Why did I do this? Why did I invest in a a -part guest appearance by Spider-Man in his total best bro’s comic? X-Man had already shuffled through a few creatives by issue 37. Starting out with Jeph Loeb and later John Ostrander writing for Steve Skroce. By the time Skroce left for Spider-Man, this book was written by Terry Kavanagh, and when Skroce left, he was replaced by Roger Cruz. Crus and Luke Ross were essentially the same person in the late 90s. I mean, look at this Cruz cover:
A subpar Joe Mad impression with a Spider-Man doing a halfhearted McFarlane impression? You have to check the signature to be sure it’s not Ross. That issue tied in somehow to the Morbius story in SM 78, but I had no interest in picking it up. This issue begins what appears to have been a brief guest stint by the artist Crisscross. Hey, the name was his idea, don’t smirk at me. He is inked by Bud LaRosa and colored by Mike Thomas and Mark Bernardo. Crisscross brought a quasi-graffiti influence to his stuff, a lot of really exaggerated angles and shapes. His stuff feels very of its time but also not as derivative as a lot of his contemporaries. We open on Spider-Man begging someone unseen not to do something on top of a bridge at night.
It’s a bridge in New York and Spider-Man’s there, so you know…
Spidey and Nate recap a bunch of his recent adventures at each other, Nate finishin’ a lot of words without the g’s even tho I don’t think other writers were writin’ him that way as he continues to threaten to do… something. Spider-Man grabs him by the shoulder and tells him not to and is zapped with energy for it as psionic energy explodes out of Nate into lightning looking arcs headed for the city. I guess he’s trying to make the entire city forget about him, and we meet his ludicrously named love interest, “Jam,” short for Jasmine (How? Show your work), who we’re told is the only person he’s giving a chance to choose to forget, and she does not. Apparently he has succeeding in mindwiping every one else, tho, including someone named Bux. I’m glad I’d given up on the X-Men by this point. The Age of Apocalypse event that created Nate gave me a perfect jumping off point.
But as he keeps violating the minds of every New Yorker, he reaches the mind of the aforementioned Threnody in “the underground tunnels” (The Morlock tunnels? Who knows?). He’s trying to figure out why he’s not sensed her in town before when…
POOM indeed.
Yes, I’m sure the thing shining gigantic spotlights all over the city is “hidden.” Ugh.
As Nate’s psionic storm or whatever expands, a figure emerges coming toward Spider-Man. And that figure… is Gwen Stacy with a goofy futuristic rifle. Really. We’re told this is the Gwen of Nate’s alternate reality (Professor X’s son went back in time to kill Magneto and accidentally killed his dad instead, transforming the present into a post-apocalyptic nightmare until the X-Men fixed it, but the event was so popular that elements of it came to the prime reality, like X-Man, and writers keep going back to it, even today), which means she grew up a lot harder than the real Gwen. Spider-Man flashes back to a long montage of him and Gwen dating when he was still wearing vests and glasses, because long time Spider-Man writer and Clone Saga villain Terry Kavanagh apparently doesn’t know basic Spider-Man history, and then her death and then how he came ot love MJ and whatever.
Uuuuggggghhhhhhhhhhh Spider-Man saves this Gwen from dying this is so stupid. It somehow takes 2 more pages for him to reach her.
I just remembered. I got these issues when I worked at the comic shop. I was trying a lot of random things at that time just because. This had Spider-Man in it, so why not? Boy, the answers to that question are numerous! But we’re here, so we’ll have to finish this dumb story up next time.