Well, to get right into it, Spider-Man’s narrations makes a weirdly blithe joke about Captain America being dead (????), then he dashes around trying to do… something, the art is pretty unclear, while sarcastically confessing to having killed all these people. Then he remembers he’s out of webfluid and begins falling to his death. Classic Spider-Man. But Jackpot swings in on a rope and saves him.
Super characters have been traveling through cities on ropes since Batman, but basically everyone but Spider-Man doing it has never made much sense to me. He can shoot a web and discard it. Everyone else had to either have miles and miles of rope on their person or somehow keep reusing a smaller supply without making their transit time impractical. Batman didn’t have the gun with the retractable cable in it until his 1989 movie! He was just swinging, shaking the rope loose, flinging it somewhere, swinging there, repeat. Deeply impractical. Also, “What are they bothering you FOR?” I’ve always wondered when I see writers accenting a word that sounds weird to me. Why not “What ae they bothering YOU for?” That’s how an actual person would say it. Well, anyway…
Everyone has a unique take on Spider-Man’s humor, but I’m beginning to think Guggenheim’s is among my least favorite. Jackpot gets mad at him for using her real name, and he says it’s known “to at least 12 different SHIELD registration bureaucrats.” Then Menace flies away, and Spider-Man looks at a helicopter and says he has an idea. He hops up into the chopper and promises to turn himself in if they will first chase Menace and let Spider-Man stop him from abducting Councilwoman Parfrey. They go with this, and Jackpot hops up and they’re off. Using the tracker from ASM 549, Spidey leads them to Menace. When they’re in range, he leaps onto the glider.
Menace somehow looks worse with every panel. Like a generic Halloween mask. Jackpot has gotten the Councilwoman down to the street, and tells her to stay put before leaping into the fray herself (Over the Councilwoman’s terrified objections about being left alone). She grabs Menace around the neck from behind, pulling him off the glider and sending it flying out of control under a Spider-Man internal monologue about how these fights are like chess, finding patterns and predicting moves…
What were the odds???
Hate a lame coincidence. Menace drops a smoke bomb and disappears way too easily. WAY too easily! With his danger sense, Spider-Man could track Menace through some stupid smoke, and Menace doesn’t even have a glider anymore. Just jump 30 feet in the air like you can and see why way Menace ran! Ugh. Jackpot is furious at her role in the tragedy that’s occurred, then the cops show and Spider-Man reveals he was lying about turning himself in. Wah wah.
WHAT????? There is NO WAY! NO WAY!!! Peter made his first web fluid in his bedroom at 15! $2000????He can’t afford a computer but he’s throwing 2 Gs at webfluid twice a week? This is ASININE!
Some of the worst Spider-Man heads of the 21st Century, all on one page.
As much as this story didn’t do it for me, I can only imagine the horror about to befall me in the next one…