This month, we randomly have a cover by Terry & Rachel Dodson. Not their last appearance on this blog. The Spider-Office seems to have been booking cover artists for 3 each, but the Dodsons just do the one here, and J. Scott Campbell only did 2 this time, and I wonder about that. We join Spider-Man preparing to break into a high end medical testing facility, both because they won’t be open for a few hours and he’s in a hurry, and because he couldn’t afford to go there anyway. I’m just realizing this comic has 4 pages that were cut just slightly too big. Don’t think I’ve ever seen that particular printing error before.
A savvy businessman.
Laying it on a BIT thick, I must say. But, then, they were apart a long time. Spider-Man heads out to first talk to Lamont about his plan, then see Forelli. He’s in the process of begging Forelli to be straight with him about why Digger hates him and also to leave because he’s sure Digger is going to come here when Digger comes smashing through the window. But not Forelli’s window.
Romita does a cool sort of montage fight page while JMS does narration about how sometimes the scientist has to get out of the spider’s way when he’s in situations like this, which is a bit labored. During a break in the action, Digger complains that things were better back in his day, and this world deserves to be put out of its misery, starting with Forelli. Comics’ most dangerous “you kids get off my lawn” speech! Meanwhile, Forelli finds they can’t get out of the building, that digger damaged that load bearing wall on purpose to trap them.
Spidey is thrown against Forelli’s living room wall for a brief bit of banter through the window as Digger escapes into the sewer, but Spidey is right behind him, saying “End of the line.”
Cut to Peter & MJ at a purposely vague location, with Peter nailing something to a wall. MJ notes that he was too ready with that theory about the Hulk, and asks if it was something he’d thought about before. He says all the heroes secretly look for weaknesses when they meet, in case they might have to take the other down some day. That he has a Hulk plan, but it would kill him, and he doesn’t want to think about this. This is all similar to the stuff DC was up to with Batman in the late 90s & early 2000s, where it came out that he had contingency plans for the whole Justice League when those plans fell into the wrong hands. Anyway, we finally see what Peter was working on.
That’s sweet. It’d be nice if we ever heard about it again. How’s it going? What’s it do? Does Peter manage it, or just donate enough money to name it? We’ll never know. Next, we switch back to PPSM for a couple posts, with a very unusual artists to close out the title.