After 2 months of unusually specific covers, we’re back to generic for the big finish to this story. Who can know what motivated these covers? I still kinda wonder if Bags just made a ton of the generics while Jemas was in charge, and they’re burning them off where they can now he’s gone. But, hey, that’s not the thing, the thing is MJ ran away from home. May rushes to Peter’s room, but he’s not there. She rushes to Gwen’s room, but she’s asleep and doesn’t know where Peter is. Then May hears a noise downstairs.
Peter rushes off, saying he’ll be right back, and goes to the warehouse. Where he practiced his powers, where he caught the burglar, where she’s been holed up before. And he finds here there, asleep in a big heavy coat, having written in her diary “never felt so isolated from the world in my whole”–
Big coloring mix up in panel 4, but an understandable one.
MJ’s dad sucks in any continuity. Great sequence, tho. Typically great acting from Bags. We jump to Peter at work, dozing off after last night, remembering Black Cat yelling about her dad, and having a flash that maybe the master she wanted Elektra to tell that to was Kingpin. He looks up known cat burglars, getting a list of various characters’ real names, like Abner Jenkins (The Beetle), Hobie Brown, Thomas Fireheart and Cletus Kasady, but he also gets Jack Hardy, and eventually clicks on that one.
Young Felicia there looks too much like MJ. Peter thinks if he figured it out, they must have, too, and we cut to Kingpin and Elektra in Felicia’s home, which they have wrecked, Kingpin’s giant hand around her neck and pinning her to a wall. Kingpin is ranting at her about what a loser her dad was when guess who shows up.
You know, I didn’t know it when this came out, but not totally different from Felicia’s apparent death in ASM 195 back in her first story. Huh. Spidey hops back up after trying to save her, but the baddies have fled.
No magic tablet for USM. Well, not yet, at least, I don’t honestly recall if it ever comes back.