The way it feels like storylines just keep wandering in and out of these books instead of progressing is kind of crazy. This month has the odd credits “Howard Mackie – story from an idea by AA Ward – script.”
Really beating the crap out of your own story here, AA.
Peter keeps up the sneer as he recaps his life and heads to some terrible apartment he’s now living in, where he’s already late on the rent. Ok, sure, time no longer means anything. He says everyone believes MJ is dead, “Yeah… right!” as he tries to eat some cereal but finds his milk is bad. How long has it been since ASM 16!? Then he tries to sleep and his bed collapses. He’s also coming down with the flu. Laying it on as thick as possible. So he goes out as Spider-Man, grumbling that his villains always come back, and he’d like to fight someone new for a change. One assumes this was the core of AA Ward’s concept here.
This comic that sucks and whose creator is making fun of it the whole time maybe shouldn’t have been produced, I think. Ugh, anyway, the still-ink-covered Spider-Man goes to the Bugle to ask Ben Urich what’s going on, but finds all the lights off and everyone hiding under their desks. Ben tells him Venom has taken the place hostage. Sure, man, why not, that only makes zero sense. And then, of course, he appears, grabbing our here from behind.
This terrible spread made me go look up AA Ward. I got nothin. This is their only comics credit, and I didn’t turn up any other writer by that name. For good reason, it would seem. Venom keeps referring to themselves as “I” as the battle rages through the Bugle offices and they have some truly terrible banter until Venom reveals he’s not even here for anyone at the Bugle, he’s here chasing Sandman, who appears to say Venom’s been following him all over town. Sandy exposits that he wasn’t sure he could take Venom alone, so he came here to try to lure Spider-Man into it. There is a funny visual where Venom bites a sandy chunk out of Sandman, which seem like a new one, but it’s all pretty painful, dialogue-and-story-wise.
Let the record show Venom was the 6th member of the version of the Sinister Six he fought, however briefly, and his math therefore doesn’t add up, your honor.
“Comics are the same thing over and over, why read them?” – Spider-Man. Ben Urich is hailed as a hero by his coworkers, there’s some odious nonsense about Peter being worried because he forgot to take May to a doctor’s appointment, only to call her from the Bugle and find out it’s tomorrow as JJJ wails, and then he leaves.
Gregory Wright is a fine colorist, but how he managed to pick a detail out of Thing’s eyebrow and make it an eye while coloring the left eye orange is beyond me. Maybe he wanted his colors to be on the same level as the story in this issue, if only for a page. What a terrible comic.