This month, Ramon Bachs is suddenly on line art, with Paul Mounts coloring. Angel Medina seems difficult to pin down. And Aguirre-Sacasa is pushing me to my absolute limit starting with a caption that says “6 days ago,” which picks up from where last issue left off. He has Peter in the black suit for at least a week when JMS had it for 2 days, maybe less. This whole situation is so insane. Every single one of the 65 comics JMS didn’t write should’ve just had him in the classic suit and said they take place before Kingpin had May shot. It would be fine. It would be much easier to ignore that Peter arrived home from the end of Civil War 7 to get May shot than to ignore the clear timeline in 5 issues of ASM. Or, I guess, Strackzynski could’ve taken the existence of the Marvel Universe into account when crafting his story. You know, either way. “Six days ago,” Spider-Man is confronting still another spiderman, and this one is turning into a real creep, in more ways tha one.
That is… sure a drawing of Spider-Man, that last page. Shaped like a tree trunk. Spider emblem looking like someone’s best guess. Well, now it’s “the present,” May has been on the very brink of death for 6 days (or more!). I guess I just have to let it go, but it’s SO stupid. So, so stupid. We’re at the police precinct where what’s his name works, I don’t remember the cop’s name. Detective Fogg. Great name. Maybe he’ll know a guy called Knight. He’s reviewing the situation, saying all the victims are homeless males age 13 to 18 (That last guy didn’t seem especially homeless) who were all taken in by a mystery man and turned into knock off spider-men. And if things weren’t absurd enough…
Why… why is one of the Ricochet? I don’t ask much. No one knows that was Spider-Man. No one knows! Why? The Spider-Armor? Calvin Zabo somehow knows Peter was a Hulk for 5 minute 15 years ago? What are we doing, man? What are we doing? Aguirre-Sacasa’s goodwill is SPENT.
I can’t let it go. How long has May been stashed in the 2nd hospital under even-more-false pretenses? How stupid are the people who work there? Ugh.
It means that they’re all going to mutate and die, not unlike Spider-Mand did TWICE RECENTLY. Not over that, either. Curt says he’s developed a vaccine that will keep their change from progressing, and then fully 4 of these idiots say they don’t want it. Fine, die then, I don’t even care. They’re told they’re getting the vaccine one way or another, and then Spider-Man delivers another victim to the precinct. They sure are working nicely with this wanted fugitive. Then we go spend 2 pages watching a guy try to smash a 2-way mirror with a chair. JSM isn’t the only one stalling.
Whatever!
Reed 100% could’ve done it faster and better than Curt, and Peter knows this. Dumb comic.
A coloring mistake makes it look like someone’s about to assassinate Reed. Man, how funny would it be if he was brutally killed in one of the Spider-Man comics no one reads while he’s on another planet having a 2nd honeymoon with his wife in his own comic? The literal death knell of continuity. Reed found dust and salt traces on Ethan that make him think the lab is somewhere near a fight he had with the Mole Man once (WORD?), so Peter heads down into the sewer.
Coulda just asked him!
Zabo’s plan to fill Manhattan with Spider-Men being foiled because people, like, noticed Manhattan was full of Spider-Men could be seen as terrible writing, but Aguirre-Sacasa luckily has the excuse that Calvin Zabo is a criminally insane weirdo who’s been experimenting on himself since 1964 because he read a book once, so I mean… why would you expect him to come up with a reasonable or well-considered plan? Eighteen days. Presumably 18 days since Peter unmasked. I wonder how long Civil War is meant to have lasted. Like, if you take out Straczynski daisy chaining his issues of ASM onto the main book in a way that provides zero space between them, if you ask editorial or Mark Millar, I wonder how long it lasted. I bet it would be a lot longer than my sense of it. To me, it seems like it was a week. Maybe less. ASM made Civil War 3 officially 24 hours after Civil War 2. 3 flowed right into 4. Could’ve been some space between 4 and 5, but not if you read ASM. Same for 5 and 6. And then 6 cliffhangers right into 7. It feels like, from Civil War 2-7, we’re looking at just a few days. But they had to build a whole giant prison in the Negative Zone in that time. Had to train 50 states’ worth of superheroes. It can’t be as short as it seemed. And I bet it wouldn’t seem that way if not for ASM.