Time to wrap this up, and it takes 3 colorists to do it, as Andres Mossa is back, also joined by Antonio Fabela. So, the Hood’s trying to kill Mr. Negative, Spider-Man’s trying to kill Betty Brant, and we know none of them will actually die, so how’s it gonna go down?
Now, Spider-Man not noticing that “SKRRANNG” seems unlikely, but I actually kinda like him not noticing her weight coming off the webline. Just because, as I have gone off on tangents about before, to a guy who can lift a bus, what’s the weight of an average woman? Betty proceeds to SSKKSSSH through someone’s window, where she winds up with glass in her foot and some random cat angry at her. Meanwhile, Mr. Negative gets a grip on the Hood and starts turning him. Then Spider-Man descends down to Betty’s broken window in not the first panel I’ve suspected of being a swipe in this series, but I can’t quite source it. He sees her blood and follows it, only to find… she’s tied a bloody strip of her clothes to the tail of that angry cat? One assumes she got a lot bloodier doing so.
She goes on to explain that the gang took her to a place they kept Chinese immigrants who couldn’t pay them, sold into slavery or worse, and were torturing her when Mr. Negative showed up and killed them all. He asked how much she owed White Dragon, and for a second, as she begged him to free her, she saw he was really her husband, but she doesn’t tell Betty that part.
Well, that doesn’t make any sense to me, but ok. As Mr. Negative’s touch doesn’t work on Hood, letting him know the Hood is already corrupted by something even worse, he randomly chooses to tell him the real story…
Oh. Ok.
My goodness, they’re plugging Mr. Negative into the origin of Cloak & Dagger? Messy and not too satisfying. Also, thinking maybe Gianluca Gugliotta has never seen a black person… Well, anyway:
That doesn’t make sense to me, either. “I always said you were a menace, but now that you’re being mind controlled, I sort of forgive you for the past!” Bottom panel is, of course, a rather loose interpretation of the scene in ASM 8. Well, that suddenly snaps Spider-Man out of it. Not sure how it took so long, but oh well. Also, Mr. Negative explains to the Hood that the universe is in balance, good/bad, light/dark, and that he is, too, but the Hood is only half a person. Ok, fine. Hood’s about to kill him, anyway, when…
Osborn explains to his Green Goblin mask, more Sam Raimi movie nonsense, that Mr. Negative had evidence of his drug schemes from New Ways to Die, which he turned over in exchange for Norman’s intersession there, so that’s why he did it. We then learn that the Spot was working for Negative the whole time, in exchange for a promise to try to cure his condition, a conversation wherein Mr. Negative confirms his powers come from the Darkforce, like Spot and Cloak.
Well, now we know more about Mr. Negative. That makes this series far more valuable than the Venom one. And it actually had some small implications for Dark Reign as a whole, rather than just being a bunch of nonsense that didn’t go anywhere. So, that’s not too bad. Could’ve had better art, but that’s life.