I like the rawness of this cover. Sal went a lot looser and more ragged and it looks cool. Wonder what prompted it. Time for some much-needed damage control.
Good job, Pete-o. He’s swinging around talking about how he was engulfed in fear and paranoia until his hallucinatory adventure healed him. You know, the end of every 3rd JM DeMatteis story. Now he’s swinging around trying to find Puma to stop him from doing whatever horrible thing he’s gonna do that Black Crow coulda been, you know, specific about. Then he sees a discarded newspaper declaring “Senator Maguire to speak at human rights rally” and knows Puma’s gonna kill that guy. Ok, sure. Why not? It makes no sense, but why should this story start making sense now? But Puma seems to be tracking Spider-Man, instead, and a particular panel leads me to once again ask why his belt has a big “E” on it. There’s a whole page of babble about how he’s taken control of his destiny or whatever, and then…
Well, that came out of nowhere. He decides that “no one will see he’s great” if he does this silently, and smashes through the window. He remembers how he’s only ever killed evil people in the past (Really?), and how this guy’s done nothing, as he cuts the guy’s lip to scare him or something. Then his security bursts in to get beaten and slashed up. Puma says he’ll let them live so they can remember this experience.
They fight around town and then Puma makes the mistake of calling Spider-Man “Parker,” reminding him that Puma’s yet another guy who knows his secret and could threaten his family, and as he so often does after being “healed” or whatever, Spider-Man flies right back into a rage, punching Puma into a big sign and electrocuting him, then picking up up and preparing to throw him off a roof to his death like on the cover. Whatever, at least this is almost over. If Spider-Man about to chuck someone off a cliff feels like a recently played beat, well…
You got it. Spidey declares he won’t fight Puma and proceeds to get all slashed up. He takes that remarkably well.
So all this was just to take away Puma’s knowledge of Spider-Man’s secret? Sheesh. The Crow says it’s a gift for his courage and trust, and Spidey says thanks, and then a ton of cops bust onto the roof. Puma decides to run for it and gets ventilated.
I wonder if this title inspider Dan Slott’s own terrible idea, The Web of Life And Destiny, decades later. I wish I could believe that’s it for overwrought psycho-babble stories for awhile, but the next issue begins a story called “Death of Vermin” as DeMatteis begins his march toward a big anniversary issue with dangling Harry Osborn plot threads, so you know…