One thing’s for sure, Peter’s definitely gonna expose his secret to Harry and the Reillys after the extreme lengths the Spider-Office went to to make it a secret again. Jeromy Cox has to pitch in on colors this time, so the streak for longest run of issues by the same creative team since, like, the mid 590s is 2! Very weird to me. We open on a split page showing Ben Reilly confronting Damon Ryder in the past and Raptor confronting Peter Parker in the present, an old fashioned splash page start, then start with Ben.
Ryder looks so dopey.
Good God, are you telling me Ryder SAW Kaine and still blames Ben for whatever’s about to happen? Could this get any stupider?
In the past, Ben and Kaine’s tussle starts a fire in the house, which Ben is weirdly slow to realize despite standing right next to it, because everyone in this comic is an idiot.
Hasn’t this house been through enough? It came back from the dead! So Ryder remembers Kaine bursting into his house, and then his house catching fire, and not only does he still blame Ben, he’s even willing to get chummy with Kaine? Bill Mantlo would laugh at how bad this plot is. Then we flash back some more and learn Ryder had already killed his family before the house caught fire, womp womp.
I am so ready to check out. Now Peter believes Ben killed Ryder’s family despite knowing Kaine was there??? Kaine, who he knows followed Ben throughout his years in exile, trying to ruin his life? Did everyone in this title get hit in the head? It turns out, when Spider-Man narrated that he “sent a text for insurance” last issue, it was to answer Screwball’s challenge. Which presents the obvious problem of him giving her Peter Parker’s phone number, but Guggenheim is way past caring about whether his story makes any sense. As Screwball fights Raptor over her own objections, Peter decks Kaine and hustles the Reillys and Harry out of the house with a line about this happening because of a story he worked on for Front Line.
So, net, Kaine bearhugs Spider-Man, confirms his assertion that Peter and Ben are different people, then rips Spider-Man’s mask off to reveal “Ben Reilly” underneath. And Raptor goes for that, because he’s an idiot like everyone else, and then Kaine says it’s not Ben Reilly, who is dead, but his clone. Oy vey.
Kaine decides to let both Ben and Damon live so they can hate each other or whatever. Like… whatever. And Peter tells Damon that’s what happened, even though he couldn’t possibly know that. Like… whatever.
What an absolutely terrible story. Is this the end of Raptor? One hopes. Well, the good news is, this is also the end of Marc Guggenheim’s time as a regular Spider-Writer. After this story, I feel like it should be the end of his career, but he’ll go back to TV and make that Arrow show that looked so dreadful. Speaking of dreadful, join us next issue for both Joe Kelly and Deadpool. I feel like I’m being punished for something.