impossible! But that’s the quality of writing we’re getting from the Spider-books at this point. In short order, the Ghost shows up, last seen on the blog way back in ASM Annual 2-, to do his usual corporate sabotage thing. Then Spider-Man swoops in to save Dr. Twaki and his assistant from… something…? It’s very unclear why they’re in danger. Or how Peter knew. Or… or anything, really. Some security guards assume Spidey is the saboteur, but Cassandra yells it’s the Ghost and points him out to them… and they see her? How has everyone been ignoring her this whole time!? Ugh, this sucks. The cops shoot some controls and now everyone’s in trouble.
If they don’t want a shred of evidence left behind, maybe you shouldn’t be saying all this in front of a room full of people, dude. Cassandra tells Twaki how to stop the explosion, and it’s so obviously just gibbersh. You can’t fake science like this in comics in 1999, but this whole run has been just goofy about it. Then Cassandra used “the time-warp capabilities” of her belt to make Ghost solid. Uh, ok? Spidey knocks him out, and Cassadra tries to hide somewhere she can timeshift, but Spidey stops her, demanding to know who she is. And she tells him, and then vanishes as he’s trying to ask about MJ, off to appear in Lost Generation, sales pitch complete. The security guards don’t like Spidey being around, so he runs, and soon Peter Parker arrives, to Dr. Twaki’s consternation.
And that’s that! What a bunch of nothing! SURELY they didn’t plan things this way, for Tricorp to appear in like 4 nonconsecutive comics and that’s it. This era just feels like the wheels are coming off all the time. All setup, and instead of a payoff, you get setup for something else, which also doesn’t pay off. But wait, speaking of which…
Just like that! In one terrible issue that was half an advertisement for another series, Peter loses his house and TWO jobs on top of losing MJ. “He’s just like me!” In the past I’ve sneered at the idea that Peter Parker, everyman, had literally every woman who saw him falling in love in the 70s, but now they’ve swung so far in the opposite direction. This level of tragedy is not normal. And it’s only just started! It’s kind of astounding to me how this just ramps up. I remember this, obviously, it’s pretty memorable, but I didn’t remember it being just, like, a flipped switch. All of it in the same issue! Unreal. Driving off the cliff as fast as possible…