That gun and the way he’s holding it are really funny to me. “I got tired of gimmicks, so now I just bought the biggest revolver I could find, whatever!” Ghost Rider’s Hag and Troll! Be still my heart! Don Hudson inks and Renaee Witterstater pitches in on colors this time. So, it’s the middle of the night and the phone is ringing at the Parker home, waking MJ from slumber in an outfit so revealing it’s almost comical, because 90s, and she realizes Peter snuck out.
As it happens, Spider-Man is swinging around with Moon Knight thinking he can’t keep sneaking out on MJ and he has to find Katzenberg, 2 problems he coulda solved at the same time. He’s also furiously recapping and wondering what’s up with Moon Knight.
Hobgoblin has arrived at that bar, and after the usual people making fun of his outfit and threatening him as you’d expect from a cliche seedy bar, he begins beating up everyone in the place, and then goblin zapping them for good measure, having a great time, talking about how he fought a bunch of Green Berets in Saigon once, demanding to know where Katzenberg is.
“That guy just beat up like 15 people and shoots lasers out of his hand, but I have a gun, so…!” Come on, buddy. We briefly cut away to Demogoblin exhorting his new buddy Doppelganger to kill some cops (The Spider-Man doppelganger is just called Doppelganger. Crazy creative, right?), and then we meet these losers…
Never seen ‘em before. Not sure that lady deserves to be called “Hag.” They go to work on the Guardsmen as spidey and Moony make it to the now very much on fire bar. The only survivor is the bartender (Somehow?), who is dying and rambling that he was Nick’s brother-in-law and how Nick paid him good money for “that fleabag hole in the wall on Delancey St.” So, our heroes head for that nicely exposited location, and we get there first, so we can see a paranoid and terrified Nick Katzenberg recap the Rose storyline. The Parker phone rings again, and MJ picks it up already yelling at Nick, but it’s Betty, for some reason, and when she hears how upset MJ is, she says she’ll be right over. But as she hangs up, MJ seems pretty unhappy about that. Then we cut back to Nick as Hobgoblin comes through this window with a giant 90s gun. He spends too much time taunting Nick instead of shooting him, so…
I mean, Nick was just complaining that if the Rose’s guys had just killed Peter for the photos Nick took, none of this would be happening. Rarely has Spider-Man had to save someone I wanted to see die so much. Goblin reiterates that he has to kill Nick & Moon Knight to get in good with Foreigner as battle is rejoined. Nick flees, naturally, and Hobby blows up the apartment. Spidey tells Moon Knight to help people evacuate while he goes after Katzenberg. Hobgoblin once again gets there first, and once again toys with him instead of doing his job. I mean, how does he expect to get his rep back if he wastes this much time not killing his targets? Moon Knight’s outside getting people to safety and thinking Spider-Man must really like this Katzenberg guy to go into this now towering inferno after him.
Weird take for a guy who’s killed security guards to escape in the past. Back at the fire, Spidey once again stops Hobby from killing Nick, boooooooo, and they fight some more. Spider-Man leaps to push Nick out of the way as a beam collapses, taking the hit instead. And then a pretty shocking thing happens:
Not that incorrect caption, although it’s pretty confusing, I mean Nick actually growing a spine for a minute.
So this 2-parter rolls right into a 4-part crossover. Awkward. But it’s a crossover between 2 books Mackie writes, so it should be relatively seamless. We’ll see how that goes.