USM 026

This cover always seemed like a miss to me. Weird composition, and the background is really distracting. The Spider-Man, tho, would go on to be used in commercial products. Well, this one starts with another time rewind, but a much shorter one.

So some helicopters opened fire on Green Goblin, not seeming to have much effect. While all that’s going on, we get back to the thing we care about:

And that is definitely the first time Bendis really let me down. This bait & switch was just completely beyond justification. The events of this page are CLEARLY not the events of the last couple pages of USM 25. He even changed the dialogue! To this day, I don’t get it. It’s a cheap thing to do, and the first real misstep in 25 issues. Universally panned by us forum folks. I can remember B trying to justify it, but I can’t remember how, probably because it didn’t hold water at all. How could it? There was, at least, a way to have it play out just like last issue, with him thinking she’s dead, only for her to wake with a start, but they didn’t even bother. A rare poor decision around here, but a pretty major one.

Osborn’s up there shooting his fire or whatever at the copters, which he is surprised to see have plasma shields. But then Spider-Man is on him. He comes flying in and lands a two-fisted punch in the face, then disappears, only to flip up from below and kick Goblin in the face before flipping around and beginning to pound away on Goblin’s face, saying he won’t let him hurt anyone ever again.

Feel like Thibert is suddenly inking the webs on Spider-Man’s costume thicker this issue. I wonder if they were considering doing more movie-style shiny webbing inside as well as on the covers at some point. Exit the Goblin, stage left, pursued by helicopters, and Spider-Man manages to get a web out and slam into the bridge instead of plunging into the river. Then he follows the fracas, worried that Harry is now in danger. Osborn smashes into his office, bleeding a sickly yellow from his mouth, saying the Oz has almost worn off, smashing into the secret area of his office to get more, but of course, an off-panel voice says “Dad?”

And that’s why some of the voices in Norman’s head were saying “Cellar door” over and over last issue. Norman juices himself with not one, but 2 more doses of Oz, becoming even more demonic and spiky looking, and then Spider-Man catches up to him. Spidey says he’s not scared of the Goblin, and this ends tonight, and the now barely coherent monster that used to be Norman attacks, eventually grabbing our man by the ankle.