CYBERWAR! This nonsense is still! Going! Month 2 of the Scarlet Spider debacle comin’ in hot. Look at that spot color. So exciting. You got the De Team DeFalco & Dezago. You got breakdowns by Tom Morgan. You got inks by Randy Emberlin, Hector Collazo and Don Hudson. You got colors by Kevin Tinsley and Chia-Chi Wang. Man, look at that lineup. It’s almost like these things were scheduled on very short notice and it was an all hands on deck situation to produce them because the regular art teams had already moved on to the next Spider-Man issues. Guess what, Seward Trainer is still in “cyberspace!”
Oy. This hurts me so much. This is now essentially just, Dr. Strange on The Astral Plane, only it’s happening on AOL. Meanwhile, Ben Reilly is, I guess, searching for Seward in cyberspace, but has no luck and disconnects so he can furiously recap the last month and a half of comics He thinks about going to patch things up with Carrie, but instead, we cut to…
What… a totally anticlimactic resolution to that! How exciting! Tso is on his way to visit Smythe in person, and is shown a truly pathetic looking array of goofy “cyber-slayers,” but I can’t fault the art team for how dumb they look considering this issue might’ve been completed in a weekend, for all I know. Smythe helpfully recaps his entire deal, and there’s no reason to get into it here since I’ll be doing the actual comics eventually (Soon? I dunno), but he assures Tso that Doc Ock and her goons will be the perfect test of his new robots.
Ock’s super-muscle looking all dejected is very funny. “Aw, gee whiz, boss.” But wait, the cyber-nonsense is about to crank into overdrive.
Yeah? You programmed that byte, did you? Did it do The Kessel Run in 12 parsecs? Again, it’s 1995, there is no information about anybody on the internet unless Ben made a Compuserve profile that says “Hi, I’m Ben! I’m not a real person, and I have no credentials, please arrest me! Point your web crawler to ‘IRS.com’ or use AOL keyword: fraud to learn more!”
About as authentic as this beloved gif. Also, I was one of the console cowboys in cyberspace! This comic is killing me! Anyway, anyway. Ock knows it’s a trap, but decides to take her Z-list muscle and walk into it if it means getting her precious chips. Also, the FBI plant in her gang decides this is the time to go tell what he’s learned, and also some other goon sees him leaving and wonders if something’s up. Who cares?
Yes, I’m sure most high schools had fully connected and extensive digital records in the era when people didn’t even know what a modem was. I’m gonna smirk so hard it hurts me. URgh, so Krannor gets a call from Tso, who says it’s going down, and to bring all the goons to… The Children’s Zoo. That’s where this gang fight is scheduled to occur. Great. He gathers the troops, but wonders where Ben Reilly is. He’s in his tights and headed to the Zoo, having been tipped off by his handy man-in-cyberspace, and he immediately enters combat with Ock’s cyber-goons. Aura says this confirms he works for Tso, which is funny, and it’s fightin’ time. And, of course, civilians are everywhere, so Scarlet really has his work cut out for him this time.
Tso says they should use the fact that Ock’s goons think Scarlet works for him. Alistaire is horrified by the idea of “allying with a spider,” but what’s a Scarlet Spider to him? His dad, and he in turn, hated Spider-Man, this is just some jobber. It’s like being mad at a celebrity impersonator of a celebrity you don’t like. Anyway, Tso is thinking he should prrrrobably double-cross Smythe and take these handy robots for himself. Override shuts him down, tho. As Scarlet rescues some kids, the robots deliberately avoid attacking him to focus on Ock’s goons and confirm that he’s on their side for their foes. Until they’re all unconscious, anyway.
Thrilling. This issue features a letter from Olav Beemer, a guy who wrote so many letters to comics in this time that he became something of a comics celebrity for it, himself. You can do anything if you put your mind to it! You may note that the blurb says there’s going to be a Web of Scarlet Spider #3 despite this being a 2-month event. That’s… a whole thing…