Wow, this issue’s clean! This looks like it just came off the press! Shiny and unblemished. I bet CGC would give it a 9.9 or some such. Too bad it’s this comic and not a good one. Wonder where it came from. I guess eBay. Well, time to reduce its value. The Fear-Fraught Fist-Flinging Finale, don’t you know. The Moran pitching in on colors before was Ericka, who’s doing this issue solo and thus gets a full credit. It’s recap page into 2-page splash like last time, mostly empty panels full of silhouettes as the army of Platoons fly after our heroes. Then we go to various silhouettes I’m told are in various parts of the country calling to place orders for the Platoon suit. All they’ve seen it do is get beaten by Spider-Man and Iron Fist, but the board of directors says they don’t have enough phone lines to take all the orders. “Get the battlesuit that fails in its mission, order now!”
Uh… ok. I don’t know why any of that just happened, but sure. Iron Fist is not coming to the surface due to having been shot in the arm (Surely the world’s most powerful martial artist wouldn’t be knocked out by a laser in the arm???), so Spidey has to haul him out of the drink.
So we watched them all fly away, and the news lady said they were headed for Brooklyn, but now they’re all… under the bridge? Standing on the water or something? If only they were visible on the page to figure out what was happening… Great storytelling. Spider-Man’s web catches 4 of them, and the dialogue says it was 6, but now he’s out of web fluid, and more are approaching. Quick page of ARMs taking more orders, then a splash of the heroes punching. This coulda been 1 issue.
So they’re ON the bridge? So the heroes leapt into the water, climbed back up, overshot, climbed up to the very top of the bridge, and then jumped down to the Platoons on the actual lanes of the bridge? This comic sucks!
I am running out of ways to react to both art and script that isn’t just a heavy sigh. The heroes didn’t die, of course. They lept up onto… fire escapes? Lee bothers to draw enough background so you can see fire escapes. Weren’t they just on the bridge!? I know the newslady said they were “at the very edge” of it, but… sigh. So the baddies all shot each other in the crossfire, but now the 6* (*actually 4**) (**but now Lee only draws 3) Spidey webbed earlier are loose and coming after them, so it’s time for more barely visible non-fighting. Iron Fist punches one in the arm as it shoots, and it then brings down a barely rendered building on top of some amount of the other ones, I can’t tell. Then the various people who were calling to order Platoons are revealed as they all cancel. They are X-Men villain Shinobi Shaw (Last seen on the blog in Spider-Man Team-Up 1, I believe), Hydra, X-Men villain Sat-yr-9… Richard Fisk from witness protection???… GAUNTLET from JAIL… a US Army guy and The Slug. How was Gauntlet going to buy suits!? FROM JAIL!?! He has no money even NOT in jail!! This comic sucks! 2-page splash of the heroes hitting 2 more Platoons. Every splash, they each tell each other to do something, by name, at the same time. “Aim for their JOINTS, Spider-Man…” “EXPOSE enough CIRCUITS on them, Fist–” Every splash. Why?
AIM is, of course, known for their distinctive monster-skull-masks. Oh wait, no they’re not! Jae Lee just sucks! My bad! I will be happy to forget this story. I sure hope my next comic is at least competently produced…