A 4-part story where a single chapter is written by a different writer is a strange decision. Charlie Adlard, at this point best known for the Walking Dead, tags in for line art this chapter, and Jung Choi colors, credited with a full name, as opposed to the mysterious “JC” credit on USM. That’s odd. Well, Peter’s writhing around on the ground in pain and yellow light is coming out of mystery dude’s eyes as we rejoin the story.
Thinkin’ outside the box. That severs the connection between Peter and Whoever, allowing Peter to wake up and whatsisname to fall down. He is very cross about this and does his Glow Eyes and MJ passes out. Whoever flees as Peter tries to rouse her, and then we see Spider-Man burst into an emergency room with the unconscious form of MJ in his arms.
Spider-Man finds his way to a place in the park where Whoever is feeding swans. He chose this based on a memory of MJ being chased by one and being embarrassed. He then reveals to Spider-Man that he can see the future. Spider-Man is obviously not interesting anything but helping MJ, but this guy says in 4 minutes and twenty seconds, Spider-Man will suffer terrible agony and die. He says he’s sorry about all this, that he didn’t choose for any of it to happen. Spidey says we all have choices, and then Whoever socks him in the face while telling him to try to be brave.
Spidey has only 2 and a half minutes left as Whoever throws him through a bridge. Suddenly very powerful, this guy. Bad guy batters our man around, saying Peter’s wasted his potential, but that he will appreciate it, but then Spidey trots out “With great power…”
I mean, could this be any less satisfying? Could there be a worse resolution to all this? Not just to this little storyline, but to the whole time MJ was “dead,” to the whole time she was being stalked before that, to most of the last 2 and a half years of comics. A guy who’s never even named, who didn’t even care about MJ in the Mackie issues but randomly said he loved her in this one, with some barely defined superpower, kidnapped her, tried to kill Spider-Man, realized killing is bad, and blew himself up. Just pathetic. I don’t know if they could’ve come up with a worse explanation and ending on purpose. But… it’s an ending. The unnamed bad guy has blown himself up and our couple is reunited. What’s left to do? Well… a whole annual, that’s what. Can you imagine being Paul Jenkins for this? “Hey, Paul, before you got here, we had this long-running subplot that changed course like 3 times, and then we literally blew it up and got on with our lives, but now we have to bring it back, and could you, like, wrap it up for us?” He’s Peter David writing ASM 289 for a new generation. And what about Mackie? You were in charge of this nonsense the whole time, even if editorial was CLEARLY moving the goal posts all the time, and then the time comes to end the story, and someone else does it? Just insane. Loopy. Bonkers. But… let’s see that annual next time…