Maybe I’m just no fun, but I don’t think Spider-Man should be retroactively made to encounter any actual supervillains before he really did. After, like, ASM 3, say, it’s fine. But I just feel weird about his first superfights being “untold tales.” No one asked me, tho, so here we go. No fewer than 4 more painters join Paul Lee in getting this issue out the door, that seems like a bad sign. We got Terese Nielsen, Alexi Taylor, Greg Loudon and Ken Meyer, Jr. on deck this month. We begin with some pretty interesting, heretofore unexplored backstory…
The idea that Peter knew all the kids except Flash, and that he turned them against him, is an interesting one. It seems a bit much, but it also kind of helps make sense of his fruitless attempts to interact with them in AF 15, makes them seem slightly less straight up evil and makes him thinking they wouldn’t be slightly more believable. That’s a lot of backstory for 2 panels in the original, tho. Spidey saves the guy and keeps a girder from falling on the people below, and we see the glowing dude on the cover flying by. The worker says he’ll never forget this, and that it seemed like the crane must’ve been tampered with, but who could have done that so high off the ground? The gathering crowd wants his autograph, but Spider-Man swings away, saying that’s not why he’s doing this. Then he’s flagged down by Maxie. He says the public is going crazy for Spider-Man since he’s started the hero gig, and he could name his price for talking to any magazine, paper or TV show, but he says he just wants to live up to his responsibilities and swings away. He ruminates on how chasing fame is how Uncle Ben died. However… one could make the point that making money for his frail, grieving, unemployed elderly aunt might be more important than his recently discovered principles, at least in the short term. anyway , as he swings off, he’s seen by a semi-obscured and unnamed, but unmistakable Kingpin and his crony. We learn Kingpin arranged the “accident” at the construction site to try to muscle in on the management company, and he says he has an agent to take care of Spider-Man if it becomes necessary. Later, the TV in the Parker home is showing a piece on those scary mutants, with footage of Cyclops saving some people described as an attack.
Wow, Aunt May looks scary there! Wow! Her resilience in the face of loss is pretty impressive, demonic appearance notwithstanding. Watching the footage of Cyclops, struggling with how to deal with May thinking he still has friends, Peter thinks that while he may not have an angry mob chasing him, he thinks he knows how that guy on TV feels. I mean… the angry mob is a pretty big part of the story. But, anyway, he waits til May thinks he’s asleep and Spider-Man is back out on the prowl, hoping to find a wrong to right, when…
Oh ho. Spider-Man relates his origin, leaving out his name, and she is shocked by the idea of a radioactive spider, saying, “That’s so dumb!” She says they should go do something, and we’re told they race through the city, and for the first time since Ben died, Peter begins to feel like a kid again.
Meanwhile, at Maxie Shiffman’s office, his secretary quits, saying he hasn’t paid her in weeks and she’s tired of hiding him from mob goons and bill collectors. He has no idea what he’s gonna do when he gets a call from a guy at “It’s Amazing,” the show that’s putting all these super people on TV. He says he’s still gonna get them Spider-Man, it’s just taking awhile, but then a knock at the door turns out to be a rather menacing looking guy with powers. Maxie says he might just have something for the show. In front of the ever-running Parker TV, Peter hears of another accident at the construction site, and thinks if he stakes it out, he could catch whoever’s doing it. And, to his delight, he thinks he won’t have to do it alone. He soon tells Joey his plan, and well…
That went great.
Joey dressing like an early 90s kid in this late 90s comic where everything else looks like the 60s is pretty weird.
Peter’s so lonely he sets out to try to convince himself maybe Joey’s right, maybe he’s too serious. He wonders if he’s done enough, if the good he’s done has been enough for Uncle Ben. He wonders if he loosened up, maybe she could meet him halfway and stop doing such dangerous things. He’s got a lot on his mind as he wanders through his evening on autopilot, and the same into the next day. One of the kids throws a football at him, trying to hit in him the head, but Peter catches it without looking and throws it back a lot harder than they would’ve expected. He’s worried he did too much, but…
I think this is an interesting move. While Flash has certainly got a lot to answer for in turning all these kids into Peter’s tormentors, in this moment, Peter chooses to be an outcast. It plays into that business where Flash told him he brought all the teasing on himself by refusing to be part of the group back in Web 11. At any rate, Spider-Man swings to what we’re told is a very dangerous part of town, looking for trouble, and happens to hear one guy advising his buddy to call in sick to the construction site tomorrow, because either their boss is going to play ball, or there isn’t gonna be a boss anymore. They don’t say what construction site, but our man doesn’t have to be the world’s greatest detective to put this one together. Thusly…
The ol’ Parker luck. Little bit of built-in animosity from the Kingpin for their famous first meeting. It’s weird no one ever brought back Joey Pulaski. You’d think Kurt himself might’ve had present day plans for her. Maybe he did, but they didn’t happen.