Not the best cover to announce your biggest villain is back. “Can you guess whose hands these are?” This issue is John Byrne’s last (Huzzah!) and to send him off in style, John Romita, Sr. is inking. How’s things in the life of superheroing’s biggest loser?
Yeah, but look at those immaculate lines. Not even Hanna had Byrne looking so clean. Out of options, Peter finally does the reasonable thing and calls Aunt May. But don’t get too comfortable with him making reasonable choices. Thus, Spider-Man is soon riding on top of a train back out to Queens.
Really, really asking for trouble, Liz. Man, this synthesis of Byrne and Romita is interesting. Romita can be a heavy handed inker, and you can see both of them coming through in different parts of different panels. Two of the most recognizable art styles in comics history jockeying for position on every page. Really interesting. And really asking…
Meanwhile, in Queens, Aunt May takes her soaking nephew into the house and demands he go take a hot bath. As he showers, he thinks to himself he feels better already, and that he & MJ should move back into the house when he finds her. When he comes downstairs…
I can’t believe it’s been so long, either. The way they brought her in as an ersatz Aunt May for a couple years was only more obvious and awkward when she got shoved right back out the door when May returned. Later, Peter is preparing to leave, and May is understandably worried about him refusing to admit MJ is dead. She asks him to move back in (Isn’t this Anna’s house still? Shouldn’t she have a say?), but he lies and says he’s got a line on an apartment and a job. She knows he’s lying and forces him to take some money (Can you collect social security if you’ve been declared dead?). He thinks maybe he will come back tonight. Meanwhile, The Green Goblin has crashed Liz’s car and is tormenting her. She’s figured out it’s not Norman, and he doesn’t seem to like that. Remember the other Green Goblin? The mystery guy from what feels like a million years ago? He’s back. But in Norman’s end of the world suit. Whatever, we go to the Bugle instead of seeing what’s going on, as Peter is back for… some reason. Robbie is once again arguing with Randy, and asks if Peter has reconsidered that “bonus,” and Peter does the smart thing and says he’ll take it.
And yes, Byrne is making Romita, who created Robbie, ink his hair wrong. Sacrilege. But this meeting is fateful.
Peter and Randy talk for awhile, Randy revealing he’s moved back to NY to try to be an actor, and the 2 commiserating about growing up. Randy has always been a severely underutilized character, but seems like once a decade, a writer decides to bring him back, and here he is. But then Betty bursts in, saying “someone thought they saw” Peter go in this place, to say that Green Goblin’s attacking Liz and they’re going to go cover it together. And Peter suddenly wonders if Norman is behind MJ’s death. That took long enough! He’s not, but why wouldn’t you assume the guy who faked Aunt May’s death also did Mary Jane? Well, they arrive on the scene, which now has cops and the Goblin having a shootout, and the Goblin doesn’t seem to want to do it. Peter picks up on it not being Norman immediately, and thinks about his recent encounter with Harry’s holographic “ghost.”
But as the Goblin swoops down and slams Liz into a wall, making weird comments about not having a surname, hating the Obsorns, and wanting to look at “his” files, a web snags his hand before he can do anything else.
So you get Romita inking Byrne’s Spider-Man, and it somehow comes out looking not unlike Sal Buscema’s. That’s wild. The battle goes slamming into a cable car, which immediately brings the Nightcrawler/Punisher story from ASM 171–172 to mind, but this is a very different story.
And with Peter literally sleeping in alleyways, we say goodbye to John Byrne. He’s made quite a mark on the world of Spider-Man in this past year. Just not a good one. But at least his final issue is the best looking. That Romita touch of class! Man, anyone inked by him should count themselves lucky. I bet it was a thrill for Byrne. I hope so, anyway. But if he’s done, who’s the next artist on ASM? The answer may surprise you. It sure surprised me back in the day… But first, we’ve got to resolve this cliffhanger in PPSM.