Alright, let’s see this turkey out. The villains attack in a 2-page spread with a lot of coloring mistakes. Weird that Venom isn’t in the baddie roster. Jack O’Lantern recaps at Mysterio while also realizing DD is blind, which seems bad.
Whatever. As the battle against fake people continues, DD and Spidey begin hallucinating their father figures, Matt’s Dad and Uncle Ben. This leaves them incapacitated, and then it’s up to Just A Guy Named Joe to fight all the robot villains. And he suddenly discovers he’s got super strength, ‘cuz why not?
JJJ tells them Jack is Berkhart, and Spidey thinks that makes sense. Glad someone does. Joe gets knocked out by Robo-Kraven and Jack grabs Bet/sy in the chaos. Then, since we’re running out of pages, DeFalco has to try to sell the idea that Mad Jack was Berkhart the whole time…
Oh, sure, a guy dressed like Jack O’Lantern claiming to be an ancient spirit who just happens to look like Jack O’Lantern, everyone was thinking “That guy’s obviously trying to be Mysterio.” And he didn’t “have a thing for Jameson,” he had a history with Marla. Yer not fooling anybody, Tom. But wait:
Congratulations, this makes LESS sense than Berkhart! But wait again, because after the heroes confront Mad Jack, he gets real big to be scary, and they’re suddenly totally immune t his illusions, and…
Much like when DeFalco walked back Scrier’s all-powerful, immortal status in ASM 417, him walking back Mad Jack’s all-powerful, immortal status is a big, dumb letdown. What a bunch of nothing. You’ll be shocked to hear that “Maguire Beck” never appeared in anything else again. Daniel Berkhart, on the other hand, has a surprising 6 more comics ahead of him here, and 4 of them will be covered on the ol’ blog eventually. For now, we’re actually gonna see a few issues of ASM and PPSM. But don’t get too comfortable, there’s another miniseries lurking in the near future…