ASM 595-611 & Annual 36, Web of Spider-Man, Vol. 2 #1, Punisher Annual 1, Fantastic Four 574, ASM Presents Jackpot 1-3. Norman Osborn tries to brainwash Harry into joining the Dark Avengers as a publicity tool called “American Son,” but Harry’s only doing it to try to rescue Lily, his former fiance, the supervillain Malice, and Norman’s baby mama. It doesn’t go well, and Spider-Man winds up masquerading as Venom undercover in the Dark Avengers to try to help before the 2 Osborns duke it out in stolen Stark tech. Then it’s time for the big wedding of Aunt May and Jay Jameson, almost ruined by Doctor Octopus, now dying of brain damage caused from 15 years of being punched by Spider-Man, in a misguided and disastrous attempt to automate Manhattan as his legacy. The New Avengers and the FF get wrapped up in helping, Johnny Storm attends the wedding as Carlie Cooper’s date, and Peter goes with his roommate, Michele Gonzales, sister of his former roommate Vic the crooked cop in jail, and then MJ shows up to make it weirder. Peter makes the rare and ill-advised decision to get drunk because MJ scares him so bad and wakes up with Michele, which leads to them hating each other. The situation is not improved with Chameleon takes over Peter’s life for a while to try to get into JJJ’s administration and, not knowing he’s Spider-Man, manages to almost ruin his relationships with almost everyone he knows, the visiting MJ included. But Peter breaks free from Chameleon’s torture dungeon and catches him, and everyone forgives Peter’s terrible behavior due to bad writing. As tends to happen when the writing staff is too lazy to give Peter a real love life, he then gets back together with Black Cat, and they fight Diablo, of all people. In the Annual, the ludicrous new villain Raptor appears, doing mysterious things, and then in the regular series, he makes his move, determined to kill Peter for being Ben Reilly, who he met in his former life as a scientist when Ben was in exile. Kaine ruined the guy’s life as he tended to do, and even pops back up here in time for a fight between Raptor, Spider-Man and Screwball in Aunt May’s burning house. In Web of Spider-Man, we get a flashback to Kaine’s past no reasonable person could care about just in time for his return. In FF, Spider-Man is a guest at Franklin Richards’ birthday. In the Punisher annual, 2 villains with mind control powers make Spider-Man and Punisher fight. And in the Jackpot mini, the unnecessarily convoluted story of Jackpot, the superhero who looked and talked exactly like Mary Jane but wasn’t, who died, but was then revealed to be the 2nd Jackpot, continues as the original Jackpot gets back in the business. She has a new, worse costume just in time to fight Boomerang in a new, worse costume, who is working for a new Rose in a new, worse costume. Spider-Man keeps popping up as Boomerang kills Jackpot’s husband and the Rose is absurdly revealed to be her boss at work before she brings them to justice, retires from crime fighting and is never seen again, thank goodness. It’s a lot. Daredevil was in there somewhere, but I don’t even remember, at this point. Swiped John Romita, Jr. Spider-Man and Doc Ock. Laying out those tentacles took a lot of effort.