This team-up seems unlikely to occur inside. For the big finish, McLeod shares pencil duties with Lee Weeks, but continues as “finisher,” which implies a heavy hand on the Weeks material. We shall see, I don’t recall the change in personnel from when I was young. Master of Vengeance is about to kill Spider-Man.
“Duh” just feels very 1990s. Spidey dodges some of the guy’s blasts as he goes out a window, swinging away and circling back so MoV doesn’t know he’s being followed. The villain apparently still has his Spider-Man mimicking stuff on, and begins climbing down a wall as he rants, allowing Spidey to dropkick him from above while making fun of his awkward villain name. MoV crashes to the ground, but gets right back up and starts zapping some more. Back inside, Punisher frees himself by ripping chunks of the decrypt old wall off where he’s webbed to it, now walking around with plaster webbed to him.
Despite Spider-Man’s tough talk, MoV is still standing after those attacks. He begins a long rant about how all his poor choices were Spider-Man’s fault, very Venom-esque, as the idiot reporter from earlier in this story pulls up in a van with her camera man and walks right up to the guy, just utterly clueless about the danger.
Gran’t sort of world weary take on Spider-Man is pretty fun here. Still quippy, but in a kind of tired way. Vengy comes running back into his lab for more juice, only to find Punisher still there, holding the rest of his supply, telling him he’s lost to addiction. Frank’s about to shoot when Spider-Man webs the barrel of his gun in another direction. Spidey’s banter really starts to get to MoV as he snatches a vial of his stuff from Frank and drinks it. He starts zapping again (If the zaps come from the gloves, why did he need the serum?), and Spider-Man leaps around, tricking him into shooting out all the load bearing walls and collapsing the ceiling on himself.
Spider-Man dives in to try to pry the gloves off his foe and save him, but Punisher clocks him in the head with the butt of his gun and drags an unconscious Spider-Man out of the building, allowing MoV to blow up a whole big chunk of the building. Waking up, Spider-Man is furious.
But Frank’s not leaving, he’s just getting up onto a nearby roof. Spidey’s being crushed to death, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling a different pull from his Spider Sense, seeing the reflection of Frank’s sight, and then fighting desperately to keep a thankless MoV from being executed.
Seems unlikely, Pete! Hard to find much trace of Lee Weeks in there. A few Punisher faces in the back half, but McLeod kept things pretty consistent. He’s definitely an inker who makes his presence felt. These 3 were our only Spider-Mans this block. Next up, we return to ASM.