This annual is covered dated July 2007. It came out about halfway through the Back In Black period. That seems early for this. It seems much more appropriate here, as the final Back In Black comic. And so it is, because no one can stop me. Please welcome Matt Fraction back to the blog. Matt’s about to hit a homerun clean out of the park and really make you wish he’d written a Spider-Man comic. He is unfortunately joined by Salvador Larocca, who he will further unfortunately be joined by for a very long run of Iron Man comics with excellent stories and annoying, distracting celebrity tracing art. But that’s for later (We’re gonna see their 7th issue when we get to it due to you-know-who guest starring). This I bought when it came out, already an avowed Fraction fan from his Image comics The Five Fists of Science and Casanova, and having enjoyed that Punisher War Journal run to this point, and really enjoyed the Iron Fist run to this point (Which we sadly have no reason to look at). Paco Roca colors.
Oh my God, she’s Liv Tyler again.
I wonder who Peter is. He’s gotta be somebody. We flashback to “earlier,” as MJ trying to get some coffee (At the Coffee Bean, no less) runs into a “Brady,” who seems to have been security for her in her modeling days in CA. They were apparently very close, almost romantic. MJ is happy to see him, but also paranoid about him drawing attention to her. This leads to our first classic era flashback, which is still LaRocca drawing, but now he’s doing “Tim Sale as John Romita, Sr.”, an extremely convoluted thing to do.
Very much enjoy this take on the old gang.
Aaaand, there it is. Oh, Brady, you jerk. But where’s Peter in all this?
Lamont! Someone remembered Lamont!
Peter flashes back told times again, saying even when they were kids, they all clung to each other for survival. That the guys were outclassed by the girls, who could play them like fiddles, and they just let them play. Which is just a fine bit of language and very Fraction and if I could, I think I’d run every page of this book. Back at the Coffee Bean, Brady tells MJ she & May get fully immunity if they turn in Peter. It’s time to put the “Spider-Nightmare” behind them. MJ says he doesn’t know what Peter’s lived through, what he’s lost and what it cost him. What it cost all of them. She talks more about how he was going through so much in the old days, and no one could offer him any relief or reassurance as the flashback officially becomes ASM 87, referenced a 2nd time in this period, Peter stumbling in on everyone to admit he’s Spider-Man in a daze. A comic I hadn’t read when this came out, by the way, it was kinda confusing!
Peter tells Lamont the bullet points of his backstory, as MJ tell sBrady…
Is that meant to be the older Peter & MJ in the window there? I remember this bit very well.
This is such a great Mary Jane, in the past and the present. Ugh, why didn’t Matt get a Spider-Man run?Peter is telling Lamont that the first thing MJ ever said to him was “Face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot.” Agrees with LAmont that that’s insane thing to say, but he couldn’t let her go. Maybe because he’s a scientist, the fact that he couldn’t explain her made her fascinating. Then they replay the mixtape scene with Peter’s internal monologue, freaking out, hoping she gets the “magnetic fields” reference, totally getting what the mistletoe is and running away because he panicked.
MJ is telling Brady that her time in LA, while she and Peter were separated, was the loneliest time of her life. And Brady is 100% Ben Affleck in a single flashback panel. He says he felt something when they were together.
Then MJ flashes back to ASM 143, first a new sequence of her talking Peter into coffee at the airport (And a funny bit with Joe Robertson) before a slightly modified version of…
She tells Brady to arrest her, and he begins to do so. Then he notices the spider tracer on the seat. I think it’s meant ot be the one from the clone mess that she could trigger to get him to come running. She says she wasn’t rambling, she was stalling. And then Peter comes smashing through the window and scoops her up.
I mean, wow, right? A tour de force on this relationship. Versions of Peter and Mary Jane you’d love to read more of, and a reaffirmation that their now 20-year old union is still strong. What a strange and cruel time to do this comic…