Well, this sure woulda been a good cover for last issue. Seems strange timing. Bendis doesn’t seem too into each issue having a title sometimes. “Black Van.” Very evocative. This issue, we open on George Stacy at his cop convention, palling around with some of his buddies until a scream draws their attention. Spider-Man has just knocked over an armored car. Literally, somehow. And how the spider is correct on his suit and he’s wearing a backpack, which I guess was maybe meant to throw you off? But as Stacy and the boys hold this Spider-Man at gunpoint, we move our scene to…
Kong’s reaction down there is great. Peter shuffles to his locker, unsure of how he can get away with this arm much longer, and finds a note in there telling him to come to the black van in the parking lot to get his shoulder taken care of. Hence the title!
When I say we learn more about Janet as a character in these 3 pages than is offered in all 12 issues of Ultimates, I am not exaggerating. Bendis tends to fall back on SHIELD as a narrative crutch too often during his tenure at Marvel, in my humble opinion, and this would be a pretty good example. SHIELD is always an option to deliver some exposition, clean up when a story’s over, and sometimes, bail you out of a narrative issue like a teenager hiding a gunshot wound from his mom. We cut to Peter, MJ & Gwen walking home from school. Peter is doing way better already, and Gwen gets into how she knows what’s going on, the 2 of them sneaking around at all hours of the night, but she’s cut short when we see cop cars outside the Parker residence for the 2nd time in this story. Peter goes running in, fearing the worst…
And it is the worst, but not for him. This is, after all, what George Stacys do, but it happening so soon was still quite the shock. Seemed like kind of a waste, honestly. Especially with B hinting at the possibility of romance between him and May. It could’ve been even more tragic when it inevitably happened. And killing Geroge kind of puts all eyes on Gwen. Over the decades, people have kind of come to see their deaths as back-to-back events despite them being almost 3 years apart. I think the fact that Marvel has packaged their deaths together in trades a lot helped with that. But, at any rate, things have gotten way more personal with this evil Spider-Man now. We cut to Ben Urich investigating the incident, getting the story from various witnesses cut back and forth with actual flashbacks. He learns that, when the cops arrived, fake Spider-Man bolted, and they opened fire, one of them shooting his backpack…
It’s what George Stacys do. A “canon event,” in the words of the Spider-Verse movies.
It is then very abruptly the next day, and Peter happens to be at the Bugle as fake Spider-Man is sighted in yet another standoff with the cops. This time, Spider-Man just goes smashing through a window of the bank, no reason to stop and talk to the cops. Jean DeWolff is on the scene as someone points out that he thought they were all here because Spider-Man was inside…
Time for some payback, one would think.