Who, indeed. I sure don’t know. I’m a little surprised it’s the same team as last issue. If Scott McDaniel produced all 4 of these while also drawing Daredevil, my hat’s off to him, and I do believe he did. Another 2-page splash opens this chapter, setting up the scene from last issue, and the recapping follows on the next page, and then Spidey, Nova & Namorita engage the newer, bigger Dreadnoughts.
Nita keeps telling people she’s a sub-mariner, but I don’t think that would mean much to most people. “You drive a submarine?” Why not “I’m Atlantean?” In short order, Nova is gassed and taken out, Nita is pummeled by “a solid air battering ram,” and Spider-Man is glued to a wall by some kind of adhesive. But…
Oh right, Silhouette. I remembered the “Sil” part. I also just remembered The New Warriors got pulled into the 1990 X-Title annual crossover story. They get around. This is, like, Night Thrasher’s 6th or 7th appearance on the blog, and we’ve never once seen him use the skateboard that gives him his name. He & the ladies were looking for Speedball, and their search just happened to bring them here. So now the heroes know it’s all connected, and Spider-Man surmises they must be dealing with AIM. Then it’s back to fightin’. The heroes continue to have a rough go of it, even with reinforcements, until Spider-Man notices Firestar’s microwave beams seem to disrupt the Dreadnaughts, and goes looking for a control source. He soon finds people manually piloting the robots from a distance and quickly takes them down and blows up their controls.
Without pilots, the robots are easy prey for The Warriors. Then Spidey shows up and leads them to an admin building, where a lady is wiping their computers. She tells them they have legitimate contracts with the US government and the heroes can’t do anything. Night Thrasher tries to salvage something from the computer, but it soon quits working. So, Spidey webs the lady and they just leave. Elsewhere, the shady gathering of rich guys worry the gang got just enough info out of the computer to find their secret lab, but their shadowy leader thinks that could work to their advantage. If the heroes can be contained, they’ll just be added to the superpeople already kidnapped. Justin Hammer thinks he can help with that.
Silhouette’s hair sure got huge there. When our heroes land at the coordinates Thrash got from the computer, it seems like an empty cow pasture. But, of course, everything is underground, and Nova trips a security alarm, and it’s suddenly more fighting, as computerized defenses start blasting away. One by one, the heroes are grabbed by mechanical tentacles popping up out of the ground and pulled under, leaving on only Spider-Man and Silhouette free to go rescue them. As the captured folks start wandering around inside the compound in small groups, Spidey and Sil find a grate he can rip open so they can head inside. We see this is what the rich guys were hoping for, and Justin Hammer gives his guys the signal. And so, all the scattered heroes come face to face with some of the various villains Hammer employs.
Whole lotta folks we’ve seen before and a few new ones. Man, I bet it’s hard to get respect from your fellow villains when your name is “Discus.” Kinda funny how many Spider-Man villains Hammer has taken in considering he’s an Iron Man guy. Half the 10 attackers are Spidey guys, and while Blacklash is an Iron Man foe, we’ve seen him enough around here that he kinda counts, too. Now it’s on to part 2 of the Venom story, as he incapacitates the cops who found him last issue and flees as more arrive. He goes to his own place and gets back to looking normal just in time to tell a cop he hasn’t seen or heard anything suspicious.
So Venom breaks into Markham Machine Company, but being brand new to the superworld, doesn’t know exactly what he can do and is immediately caught on security cams.
That’s a pretty solid answer to a question I’ve never thought to ask about Venom being “we” when Spider-Man never communicated with the alien. Venom questions the one guard he leaves standing and soon finds Pablo, but he seems to be working with the enemy. And then the baddies surround Venom with fire, and Eddie learns for the first time that his new best friend is scared of it. And that’s the cliffhanger. Next up, a Prowler short where I learn that, at some point, Prowler was made the brother of one of the 70s martial arts team Sons of the Tiger? We saw them way back in MTU 40. And I guess this explains why Hobie’s brother was a martial artist in TAC Annual 10. Random. Not as random as them looking into an area for a construction project and just happening to meet a homeless Vet who knew their dad and saw him die, tho. Hobie ends up fighting The White Dragon, believe it or not, but not much comes of it, and it’s all a prelude to a Prowler mini I don’t haven so whatever. Then there’s this…
That’s pretty good, although I think getting jobbed out to Stilt-Man in DD 27 should probably be #1. aunt May is a more formidable villain. I wonder if they left off the Amazing Bag-Man incident from ASM 258 because they thought the other bag head thing was better, or because they didn’t think it ranked. At any rate, the rest of the book is more of the Cloak & Dagger story from last issue, which means the promise of a Black Cat story on the cover is a mistake. That’s weird.