Let’s get to know this lame villain. Maybe they’ll even bother to tell me who Quicksand is along the way. 2nd issue in a row that starts with 2 consecutive splash pages, the first for recapping purposes and the 2nd for the other 3 characters being blown into the air by Sandstorm. Man, Sandman’s wearing a really bad costume I don’t think I’ve seen before.
I gather Quicksand is a villain. No more info is made available. But Sandstorm’s ridiculous appearance is referred to as “grit armor,” so there’s that. And as Spidey and Sandy dive back into the fray, Sandstorm and Quicksand appear to have teamed up. Ok, I had to look. Quicksand was created by Tom DeFalco & Ron Frenz on Thor, but even the Marvel wiki doesn’t say how she got her powers or anything. Not exactly major, tho I’m surprised to read she’s appeared (as presumably a very minor background character) in several comics I’ve read, including some Captain Americas that are her most recent appearance before this that involved Superia trying to unionize all female supervillains. Ok, sure, there were like 100 characters in that story, she was probably there. Also this:
Gotta have your priorities right, JJJ. While they smooch, the battle continues.
So she’s literally just a female Sandman. How original! And it begs the question, if they have essentially the same powers, why is Sandstorm so different?
Spidey webs Sandy away (He’s hurt? He’s, like made of sand), but then both villains come after Spider-Man. He gets punched into the ruins of the lab, and then Quicksand goes to work on Sandman, though Sandstorm seems less into that. TOO MUCH SAND. While the villains begin killing Sandman or whatever, Spider-Man finds one of the samples that caused the explosion in the rubble, and just handles it with his hands despite the radiation and whatnot. Very smart. Meanwhile, Marla’s trying to get down to try to help, and JJJ is trying to stop her. They’re on a fire escape on the side of the building with a big hole in it, and the fighting below rocks them, sending Marla toppling over the side. But then Robbie & Betty appear to grab everyone and pull them in a window to safety. And that’s ABSURD. We cut to Spider-Man hopping back into the fray to save Sandman, swinging that sample on a web in his hand. He gives Sandman a breather to reassemble himself, but is soon also in trouble.
Sandman looks like Banshee & Siryn from X-Men. His costumes only get worse every time they try to move on from his sweater & jeans look.
That is seriously some of the worst, least convincing technobabble I have ever seen in my life. This comic sucks.
Who’s to say that kid doesn’t have family? We literally don’t know anything about him! This whole story was a bunch of rushed nonsense! Good grief! Coming to this right after seeing what Ditko could do in just 20 pages, there is absolutely no excuse for such a half-baked story getting out the door in 1993. Man. Sometimes my decision to collect all these comics I skipped as a kid makes me feel dumb. Well, also, Scorpion fails to kill Cardiac, then Cardiac kills the CEO of the drug company, then buys it in his civilian identity as an impossibly rich doctor so it can keep doing all its good work and none of the bad. Sure, man, whatever. In the letter page, Danny Fingroth takes most of the page to explain the editorial situation on the titles and promise that they should be more consistent than ever, even as he’s only months away from the unmitigated continuity disaster that is the leadup to the clone’s revelation. That really worked out. Can’t believe that guy got to preside over 2 of the most messed up continuity situations I’ve ever seen, both on Spider-Man. Well, anyway. I’ve got all the books to the same cover date, January 1994, except Adjectiveless, so it’s time we see what’s going on there lately.