ASM 331

Now here’s a weird one. This is one of a few issues where a very dark ad was actually transferring ink to the facing story page and I put a kleenex in there to try to stop it. There is a 31-year old tissue in this comic. And look, those portrait squares are back. This one starts with Mary Jane being accosted in her home by an intruder who made a “you never know what the cat might drag in” joke, so…

This ignores that after they broke up, she & Peter kept in touch, even as he & MJ were getting closer again, and she wasn’t going bananas about it back then, but that’s comics for you.

Someone almost repulsed by the sight of Spider-Man with his mask off doesn’t strike me as the marrying type, but what do I know? I try to avoid posting this many pages in a row, but the following page is the one I was trying to protect with the kleenex.

I mean, look at it. I had to do something. Curse you, Double Dragon II for the NES advertisement! Punisher and Microchip tell each other what happened last issue like they weren’t there, and then we shift our scene to The Vault, where Eddie Brock committed suicide last month. But, guess what, when they go to do an autopsy, black goop comes spraying out of him and envelopes the doctor’s hand.

Uh. Ok. Venom does the usual “I sure do hate killing innocents even though I do it all the time” speech before stealing a doctor’s clothes and ID and walking out of jail. Meanwhile, in the Bronx, Spider-Man has met up with The Punisher and is chilling in his van with him. Microchip has traced the drugs to a facility upstate, and Punisher is loaded up on non-lethal weapons since he doesn’t want to hurt soldiers. So our guys are ready to roll. But also…

That’s funny. MJ’s having a weird week. But when that lady storms outside, she’s hit by a car, and onlookers think it seemed to speed up and hit her on purpose. That seems bad. Upstate, Spidey & Punisher discover they’re breaking into not a military base, but a training academy full of kids. Spidey warns Frank that if he hurts any kids, he’s going down, and then they head in. They’re finding their way to the boss’s office when a guard catches them.

Whatever you may think of Erik Larsen’s art, there’s no denying he can really pack some energy into a panel. Inside, they find a colonel who looks like Charles Bronson for some reason (His second appearance in the last month of posts??). After some threatening, Bronson reveals the truth: The US Government is stockpiling cocaine unless the gold standard collapses, so they can switch to a cocaine standard. This is legit the plot of this comic book.

Aaaaaaalright. If you say so! They soon find the gym of the academy piled to the rafters with crates of coke, and not long after, find those crates are guarded by killer robots, and through some very splash-page-y action scenes, they start destroying them.

He’s fine, don’t worry. Punisher rigs the gym to explode while Spider-Man pulls the fire alarm to make sure no kids get hurt, and then it’s time for fireworks.