This issue opens with a page rather awkwardly cutting panels from 3 different pages from last issue together showing Peter fighting his mystery assailants and Gwen’s headstone, then a page that’s half the panel showing Gwen’s letter again and half Peter reading it, only now he’s reading it a 2nd time. And Peter has a bunch of random posters on the wall of other Marvel stories Deodato drew, like a Nightcrawler story, a Dr. Strange spin-off called Witches, and some kind of military themed pin-up of some woman I don’t recognize. Totally what he’d have on the wall.
You don’t think you gave anything away when you fought with inhuman strength and then escaped by leaping through the air and sticking to a truck????
I’ll give Straczynski this, which is probably the last thing I’ll give him during this story: He’s not crapping on MJ. The amount of writers who are totally willing to portray Gwen as Peter’s one, true love and MJ as just some lady, even when they’re married, is kind of staggering, and this could’ve easily gone that way. They don’t seem to understand their nostalgia for Gwen makes Peter a horrible person. They go downstairs, and May hands Peter an envelope left for him, which contains pictures of a man helping May carry groceries and a woman asking MJ for directions, their faces blurred, with the note “WE CAN KILL THEM WHENEVER WE WANT.” Peter asks them if these events occurred, then rather uncharacteristically keeps the news to himself. The guy who sent MJ out of town, destination unknown, when May was kidnapped? The guy DeMatteis would’ve shown flying into a rage and storming out of the room? Later, our old friend Detective Lamont is allegedly talking to a boorish coworker. Not only does it not look like him because Deodato is just using some guy as a model, but he also looks significantly younger and his hair is blond. The whole art team messed this one up. Spider-Man appears out the window holding a sign that says “ROOF TEN MINUTES.”
Is Lamont Robert Redford? And look, Deo traced a McFarlane in panel 3, so classy!
How does JMS have no idea how long Spider-Man’s web lasts? He keeps changing it, and he’s never right. And look at that horrible drawing in panel 1! Good grief. Maybe Lamont isn’t Robert Redford. My only saving grace reading stuff like this is I don’t actually pay much attention to celebrities, so I don’t get all of the lifts. Peter then calls MJ to make sure she’s ok and get a pep talk, then tries to call… Aunt Anna’s place, where they’ve sent May to hang out! I guess she’s back in New York. but the phone doesn’t ring. Instead, a man intercepts the call, saying “we” have his Aunt and to meet him at an address in 10 minutes or she’s dead. And, obviously, they don’t have her, but this is coming out the same month as MKSM 4, and “Spider-Man, we have you’re aunt” is OVERPLAYED this month, man! Spider-Man arrives at the location, Deodato swipes a Joe Bennett drawing, and Spidey sees Aunt May tied to a chair in an abandoned factory.
The place explodes, and we find Spider-Man in the rubble outside, the same drawing as the cover, before one of his mysterious assailants boot shim in the face and starts asking him how it feels to be helpless and abandoned, even tho he is not abandoned by anyone.
Peter flashes back to ASM 121, right after he, MJ & Gwen were visiting Harry after he relapsed, and Gwen gets Peter alone, asking if he’d still love her no matter what she told him, which is just bad writing. Yes, Straczynski wants to allude to Gwen needing to tell him something, but “Would you love me no matter what I told you?” is a stupid sentence. “No matter what I’ve done,” “no matter what happens,” that sort of thing, ok. “No matter what I told you?” That just makes it sound like she’s about to say the Illuminati is real or she was abducted by aliens or something. He wakes up asking the Gwen in his head what he did.
Yes, the implication is Gwen had secret children, and they are somehow adults trying to kill him. Could that possibly be true? I mean, take a wild guess!