Also apparently known on the internet as ASM Annual 35? I didn’t think anyone cared about those legacy numbers. If you count the annuals named for their publication year, this is #35. This is back when Marvel’s so-called “legacy numbering” still attempted to make sense. Brian Reed, Mike McKone, Andy Lanning and Jeromy Cox are on deck for some Jackpot tomfoolery. This trade has this annual coming after the Secret Invasion mini, so hopefully it doesn’t cause me any continuity headaches here on the blog. I know millions of readers would be upset.
(Note Zeb Wells’ name back in the “brain trust” even though he’s very much out. I think that’s just a mistake.) Jackpot is one of a few characters, like Menace, who I looked up at some point during the years I wasn’t buying ASM, just wondering what on Earth their deal was. So I have a vague, half-remembered notion of what this is going to be about. Well, first, we very briefly recap that Jackpot is a new hero, that she and Spider-Man exchanged their “real names” in ASM 550, with Spidey giving “Flash Thompson” and Jackpot giving “Sara Ehret.” Then we remake the scene in ASM 551 where Spider-Man paid a visit to Sara Ehret, who had no idea why he thought she was Jackpot. And when we get pas the original end of that scene, we see Sara call “Alana,” call her “Tiger,” and say they have to talk. Flashback over, we can proceed to the present.
I wonder if Blindside’s really big arm is going to get explained at all.
Blind or no, our hero does have a danger sense, which he’s used to avoid being hit when he can’t see, like, a zillion times. Wonder why Spidey’s eyes changed so dramatically on this page. This Z-Lister hefts his big bags of money and walks right out as Jackpot prefers to hang around and make sure Spider-Man is ok over his staunch objections. Then she takes him to safety before the cops arrive, which seems like a violation of her registered hero status (Ya notice how the whole registration thing comes up less and less? It’s still crucially important in a book like New Avengers, but it never comes up in a Daredevil and rarely in ASM). They get some coffees and after Jackpot tries to convince Spider-Man to register, he brings up how she gave him a fake name.
So, like, one of the whole things about registration in Civil War was secret identities. They did a very bad job of explaining if a registered hero had to reveal themselves to the public, as Spider-Man did, or just to Uncle Sam. I was never really sure, and still am not, even after re-reading all that. Should Jackpot’s alias be common knowledge? No idea.
McKone forgot the chest spider in panel 3! Reed Richards is another person who should be trying to arrest Spider-Man on sight. No one in this book takes it seriously even as the government directs seemingly all its resources to apprehending the rogue Avengers in those titles. Well, anyway, Peter Parker brings Walter Declun’s name to Betty Brant, who I am glad to see as a regular player in these pages again. She explains he owns several newspapers and media companies. She also mentions how Wolverine stabbed him in the face and he somehow got better. Declun was the villain of Wolverine’s Civil War tie-ins, wherein Logan tracked down just who hired Nitro to do the job that kicked off that story in the first place. At the time, Declun was working for Damage Control, and was fired when his misdeeds were revealed. And Wolverine killed him in the Wolverine comic, but comics is comics, so now he survived somehow. Peter tries to convince Betty to do a story on how Declun isn’t dead, and also says he’ll take pictures for it, like he still works for the DB!. Between that and the Zeb Wells credit, I wonder if this was meant to see print sooner. It came out the same month as ASM 573-575, so we’re actually seeing it later than when it came out, and yet it seems to take place before. On top of prodding Betty to investigate a dangerous rich guy while refusing to say why, Peter also produces a coffee cup in a plastic bag and asks if she can get a fingerprint off it. He is acting so weird to her! He couldn’t have gotten that from Reed?? Well, next page is…
That looks pretty kill-y to me!
Now it’s later, and they’re talking on the phone, and Betty is worried Peter is in some kind of trouble due to the incredibly stupid, direct questions he was asking at an interview he shouldn’t have even been at because he doesn’t work with Betty anymore. All this tight new continuity and running the book like a TV writers’ room can’t save them, it seems. Peter chooses to just not answer that and ask if she got him some prints. And she just gives him Alana Jobson, arrested on a DUI 3 years ago. Phone call over! Peter used to at least try to hide when he was working a Spider-Man case in his private life, jeez. We cut to Spider-Man breaking into Alana’s house and feeling bad about it as he goes through her stuff. Why… is he doing this? What is he after? Shouldn’t he be doing this to Declun or finding out who Blindside is? What is the motive? And then he finds… I guess a bunch of drugs in a draw, it’s kinda hard to tell. But then she comes home, and he has to hide.
She’s looking a lot more buff than usual.
On the one hand, “you shouldn’t be using drugs to be a superhero” is a pretty reasonable position, and on the other hand, it’s Captain America’s origin. Slippery slope and all that.
This is needlessly complicated. “Check out our new hero, Jackpot! Just kidding, she’s the second Jackpot!”
McKone really does draw a great, great Spider-Man. Will his ultimatum to Jackpot stand? I don’t think so. Not totally sure. For now, our guy goes through her files on Declun, and gets a name for the inventor of the “apparently stolen” Oedipus chemical. And he’s in the phone book. Thus we find him just knocking on the door of a suburban home in Port Washington, catching Nick Chernin, aka Blindside, in his robe having a relaxing evening.
Commanda! Of all people! Not seen on the blog since Untold Tales of Spider-Man #10! Apparently, she was a background character in an army of supervillains in one of the Civil War filler tie-ins, but this is her first real appearance since we last saw her. And her last! And all a character who’s not done anything or been seen by anyone in 10 in-continuity years gets is “Been a long time since I saw her!” And she doesn’t even really get to speak. And why is she all suited up if Nick there is in his robe? Well, she gets kicked in the face by Jackpot, who obviously came here to bust Blindside before Spider-Man could. Blindy gets her with his special hand, but Spider-Man webs off Commanda’s power gloves, flips over and coldcocks Nick before popping a neurotoxin antidote into JP’s mouth, all in one page.
Spidey begins to rush Jackpot to a hospital , but she just kinda… dies. Poof.
So… is the original Jackpot gonna suit back up? Do they still throw people like her in the Negative Zone prison for not wanting to be a soldier just because she got some powers by accident? Who knows? But this comic definitely takes place after the Secret Invasion tie-in! So I’ll put it there. And no one would know I read this stuff in a weird order if I didn’t type this. But, then, no one is reading this, either…