Spider-Man has a growth on the side of his head. Absolutely insane that people saw art like this and were like “THIS is the guy we want drawing Spider-Man! On and off for the next 20 years, if possible!” Ugh, anyway. This one starts weird…
Not how your TYPICAL Spidey adventure starts. The next page, however, is closer, as Aunt May has brought over some very silly angel and devil salt & pepper shakers for Peter’s new apartment. He’s not into them, but trying to pretend otherwise with the mysterious Caryn shows up.
The visual gag with the shakers is pretty good! At this point, it’s been 13 years since Peter had to ditch a girl with a lame excuse to go be Spider-Man, but I think he’s gonna have to relearn how to do it. Elsewhere, the elder of those monks literally yells “To the Monkmobile!” as they run to a dilapidated old VW Bug covered in religious iconography. The young one asks if they should call the cops, but the old one says “he” is more a danger to himself than others as they zoom off toward the city, where “he” turns out to be William, a guy who talks in 3rd person and gets mugged. Except when the muggers try to pull his sunglasses off, he does some glow-y eye stuff to them and leaves them messed up like the monks from earlier. While apologizing. Meanwhile, Peter is at the fair with Caryn, and being a real wet blanket, when he spots Randy, Glory & Jill there, too, and hustles Caryn in another direction to avoid them. Ya know, this situation where Peter’s friends only exist in the secondary book is very 1970s.
I mean, look, he just broke up with the love of his life and he’s obviously not in a happy place, sure, but like, is that any reason to be so rude about some nice lady who’s committed the unforgivable sin of wanting to spend time with you? Our man is a jerk.
So, it wasn’t as obvious because Spider-Man was in so little of last issue, but a radical transformation took place, and is now much more clear: Buckingham’s whole approach to Spidey changed. He’s suddenly doing a Romita, Sr. style Spidey. Blue instead of black, small eyes, thinner webs on the suit. And seems to be not swiping as much, even. What happened?? That is very drastic. As Spider-Man dodges around and barely avoids a blast that sends him crashing to Earth, he meets the monks. There’s still some of the stock poses from previous issues, but with the new style on top, and less often. While Peter meets the monks, Caryn meets someone else.
Gag would’ve been better if they hadn’t shadowed the girls’ faces. The monks explain to Spider-Man that William was brought to them as a baby, and they eventually discovered he was a mutant. If he lays on his back, he’s fine, but if he stands up, as long as his eyes are open, he’s shootin’ beams. But this power hurts him when used, deteriorating him mentally and physically, slowly driving him crazy, so he’s spent his life laying on a bed reading. They tell Spider-Man they don’t know why William is here, but if he keeps his eyes open much longer, he’ll die. Which is a very weird setup, but here we are. Spidey swings into action, but wondering in the back of his mind what it would be like to be William. He thinks that with great power comes great responsibility, but what if you didn’t want the power?
I feel pretty sure you coil source the Spider-Man in panel 4, and panels 2 and 6 still rely on stock poses, but he’s better, I guess.
Only 2 stock poses on these pages!
And only one repeat here. He’s making an effort. That was an abrupt ending. It almost reads like there were more pages they forgot to print. Another one tugging at the heartstrings, if one that took a very weird path to get there. We didn’t even see Caryn and Jill confront Peter! Very weird.