This issue is extra-sized, but the reason is stupid and not related to the story. Somehow, not much of Betty’s life was ever really delved into. She was always too much on the periphery of Peter’s life to really get a backstory after they broke up. Enter Kurt Busiek. We open on Betty having a nightmare about a monstrous, 6-armed Spider-Man trapping Peter in a web and threatening to kill him, then ripping his mask off, to reveal… Gordon! Who’s Gordon? We don’t know yet, but Betty does, and she doesn’t want to talk about him.
The Vulture is flying overhead with a courier in his hand, handcuffed to a briefcase full of jewels. Lucky for that guy, Spider-Man shows up, and battle is joined. Seeing their 4th battle (Crazy this title has double their early scuffles), Betty is just glad Peter must be in school right now, and not putting himself in danger. She remembers trying to tell him about her past once, but not bring able to bring herself to do it, and then she flashes back for us.
That Gordon guy who looks conspicuously somewhat like Peter abandoned them, and Betty thinks he was kind before he got addicted to thrills, like she thinks Peter is. And here he comes now, selling photos of the Vulture battle to JJJ. Betty says again that she wishes he wouldn’t put himself in danger, and he brushes it off so she can continue her backstory. How legbreakers came to the house looking for Bennett, and when her Mom told them to get lost, one of them slapped her so hard she fell through a glass coffee table.
Spider-Man’s fighting… a giant bug that seems to also have some kind of electric powers. Very random. And it’s not going well, and then things get worse as Bluebird shows up. Not only is she there to complicate matters, she brought Jason to take pictures of her since Peter wouldn’t. And Jason is currently about to be zapped by the rampant electricity from the bug. And then we get to this issue’s fold out poster with activities on the back for the movie Dunston Checks In. About a monkey in a hotel? Never seen it. But it’s the reason this issue is thicker than usual. Quite distracting. Spidey is distracted by Jason’s peril and gets whacked by a big bug leg. Betty finds out Peter isn’t home, and is probably at the fight, and then flashes back to how she got this job.
JJJ is a complicated guy. In the present, Betty hears a news photographer is in trouble at the bug fight, and naturally assumes it’s Peter. But it’s Jason, of course, and our man’s trying to get to him, splitting his attention between a giant bug, a field of weird green energy it’s emitting, Jason, and Sally trying to get herself killed, so he can’t help when she gets zapped.
I have no doubt this is from a real Ant-Man story. Amazing they actually tried to make Ant-Man a marquee player. The bug quickly shrinks to normal size, and Spidey zooms the kids out of the way. But rather than taking almost getting herself and Jason killed as a sign to quit trying to be a hero, Sally is more dedicated than ever. Spider-Man desperately lays out all the ways this could’ve gone worse, but she’s not hearing it.
The Spider-Office was way too into that barely legible font down there in the mid-to-late 90s. Not the first time we’ve seen it, not the last. But, now Betty has more of a world to inhabit. It’s a dark one, but it’s there. I guess sad is about the only direction they could go when Stab already established that Betty had to quit school to work at The Bugle to support her family (Because people were writing in complaining that JJJ’s secretary must be too old for Peter). Stan made it canon that Betty’s actually younger than Peter, tho he did so in a letter page (In ASM 12, in fact). Not too many happy fun reasons a girl has to quit high school and get a job. Sure is convenient Gordon waited til Betty told us who he is before coming back, eh? Next time, we’ll see what he’s up to.