This issue opens with Spider-Man swinging across town, only to stop, rip off his mask, throw up, and ask himself what he’s going to do while crying. Then we get back to the end of last issue.
Dr. Warren, you say? Norman says this is the worst part and he falls to the floor in pain. Peter nervously comes around the desk to see if he’s still alive.
No amount of JM DeMatteis armchair psychiatrist drug-addled mumbo jumbo could ever put Peter in a worse position than this. Poor Harry asks what’s with Norman’s robe, and he says he was taking a sauna. “You and your sauna,” he says as he puts in a tape with an advance copy of a story Dateline is going to air on Norman. This is so Norman can control the narrative of what happened when his plant blew up in USM 4. They describe his rise to fame, then seeming death, then reveal he’s alive. It kind of feels like an extremely accelerated version of the OG Norman’s story. Then Norman is interviewed, giving his version of what happened, blaming the explosion on corporate sabotage by Justin Hammer, saying he feels safe coming out of hiding now that Hammer is dead. He says he assumes Otto Octavius had figured out Hammer was responsible for his accident, but he’s had no contact with him. While this is all playing, Peter becomes more and more freaked out before mumbling that he has to go and running out of the room. Norman tells Harry to let him go.
So good. No adaptation has ever produced a better Aunt May. Later, Peter sits in his lab, utterly freaked out, and MJ calls. She asks if he’s still grounded and he says he doesn’t think so. He asks if she can come over, and she cannot, and he tries to tell her what’s going on, but then someone knocks on the exterior door. He thinks it’s Harry and walks over to it like a death march, MJ still on the phone.
Who would have seen this coming?
Like Bendis was steady throwing curveballs in this book. Peter’s exposed to the most terrifying thing he’s ever encountered, and we shift to this. It’s so good! Cut to the next day at school, and Peter relating all this to MJ, who is clearly not comfortable with the idea that Gwen came to Peter’s house, and Peter is clearly not picking up on that. He tries to change to subject to talking about Harry & Norman when Gwen jumps on him from behind, calling him her own personal superhero.
We remember “Dr. Bradley” from the aftermath of the Goblin attack on the school.
As much as it’s not really an exaggeration to say Bendis’ dialogue changed the course of mainstream comics, his ability to craft an unbearable cliffhanger might just be his real secret weapon. Waiting on the next issue of this book was torture sometimes! I mean, the Norman thing seems inescapable, the teen drama has just been wound up tight enough to explode, and now whatever this was! It made you think shipping the book twice a month was maybe a good idea, after all…