Well that seems weird! Cyborg Spider-Man seems like enough to get you to buy a comic. So, anyway, Solo’s about to execute Spider-Man, who he has been Mysterio’d into thinking is Doctor Octopus, but…
I don’t think they liked it.
So… where’d all that blood on his face come from? Is he shot in the head? The face? Where is the wound? Shouldn’t he be, like, dead? Also, I guess of note, who saved Spider-Man? Well…
It’s Unnamed Cyborg Guy! This seems like a very casual cross to another dimension for the bad guys to me. There’s a page of Larsen’s most gratuitous T&A yet as MJ wakes up, finds Peter never came home last night, worries about their fight over her potential nude scene, and then remembers its almost his birthday and she’s not done anything yet, all in one page. The nude scene thing is awkward. Ultimately, MJ got it in one with her “my body, my choice” comment, but on the other hand, living in a world where Nick Katzenberg wouldn’t stop making salacious comments about the time he saw MJ naked in a movie would quite literally drive Peter (Or anyone) to murder, so you know. Elsewhere, Spider-Man wakes up looking like he does on the cover and freaking out.
Like Ditko and few others between them, Larsen is always up for some cartooning instead of just comic book penciling, really exaggerating features, but even so, this guy is really, really weird looking. Also…
…there is an insane amount of text on these 2 pages. Not only is SHIELD aware of all this, they’re on site, and Spidey runs into his old pal Dum Dum Dugan, last seen around here in MTU 139, I think. Spidey apologizes for being so suspicious, is told to bring that cast back when he’s done with it, and grabs some free donuts on his way out, thinking it’s nice to run into people who actually want to help him for a change. As he’s leaving, he is flagged down on the street by Deathlok. It doesn’t say they’re near The Daily Bugle, but you gotta wonder at this point! Spidey says he thought Deathlok lived in a future alternate universe, as in MTU 46, and Deathlok says if that’s a joke, he doesn’t get it. All this continuity! McFarlane couldn’t be bothered to try to integrate this book into the current monthly titles, while Larsen’s been happily dropping footnotes back to the 70s this whole story. Time for more talking.
Why’d they give Spider-Man the pouch belt? Is it just because it’s 1991 and that’s the fashion of the time? At any rate, Spidey & DL go to the lab where The Sinister Six went to another dimension and Spidey fills his new pal in. Deathlok scans no lifesigns inside, so they bust in and fight some robots, including Doc Ock’s old regular arms with some AI in them. Eventually, they fight their way to the portal. Spidey says it wouldn’t be right to destroy it and leave whatever’s on the other side stuck with The Sinister Six, so…
I feel like we’re kind of glossing over the fact that the bad guys have committed genocide, here. The building goes up in a huge explosion. Spidey and DL trade gripes about how crappy their lives are right now and then head back to Care Labs. Unfortunately…
Things get worse really fast as Electro shorts out Deathlok’s computer brain and Spider-MAn finds the corpse (re-corpse?) of Cyborg X in the rubble before and Deathlok are separated by yet another explosion.
The fact that Spider-Man is left seemingly on the verge of death at the end of every issue of this story, paired with the fact that he’s always JUST FINE the following issue, really robs this enterprise of any weight. Larsen’s really going for broke, but he’s not considering narrative tension. Despite him being a far better writer than McFarlane, this is still very much an art-driven comic.