Looking pretty basic. Looking at these knowing Sal only has a few more years on the book (And in his career as a penciler), I’m keeping an eye out for where things get looser and simpler. The interiors are more complete looking, tho. It’s JM DeMatteis, Sal Buscema and Bob Sharen at the helm. We discover Spider-Man made his choice and went back for the good guys (Obviously), a choice a badly injured Venom is berating him for in a very out-of-character voice. I guess this is DeMatteis’ first crack at him.
Felicia looks completely unfazed by having had the building fall on her, and first berates Venom for wasting time fighting Spider-Man, and then berates Spider-Man for coming back for her instead of chasing the villains. Felicia is as all-in on “it doesn’t matter what happens to us” as Venom, which seems pretty out of character there, too. Then there’s this nonsense…
So, like, the problem with Batman is, every time he doesn’t kill The Joker, he’s personally allowing hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people to die in the future. The Joker, like Carnage, straight up loves killin’ people. It’s not like fighting a Doc Ock, who will gladly kill people to achieve his goal, but who HAS a goal other than killing people. Letting Doc Ock live could lead to more deaths, but it also could not. Not so with The Joker. Batman’s principles are nice and all, but he’s spent 80 years letting an unrepentant mass murderer keep mass murdering, and he looks like a stupid, selfish jerk for it. And now, with the creation of Carnage, Spider-Man gets to look like an idiot for his principles, too! Despite the fact that it seems dated (And the fact that the Marvel movies sure do ignore it for most characters), I generally like that heroes don’t kill people. It makes them more heroic. But every rule has an exception, and a super serial killer should 100% be one. Instead…this. Spider-Man is going to spend this whole, terrible story wrestling with his conscience, and in the end, Carnage will still be out there, ready to kill again. Like he is right now, zooming around with his evil family or whatever, until Demogoblin gets mad that they don’t have a plan, and they have to rehash how they have different purposes before agreeing to keep working together, anyway. This also lets Shriek give a big dumb speech about how Carnage should think of Demo & Doppel as his sons, to be molded in his image, and then they all go off to kill more people. Meanwhile, Peter has gone to see Aunt May.
Sal draws old people better than anyone on the books at this point. Not just young people with extra lines all over their faces. May continues giving Peter a “do what’s right speech,” which is very nice, and they hug. But…
Once again, I feel DeMatteis is much better suited to this family drama than Michelinie. The parents coming back was such a big deal it sort of had to be an ASM story, but it really would’ve been better served in TAC, I think. Anyway, Venom and Black Cat arrive at the scene of the previously shown rampage, but too late. Cloak’s there, tho, and rejoins their team, and suggests they need to bring in more people. Venom says they’re find “the most vicious bunch of fighters” they can. Haha, no. Meanwhile, the bad guys kill some people and make jokes and Carnage & Demo bicker, since that’s all they do. And as they wander away from the scene of their latest kill spree, who should float up out of the sewer and start following but Carrion. Yes, time to add him to the list of lames! And meanwhile-meanwhile, Spider-Man has decided to maybe try to do something about, you know, the mass murder and all, instead of just chilling at his Aunt’s house, and is worrying that maybe Richard was right when he encounters not Carnage, but a street full of people fighting each other.
Yeah, right. Next issue, even more people join this overcrowded bunch of nothing.