In the late 80s and early 90s, Joe Jusko was the first guy to really bring painted covers into the mainstream. He predates Alex Ross. At one point, they did an entire line of trading cards called Marvel Masterpieces painted by him. He was less active by this point, so this cover was a surprise. Alright, alright, let’s let this thing limp over the finish line.
You know what, credit where it’s due, Deo’s Spider-Man got a lot less lumpy over time. Compare this guy to the freak show on the cover of ASM 509, it’s like a different artist. An artist named Joe Bennett. That guy seems to have made a big impression on Deo when he was filling in for him around the Spider-Office in the late 90s. Well, anyway, our man swings off and sees smoke coming out of his own apartment.
But Deodato’s not as good at late 90s Joe Bennett as Joe Bennett was, and 2004 Joe Bennett is miles ahead of late 90s Joe Bennett. It’s a real shame that guy turned out to be reprehensible, he became a good artist. Well, Charlie lets go as the ceiling comes down, and Spider-Man loses track of him. He has to smash his way out of his own place and makes it down to the street before collapsing from smoke inhalation. Then we’re off to another flashback… sort of. Turns out, Peter is dreaming, and the adult versions of him and Charlie are the classroom with the kid versions. The adult ones are Deodato-style, everything else is Mark Brooks. This is a visual gag I always love, mixing 2 artists’ styles for effect.
Oh my god, is Deodato’s Peter REALLY Jason Priestly!? What a bizzzzarre choice!
Timothy Dalton returns as Tony Stark. Ugh. So, like, did Peter already know all this, or is he learning in the dream? That would be very dumb, but like, we’re way past dumb. Well, our man wakes up on the pavement surrounded by an unusually nice crowd of people, in his experience, and then takes off to go ask Tony Stark to borrow some equipment. Nice to be able to do that now, one assumes. He thinks he doesn’t have time to worry about his place, “what’s gone is gone,” which is true and all, but he’s being unusually nonchalant about it. We skip ahead to him working on finishing this, but first, he calls MJ & May in a hotel to make sure they’re ok. It’s “Casa Quesada,” a very aggressive nod to the bossman (Aunt May says housekeeping only comes by every 6 months at Casa Quesada, which… one assume you could read any number of things into that, or none at all). Sure his family is safe, he swings on to find Charlie throwing cop cars at cops.
Spidey smashes Charlie between two cars, then thinks “Just got to web these in place before he can recover and get any leverage,” and creates… a big ball of web… that’s not nearly big enough to contain 2 cars… but then… what’s in it? I don’t know. Then he swings that ball to Stark Industries, and Deodato steals the Spider-Man off the cover of ASM 121. No problem, I’m sure no one would notice a swipe from such an obscure issue. He smashes through a window, and when Charlie is unleashed, Spidey kicks him into a waiting chamber, inside which he can change the atmospheric pressure. While that’s happening, Peter flashes back to when Charlie moved away, and the young Peter hoped a change of city would improve Charlie’s life.
Abruptly, that’s it. This is the next page:
And there you have the one thing I remembered about this story: The Death of Aunt May’s House. Almost as stupid and shortsighted as killing Aunt May herself. But like Aunt May, it may just be that the house can get better after its death… But that’s getting ahead of myself. Well, Peter, MJ & May are all homeless. Wonder where they’ll end up…