Felicia has teeth like a beaver and the typical J. Scott Campbell truly creepy fingers this time. Very nearly had our first back-to-back issues with the same creative team in this entire block, but Mike McKone needs a hand from Adriana Melo to get through this one. In addition, Andy Lanning is joined by Justice Smith and Mariah Benes on inks and Chris Chuckry gets help from Jeromy Cox. One can’t help but thing the schedule is off the rails here lately, all the artist switching and multiple hitters. It’s almost like publishing a book 3 times a month isn’t a good idea or something.
I feel like they could’ve saved Mike McKone some effort and just done this as a black page given that it’s allegedly “pitch black” in there, and yet lit like the windows are open. Yet another situation where the new secret identity thing is so stupid. She doesn’t remember running around town trying her best to ruin Peter’s secret in TAC 90? Spending all that time in Peter Parker’s apartment, even after they broke up? Why she dated Flash? Helping Mary Jane during the clone nonsense? Them saying “the world forgot Peter Parker is Spider-Man” is one thing for rubes on the street, but it just doesn’t make sense for so many cast members. And, like, what’s the implication here? He revealed his identity to a roomful of Avengers he barely knows. He trusts Hawkeye more than Felicia? I just find it all so hard to move on from. They can’t go more than a few issues without reminding you how badly they painted themselves into a corner, and how they got out of that corner by demolishing the house.
McKone’s instance on the suit being red & black gets annoying. I was letting it slide during all of last issue’s night time scenes, but come on, man. “Ditko drew it that way!” No he didn’t, and it’s 2009. Our man returns home to fix his webshooters, glad that Michel(l)e isn’t home. They can’t decide how many Ls in that name. Then he goes to grill Dexter Bennett, but Dexy is so visibly shaken to recognize the dead man in his safe that Spidey realizes he’s not the culprit.
Whoops.
Feels very reductive to the character of Felicia, but I guess that’s how it is. Spidey tells her to go stand in a corner far away so he can do his thing, which is smashing through a window into a lab of some kind Diablo is in. I can’t tell if the people around him are turned to stone or just colored gray like the background. But Black Cat joins the fight, and her apparently now uncontrollable luck powers wind Spider-Man up with his feet stuck in concrete. He rips the chunk around his ankles loose, hurting his knee, and they pursue the escaping D-List villain.
Name two, Diablo, what kind of line is that?? Don’t think I didn’t see the Tourette’s joke, Kelly.
Felicia’s bad luck powers finally effect someone other than Spider-Man in this story, and Diablo drops a pellet that melts the gold and sets them free. Diablo teleports away or whatever, refusing to explain what’s going on and saying they’ll see it play out on the news. Spider-Man thinks about what Bennett said and what Diablo said and makes some connections. And then the 2nd art team takes over.
An hour later, they have the building evacuated and Spider-Man is rather comically webbing it up so it won’t fall down. That’s some 70s Gerry Conway logic right there. JJJ is on the scene trying to take credit for the operation, and gets a web ball in the head for his troubles.
Wicked huge! Is Felicia one of the Reillys?
Oh, McKone is back. That’s weird.
I have really had enough of this foreshadowing with the Kravinovs. I mean, it took them this long to name Previously Unmentioned Kraven Daughter. So… this is what we’re doing? After breaking up Peter and MJ and failing to give the guy even a single date for 60+ issues, we land on “friends with benefits” with Felicia? Peter really is the everyman. This exemplifies the changes that will begin happening very soon, where comics start chasing the MCU, and that means focusing less on supporting casts, focusing less on the person in the costume. No room for friends and dates when every story is structured like a movie. So heroes date other heroes, if they date anyone, and only see civilians if it fits the superhero plot. And Black Cat… the amount of times she wanders in and out of Peter’s life as the lazy writer’s way to give him a relationship for a few issues… I mean, it happens like 3 times in 2 years from what I’m sitting writing this. It’s become hack. And it starts here!