Alright, let’s wrap this up and get FNSM out of Civil War, where it doesn’t belong, so it can roll right into a 2nd event, where it also doesn’t belong. 2006 & 2007 were hard times for the Spider-Fan. Look at that cover. I don’t think anyone ever thought to lean into the symbolism of the Vulture so hard in 40 years, good thinking there. Hey, what’s this “Back in Black” thing they’ve started shilling in the corner box, anyway? Hm.
This is apparently what Peter is hallucinating as he’s falling to the ground on the next page splash, get it?
Spider-Man webs himself up a slingshot while Betty keeps doing the math… did David think that was funny?… then shoots himself back up at Vulture as Betty figured out her has 7 seconds left before realizing he saved himself. Just killing time, I guess.
Miss Arrow arrives on the scene as Deb is freaking out because Peter almost died and Flash gives her crap. She slaps Flash, and Arrow slides one of her “stingers” out of her sleeve, but then Betty defused them. She and Flash chat a bit, and Miss Arrow seems upset to learn they used to date, tho it’s hard to imagine why.
I am confounded by this Arrow lady. There’s simply no time for this. I would so love to know what was going on behind the scenes in the Spider-Office right now. Because we are barreling toward a moment even more significant than Peter unmasking and a full personnel change, and I have to think everyone knew it by this point. It’s 11 months away, but that’s after some significant delays, which we’ll talk about later, so it should’ve been sooner, and if the change was published 11 months from now, it had to be planned way in advance. So, then… why spin up all these new subplots on a doomed run? Still more fuel for my thing about how the ancillary titles should’ve just focused on the supporting cast. Actually, this Betty/Flash/Arrow stuff would be fine in that context as long as Spider-Man wasn’t really involved. Ah, well. Adrian Toomes wakes up in an emergency room, told he just had a stroke. Naturally, he begs the doctor to kill him, as this makes him “weak” and he suddenly has a worldview where that’s bad for no reason in this story. Terrible, terrible writing.
One assumes that Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man of X-World. Notably from Peter David’s years-long association with X-Factor spanning 2 different volumes. I think X-Factor was like a detective agency or something in its most recent, David-penned incarnation, which saw Layla Miller from House of M join the cast (And get artificially aged up and sent to the future with Madrox and they got married or something, X-Men comics man). Well, elsewhere, at Betty Brant’s apartment, someone’s banging on the door at night, and it’s Deb. For reasons I can’t really fathom, she has come to tell Betty her mom has racked up huge medical bills, that she has been out of work, that the Bugle came to her with an offer to publish a book smearing Spider-Man (How would they know she had one?)…
Oooooohkaaaaaay. What a lame turn of events. Deb was wronged by Peter! He really, really wronged her! This is a cop out. Her indignation was righteous, not some scam by Jameson. This lets Peter off the hook for manipulating her and treating her like dirt all those years. Why even bring her back to do this to her? I haven’t gotten to say it in years, so indulge me one more for old times’ sake: Poor Deb Whitman. Back at the hospital, Toomes is begging Spider-Man to kill him now (Anyone will do in a pinch) and saying mean things about him to egg him on. Spider-Man doesn’t say anything, and then starts smothering him with a pillow.
Well, that was tremendously disappointing, which I guess makes it appropriate for a (sort of) Civil War tie-in. I wanted a showdown between Deb and Peter, and not only did they barely interact, they decided Deb wasn’t even upset. I miss the Bugle. It’s an awkward thing, Spider-Man and Superman being so tied to newspapers as they become less and less a part of American society. DC tried to get out in front of that way back in the 70s, making Clark Kent become a TV news anchor, but nobody wanted that, and he was eventually back in the paper biz. And, you know. Newspapers are only less relevant in 2006, and even less in 2024, or whenever this gets published on the blog. 2025? Anyway. It’s not hard to see why the Bugle fell out of its place of importance in Spider-Man comics. But I sure miss the characters. Sometimes I wish they’d have Jonah and Robbie start some stupid modern business… a social media app or something… and hire in Betty and Glory and whoever else so Peter could be around them again. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense, but it would get them all back in the book. Certainly wouldn’t be the first time they took the hit for doing something truly stupid to achieve a larger goal. Like when they put Ben Reilly in the suit. Or like what happens in 10 months…