So, just to recap: Gerry Conway made a story about clones. And then Bill Mantlo made a story about a failed clone named Carrion. And then Conway came back and was like “Just kidding, those weren’t clones.” And then he said, “Also, Carrion is just a virus people can catch, not a clone, no clones.” And then the 90s Spider-Office was like, “Actually, clones forever.” And then they were like, “Nevermind all the clones, forget we said anything.“ And now they’re gonna re-litigate Carrion. I have said it before, but typically, if you have a continuity problem that would take more effort to explain than to ignore… ignore it, man. This one-shot has many credits: A plot by good ol’ Roger Stern (Known to be very into fixing continuity issues), a script by Joe Edkin (Never heard of him), pencils by Darick Robertson (Just can’t stay away) and Dan Lawlis (Never heard of him), inks by Keith Aiken (Never heard of him) and colors by Christie Scheele and Ian Laughlin. This book’s long enough to have chapters, and Chapter 1 is called Aces & Eights. It begins at a SHIELD biohazard facility where someone has just caught on fire.
Alrighty. Peter Parker proceeds to recap his origin in a daydream for awhile. Sure, why not. But that daydream ends with Spider-Man fighting a whole bunch of his villains for some reason, and then this:
Kinda-sorta Norman’s first appearance since SM 75 threw the Spider-World on its head.
Weird to see a panel going for titillation that’s also pretty tame by 90s standards there. Later that day, Peter heads into town looking for some photography work, but stops to look at The Bugle at a newsstand, hoping to pick up a lead there. That’s sure a weird strategy. And the headline, “CARRION COPYCAT?,” gets his attention. So he calls The Bugle, and Robbie fills him in on a series of chemical robberies, the latest of which has left a guard dead, with “THE DEAD WALK” left written in ash at the scenes. Peter thinks “That’s Carrion’s calling card, alright,” but, uh, is it? I do not associate him with this at all. While becoming Spider-Man, Peter thinks the first Carrion was destroyed and the 2nd was cured, and wonder why anyone new would want to be Carrion, but… If Carrion is a virus, why assume the new guy wanted it? Anyway, Spider-Man takes off to get involved. He recaps the Miles warren connection and the whole clone business, tons of recapping, and specifically gets into how the original Carrion said he was a clone, then Peter found a journal saying it wasn’t a clone, but now that he knows Warren did create clones, what was the original Carrion? WHO CARES???? Well, I guess we do, because the new Carrion just happens to be directly in Spider-Man’s path once he gets done explaining.
Carrion has upgraded his wardrobe with a fetching cape, and upgraded his villaining with an army of zombified civilians, who he commands to kill Spider-Man. Carrion helpfully lets us know they’re not dead or anything, just under his control, and also tells Spidey he has the previous Carrions’ death touch so he can avoid it. All the while, the voice in his head from the opening scene is trying to tell him what to do.
Carrion may have vanished, but his quasi-zombie hordes are still after our hero. He solves this problem by webbing 2 city buses across the length of 53rd and 54th streets to corral them. Then a SHIELD helicopter shows up and drops some kind of gas on them. Spidey thinks he should at least thank the people saving him, but as he leaps up in to the copter, his Spider Sense goes crazy.
SHIELD endangering the world yet again? Quelle surprise! Also, Nick Fury is “dead” in this period. Tink says his son is among the infected, tho he doesn’t know about the infection yet. He just knows SHIELD took his son. When informed his son has a virus with no cure, he sets out to go find one. When Spidey tries to stop him, Tinkerer sends them both tumbling through a portal to his lab. He exposits that he’s been working on this teleporter tech for some old villains called The Enclave, and one of them’s a geneticist, so he’s gonna go get that guy’s help, but Spidey says he knows a better guy. He asks if Tink’s teleporter can send him to Europe. It can, and as Tinkerer gives him the wristband that’ll let him activate the teleport (And thinks he’d kill him if he didn’t think Spider-Man could really save his son), we’re treated to a 2nd Darick Robertson-drawn Spidey story in a row here on the blog where our hero will have to save the day wearing a fancy wristband (After The Final Adventure #4), and a 2nd story in a short period (On the blog, anyway) involving The High Evolutionary, Miles Warren’s onetime boss and permanent fixture of clone retcons (Last seen in SSU #1). Spidey teleports to Wundagore Mountain and is attacked by the Knights of Wundagore, but convinces them it’s serious and is let in to see the big man relatively easily.
You get the feeling someone was like “We HAVE to explain the conflicting past of Carrion! People will be confused!” But no one was confused because no one cares. This is an expensive, oversized comic designed to patch a hole that wasn’t leaking. And fool I was, I bought it, largely due to the words “Roger Stern.” Peter gambles that Herbert didn’t alter any of the non-clone parts of Warren’s journal, which he still has, and so he finds the bit about Carrion’s Red Dust of Death, which he hopes will help SHIELD reverse engineer a cure. He teleports back to Tink’s place, overloading and destroying the teleporter in the process to tie up that potential loose end, and then hears on the radio that Carrion and his hordes have taken over the Empire State Building. He tasks Tinkerer with getting the journal to SHIELD, and then heads to the building, where Carrion and his goons attack him immediately. Our hero fights his way through the people trying not to hurt them. Carrion is rejecting the voice in his head’s instruction to kill Spider-Man, saying he wants to make a zombie of him to prove he’s the best Carrion ever and so on.
The explanation no one asked for, delivered.
Because he’s running out of pages, Spidey webs up Carrion, hits him so hard he passes out before he can teleport, and delivers him to SHIELD.
Mighty rushed ending. But there it is, all spelled out, aggressively explained, so we can all sleep easy knowing the truth about all the nonsense we didn’t care about to begin with. Totally worth my 3 dollars. I kept expecting a big shift in the art since 2 pencilers were credited, but I guess Dan Lawlis must’ve worked on backgrounds. Ah, well. Stern was just back in the Spider Office at this time with a miniseries I am saving for later which was very good, so I bought this without hesitation. I shoulda read the fine print.