Dan Slott keeps getting to work with the best artists. I don’t know if that’s preferential treatment or him having the good taste to ask. But here he is for the Mysterio portion of our show, and he gets Marcos Martin. Don’t get me wrong. Javier Pulido is awesome. But Martin already had some prestige by this point. He will eventually bail almost entirely on work-for-hire comics, and he has the clout to get away with it. Javier Rodriguez is on colors.
Wait, is Silvermane dead? Again? When did that happen? Is he dying in a flashback??? Well, that brings us to the events of Brand New Day’s very first arc, when Mr. Negative killed all the adult Karnellis except Bruno, who apparently sucks at mob stuff. In the present, we see him making the family start laundering money through an underground casino over the objections of his capos, who say the cops or Mr. Negative will pick up on this easily, and then we cut to Negative’s goons (Including Hammerhead) raiding the casino. When suddenly…
Javier Pulido is great at these kinds of spreads, but Marcos Martin is even better.
The next day, Carlie Cooper is combing the scene for evidence when Peter Parker shows up. He’s here for Frontline photos, but also to ask her to lunch. Then he suddenly remembers he’s “seeing” Black Cat and feels bad, and then Carlie says “the honeymoon is over” and he remembers he’s supposed to pick up May at the airport.
Carlie Cooper is dangerously close to being a Deb Whitman. I do always enjoy them checking in with the gag of Peter not being able to drive. At the FEAST Center, Mr. Negative is disciplining his men for failing to kill Spider-Man. May is looking for him, and just… uses the code to open his secret room? What? She says he gave her all the codes to run the place while he’s gone, but… that is intensely stupid! And May walks in on Martin Li standing in a dark room with Mr. Negative’s Inner Demons and Hammerhead, standing over a bloody body, holding a sword. He says he can explain.
Aw, no, May. What a ridiculous development. Martin Li allowing this to happen makes him look like a shmuck. This permanently damages Mr. Negative’s credibility as a criminal mastermind. He have a doddering old lady the code to his villain hideout room!! Well, whatever, on Long Island, Bruno Karnelli is making more bad decisions, and his main goon says he’s had enough and brings in… every guy whose death was described at the top of the issue. Including Silvermane. Each death was faked, according to them. This is even stupider than the previous scene. And they pulled it off with some special help.
But why? Why did they spend months knocking themselves off? Why did they allow the rest of the family to be killed? Why did they let Bruno run their organization into the ground? That’s dumb! Well, anyway:
Dan Slott slips into what Marvel thinks of as dated Spider-Man so easily. And yet, he’s their favorite guy on the title. This is classic Spider-Man. “I gotta swing around and clear my head, with thought bubbles and everything, and recap old stuff, and then go stop a random crime or whatever.” This is the kind of thing they said was getting boring and needed shaking up when they brought in JMS. Well, anyway, the cops, lead by Captain Watanabe, are on their way to a shootout between the newly reconstituted Maggia and Mr. Negative’s mob. It was called in by Carlie, who had the bad luck to be there following a lead.
What a random cliffhanger. We barely know Carlie, who cares about her dad? Who looks way too much like Ben Urich. I guess we’ll be learning more about him next time…