For all the marbles! Our man is sizing up the onrushing crowd of inmates as we rejoin the action from last issue…
We will also remember the time Vin clocked him one in ASM 567. Sort of. It’s been awhile, and it wasn’t a great issue, so I don’t know. Sort of.
I really prefer my Spider-Man this manic. Just jabbering away.
This art team, man. Truly amazing. Everything about these pages is gorgeous. Elsewhere, Lily & Bill Hollister are discussing his impending landslide victory when Carlie bursts in to tell them she’s being hunted by the NYPD for a crime they committed. Then we cut to Harry gearing up to go try to out-Goblin his girlfriend, and he’s getting way too into it. Is he about to fall back into old habits? Meanwhile, the person who said “Freeze!” when we left Spider-Man inevitably turns out to be the one guard who was nice to him, who he’s still forced to disarm and knock out. Vin wants to know why Spider-Man is doing this for him, and is told Spidey assumes he’s in here over a misunderstanding. Our guy has always been a little too trusting.
Carlie is still explaining her situation, and that she slept in an alley last night, which horrifies Bill, who wonders why she didn’t call, and then Al, Vin’s partner, busts in with another cop to take care of her. Cut to Spidey driving Vin in their stolen van (the Vin Van!), as vin is maybe about to come clean about the Tracer Killings, then back to the Hollister campaign office.
Menace is, of course, firebombing the cops, but making the mistake of yelling “Get away from my friend!” as she does so. A fleeing Carlie ponders that as she prepares to steal Al’s car with his own keys swiped from his belt in the chaos. And then Spider-Man is on the scene, smashing Menace into a cop car.
Y’all are really gonna reference Molrun? I feel like something so close to OMD would be verbotten.
By now, John Romita, Jr. draws like no one but John Romita, Jr., but once in awhile, you can still see echoes of his dad in his figures, and that beaten Spidey has ’em. Menace is about to kill Spider-Man, who thinks “Gwen… I’ll see you soon…” but then a syringe comes flying at her. She grabs it in mid-air.
I get the distinct impression Bill Hollister is about the lose the election.
Wait, did Bill know? That seems insane. And shows what I know! The revelation that his daughter is the monster who earned him all that sympathy came too late.
Meanwhile, Carlie is trying to run back into Hollister HQ when Vin catches her and pulls her into an alley to apologize for her predicament. She seems weirdly amenable to this. He swears he was wrong to get involved in all this, an he’s going to make it right. And on the news, jumping ahead to the next day, those 2 anchors we’ve been following tell us that late returns have swung to Crowne since everyone learned the truth about Lily, and people are calling for Hollister to resign before he’s even sworn in. And meanwhile meanwhile, Detective Palone is smashing Spider Tracers to try to dispose of evidence when he has a visitor.
Too little too late, Vinnie! Enjoy prison! You were a terrible character!
No “”Why is your face all smashed in?”
I like this moment for them. I like Harry Goblining up to do good again, like in olden times (Say, ASM 312). But there’s one more page…
Oh boy! And so ends a strangely eventful storyline. The fact that I think it’s weird they wrapped up basically all their loose ends at once is addressed in the letters. This is the end of the Braintrust era. This is the end they were plotting toward ever since their first writing retreat in 2006. But it’s not the end of the “way too many writers and artists on the same title” situation. No, they’re just renaming the arrangement because new people are coming onboard. Now the writers are called,… Well, here’s editor Steve Wacker, why should I type it all out?
Written on my brother’s birthday! So, Marc Guggenheim and Dan Slott survive into the new era, joined by absolute deadweight Joe Kelly and the great Mark Waid, with Bob Gale and Zeb Wells hanging around to keep things mediocre in some capacity along with Fred Van Lente. Van Lente made his bones writing an indie called Action Philosophers, each issue profiling a different famous philosopher in a bombastic and somewhat tongue-in-cheek superhero comics style. Which was very unique and got a lot of attention. But, you know, not to slight him or anything, but he always got the kinds of assignments at Marvel where seeing his name on a product seemed to indicate it was not important, and seeing him get his foot in this door is surprising to me. Well, then. A new era of Spider-Man where a patently absurd seven people are writing one title. And I really only like one of them. Yaaaaay, me!