Insane Spider-Man on this cover. As I was hoping, this month, the gang is doing an Aunt May-focused issue like the MJ one last month. It opens in the past, with May & Ben living their content lives, until the phone rings, and they find out Richard & Mary have died. As they drove to get Peter, May worried about whether they could afford him, whether she even wanted him. She thought about future milestones in his life…
Are they really meant to have taken Peter so young? After the flashbacks last issue, I’m willing to trust Sacasa on this. Maybe I’m just thinking of Ultimate Peter. But I thought he was a toddler or so.
That takes us to the present, where we learn Peter got this severe beating from the Rhino, which is… hard to believe. I mean, sure, he could beat someone up real bad, but… he’s the Rhino. I’m not used to thinking of him as being so dangerous as long as you’re not a wall or a car.
This leaves Peter & May to talk. He says he must look pretty bad, but she says she’s seen worse. He thinks she’s referring to when she saw him sleeping off Morlun and discovered his identity (With a flashback panel), but she’s thinking of an incident when he was a kid, when his heretofore unheard of friend Tommy Monks talked him into climbing a tree and he broke his arm. It was the first time May ever saw him hurt, and it shook her badly. She leaves Peter to get some rest and goes outside to find MJ dozing on a bench. She take a seat, and then they both try to start talking at once.
Ya know, we got off to a rough start with that goofy Stegron business, but I’m starting to wish Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa had wandered into the Spider-Office sooner. He really gets these characters. But his timing couldn’t have been much worse. I mean this issue is building a real case for why May was so overprotective all the time, a psychological thing for her and not just a plot device and/or a comedy bit, depending on the era. And it’s the new, more realistic May thinking back on it. Very nice. We cut away to Rhino to find out he did, indeed, come after Spider-Man as part of Chameleon’s scheme, not knowing Chammy is now in jail and can’t pay him. Then we go see…
Still working this angle. Back at the motel, Aunt May is cleaning the bloody Spider-Man costume, and flashing back to cleaning dishes when our old pal Tommy Monks came by to check on Peter after he broke his arm. An overprotective and still scared to death May is harder on him than a child deserves until Ben steps in and asks Tommy to go upstairs and get Peter’s homework to turn in at school for him.
Yeah, man, I think if Aguirre-Sacasa had gotten one of the books before the Other, had a chance to really stake a claim, he’d have turned in a run I would look back on fondly. As it stands, he’d trying to dance between raindrops during a stupid mess that’s, rather improbably, about to get stupider, and when the smoke clears, he’s gone.