ASM 11-24, Annual 2000, PPSM 11-24, Thor 17, Iron Man 21, Avengers 24-25. After dealing with an increasingly aggressive stalker, MJ “blows up” in an exploding plane. In a truly insane swerve back to making Peter Parker a sadsack, after MJ dies, he loses 2 jobs and his house in the same day. In the only thing from this period that isn’t patently awful, Peter simply refuses to believe Mary Jane is dead. With Norman Osborn, Doc Ock and even Aunt May having recently come back from the dead, who could blame him? And he is right. With MJ dead, they immediately start trying to gin up a romance with Jill Stacy, which, like everything else in this set, is awful and stupid. Peter moves in with Randy Robertson, who starts dating Glory Grant. After 2 years of build up, the mysterious, evil Senator Ward turns out to be a living container for an alien virus, which is obviously at least the 3rd thing his secret was going to be revealed as. 5/6 of the Sinister Six reforms to kill Doc Ock, briefly recruiting Venom, who then goes on a rampage trying to kill them all. Venom bites a chunk out of Sandman, who can no longer control his sand. Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, Professor X and the Juggernaut fight the Exemplars, 7 avatars of made up gods in the style of Juggernaut, all revealed to be contemporaries of his Cytorrak. Then the Exemplars immediately come back in Avengers, and Spider-Man, Nova, Quicksilver and Hercules join the team to fight them even more. Spider-Man fights Hulk and the Blob, then is led to Latveria on a tip that MJ is alive and there, and ends up defeating a genocidal Doombot posing as the real thing. The fake Green Goblin from 1998 is revealed to be some kind of genetic freak made in a lab by Norman Osborn. And so on! This one was like pulling teeth. I’ve found that when I really don’t like the material, I also really don’t want to do the drawing. Probably the lamest Spider-Man figure out of all 55 drawings. I recycled the villain thing on the bottom for the 2nd time. I like to have stuff repeat through the series, but it was mostly because I was so disinterested in this one and saved me some thinking.
