Oh! I was wrong. I guess Bucky needed a break from all that recycling art instead of drawing things, so now-disgraced Joe Bennett steps in. Who could’ve known in 2000 that Bennett would turn out to be a total scumbag? Presumably innocent Sandu Flore1 inks and Joe Rosas is still on hand for colors as Jenkins does a story about how various cops perceive Spider-Man, which starts like this:
What’s the story with the lady cops on this page? Got their own whole thing going on.
The two cops go on to detail how the goons were smart enough to claim they were minding their own when Spider-Man attacked them out of nowhere, while the shop owner is intimidated into lying that they saved him from Spider-Man, so they now have no case. I’m sure they later took out their frustrations on an unarmed black teenager. Next, a lady who looks a lot like Kate Cushing (Where’d she go?) who’s an assistant DA talks about how they were charged with bringing Spider-Man in, so they spent a lot of taxpayer money on a Spider-Signal, like Batman’s, hoping to lure him into a trap, and he didn’t show. Great work!
The good old days, when someone in a comic could say “they mayor” and it wasn’t Wilson Fisk or Luke Cage or some other fake person. The Marvel U doesn’t feel very real anymore. Next, another tough-as-nails detective who probably beats his wife tells us he’s made it his personal crusade to bring Spider-Man to justice because he killed his best friend: George Stacy. That’s a good angle, at least. He tells his version of who George was and how he died (In ASM 90, of course), raising the prrrrretty fair point that Spider-Man running off with him after the incident and him being found dead later doesn’t look too good. But, of course, DA Tower cleared Spider-Man of all charges in ASM 186, so this guy’s been spending his career on an unsanctioned witchhunt, which, hey, sounds about right!
Next, some cops in a locker room make fun of a rookie for being so scared during a battle between Spider-Man and Sandman that he fired 5 rounds into an empty car. Sounds like cops to me! And finally, the cop from page one gets around to telling us his story, which is about watching the events of ASM 121 & 122, his first encounter with Spider-Man, being amazed by the intensity of the battle up in the sky.
I have to assume Rosas was going for a darkroom feel by coloring Peter’s hair black, but even so, that’s just weird. But that was a good ending. Jenkins had a lot of fun ideas for this book. It’s a shame his primary collaborator can’t go 3 panels without copying existing art…