WEB OF SPIDER-MAN SUPER SPECIAL #1 - October 1995

Planet of the Symbiotes Conclusion - Mortal Victory

Credits: David Michelinie (writer), Steve Lightle (artist), Bill Oakley & N.J.O (letters), Marianne Lightle & Malibu (colors)

The Plot: Spider-Man, Scarlet Spider, and Venom narrowly avoid a forty-foot tall Carnage and an army of alien symbiotes. They regroup at Peter’s home, much to MJ’s dismay. Venom develops a plan to overwhelm the symbiotes with psychic agony and force them into comas. While Venom harnesses his anguish at Our Lady of Sorrows, the two Spider-Men face Carnage again. During the battle, Carnage is knocked unconscious by an exploding gas truck, while the invading symbiotes suddenly disintegrate. Spider-Man realizes that Venom knew all along that his wave of mental sorrow would force the symbiotes into suicide. With MJ’s help, he decides the ends justified the means.

The Subplots: None.

Web of Continuity: Our Lady of Sorrows is the church where Eddie Brock contemplated suicide shortly before he joined with the alien symbiote and became Venom.

I Love the ‘90s: MJ sleeps in a Hootie & the Blowfish t-shirt.

Review: Wow, they wasted hired David Michelinie and Steve Lightle for this? I don’t think anyone considers “Planet of the Symbiotes” a classic, but to the editorial team’s credit, they did at least try to hire respectable creators for the project. This is the only chapter of this storyline I’ve ever read, so I imagine my enjoyment of the issue is hindered by coming in to the story so late. As a fan of David Michelinie’s early Venom stories, I can appreciate the significance of MJ meeting Venom face to face again, and his return to Our Lady of Sorrows, but the story’s so rushed and chaotic those scenes barely make an impact. As a kid, I always wondered if the alien symbiotes would get an origin story, or if we would ever see more of them arrive on Earth. This storyline covers all of that territory, but unfortunately it had to be published during a mega-event I viewed as utterly dumb and borderline insulting at the time, so I intentionally stayed away. Charging $3.95 a chapter for a five-part story also struck me as highway robbery anyway, so I didn’t mind missing out on this one. There were overpriced X-Men books I had to buy, anyway.

Cats and Robbers

Credits: Karl Kesel (writer), Patrick Zircher (penciler), Jeff Albrecht (inker), Jim Novak (letters), Tom Smith & Malibu (colors)

The Plot: Black Cat stakes out five-star restaurant Mikkal’s, anticipating a pair of thieves named Leather and Lace. While battling the duo, she notices Flash Thompson is on a date with a woman named Cinda inside. After defeating Leather and Lace, Black Cat asks Mikkal to return the favor and comp Flash’s meal.

Web of Continuity: Black Cat claims this is the first time she’s seen Flash since they broke up. She’s also using an unseen informant named Loop to tip her off to future crimes, enabling her to sell her services for “protection.” I had never heard of Loop, but apparently he's appeared a few times.

Review: Wow, they wasted hired Karl Kesel and Patrick Zircher for this? That’s certainly a higher level of quality than your average Web annual back-up. The premise of the story simply has Black Cat fighting two characters that somehow predate Jim Balent’s Tarot work, but it’s a fun read. The ending is also sweet, showing a side of Black Cat’s personality that most writers would probably ignore. One of the better Flash/Felicia stories, even if it does take place after their break-up.

Growing Pains Part Five - Where Monsters Dwell

Credits: Terry Kavanagh (writer), Roger Robinson (penciler), Saleem Crawford (inker), Loretta Krol (letterer), Chia-Chi Wang (colorist)

The Plot: Ben Reilly encounters the newly mutated Lizard at Empire State Hospital, Ben’s new employer. The Lizard escapes, leading the Scarlet Spider to seek the aid of a new hero, Strongarm. Together, they track Lizard to a nearby zoo. Scarlet Spider defeats the Lizard by freezing him with fire extinguishers and trapping him in his webbing. Later, Strongarm visits a friend in the hospital who was injured by the Lizard.

The Subplots: Ben is trying to win over a coworker, Rick Barron, who seems to irrationally hate him. Rick’s girlfriend, Toni Moore, walks in on Ben in the hospital’s locker room.

*See _________ For Details: Ben knows that he’s the “real” Peter Parker, following the revelations of Spectacular Spider-Man #226. The Lizard previously attacked “Doc Purl’s party” in Spectacular Spider-Man Super Special #1.

Creative Differences: Once again from the Life of Reilly, Glenn Greenberg on this project:

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't discuss the "flip-book feature" in these five Super Specials-namely the SCARLET SPIDER five-parter that Tom Brevoort and I edited. Stretching across all five Super Specials, this would essentially be a Scarlet Spider limited series, which I thought was a pretty cool idea. Tom B. and I really did want to make it special, to produce a worthwhile story that further explored Ben Reilly as a character and deserved all the space that was being devoted to it. It was the kind of project that J.M. DeMatteis would have been perfect for, but I don't remember why we didn't get him to write it. He was probably too busy, or Tom B. and I simply wanted to use this project as an opportunity to bring in a different writer, one that we'd always wanted to work with.

Again, Danny Fingeroth was overseeing us on this, and somehow, for some reason, he got it into his head that we would be bringing back the Lizard for this story. Tom B. and I were present at the Spider-Man writers' conference where the idea had been mentioned in passing as a possibility, but we'd never committed to it as anything other than a possibility. And as I recall, neither Tom B. nor I had any real enthusiasm for the idea, so it wasn't something we were going to actively pursue.

Tom B. and I brought in John Ostrander, a writer who had greatly impressed me with his work on DC's SPECTRE series. The initial idea that John pitched us was very intriguing, about whether or not a clone could have a soul. Unfortunately, it conflicted with future plans in the main Spider-Man books. I think John took another stab or two at coming up with a story line, but for whatever reasons, we couldn't get his ideas approved, and John eventually decided to just move on. Not only that, but every time any new story idea came in, be it from Ostrander or another writer, Danny would ask, "Where's the Lizard?" Tom and I would roll our eyes and try to muddle through.

Eventually, it became clear that Danny would simply not approve any story idea that did not include the Lizard, and he had already started to push his own choice writers upon us. With time-and our patience-running out, Tom and I simply submitted to Danny's will and did whatever he wanted. Terry Kavanagh ended up writing the story, which featured the return of the Lizard.

This was one of the few instances where Tom Brevoort and I felt completely disconnected-creatively and emotionally-from a project we were working on. It became a project we had to endure, rather than something that we could really take any pride in having put together. Some time later, this Lizard story was systematically undone in the pages of SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, and no one was more pleased by this than Tom B. and myself.

Review: Wow, they wasted hired Terry Kavanagh and Roger Robinson for this? No, wait. That sounds about right. Yes, this is as bad as you expect. The Lizard has been mutated into a Jurassic Park reject, yet another Kooky Kavanagh Kreation is shoehorned into the story, and the art resembles something straight out of 1995’s Extreme Studios. I also have to wonder how exactly Ben’s found a job and cultivated a new supporting cast in such a short amount of time. I know about Ben’s career at the Daily Grind, but I had no idea there was a previous attempt to set him up as a staff assistant in a hospital. Regardless, Kavanagh doesn’t seem to have any new ideas for the personal drama, either. Did anyone really think giving Peter Ben yet another redheaded bully who hates him for no reason was clever? There’s even an appearance by a new Blonde Girl Who's out of His League, this one named Toni Moore. Man, I can’t wait to read about the orderly with the rich father and bizarre hairstyle who asks Ben to become his new roommate.

WOLVERINE: TYPHOID’S KISS - May 1994

Credits: Ann Nocenti (writer), Steve Lightle (artist), Michael Higgins & Bill Oakley (letters), Kelly Corvese, Carlos Lopez, Mike Thomas, & Renee Witterstaetter (colors)

Summary: While investigating the Project, a government program that’s accidentally created a serial killer, Wolverine encounters Mary Walker. Wolverine is smitten with the demure Mary, but soon realizes another personality lives within her -- Typhoid Mary. Typhoid abandons Wolverine and pursues her own vendetta against the government scientists. Wolverine continues his investigation and finds Trevor, a scientist for the Project who regrets his involvement. Trevor leads Wolverine to Sid, the Project’s director. He finds Sid operating on Mary, allegedly following her wishes to remove the Typhoid persona. Typhoid reemerges and wrecks havoc in the lab. She escapes, leaving Wolverine alone with Sid. Sid boasts that Wolverine won’t kill him, even as his claws reach Sid’s throat.

Continuity Notes: The serial killer, or “spy-killer” as the story calls him, is known only as Roberts. He reaches out to Wolverine because he remembers him from his spy days. Wolverine, at this point, still hasn’t recovered the lost memories from his secret agent life, so he doesn’t remember Roberts. He chains Roberts up while investigating his claims, but Roberts eventually breaks free and kills himself before he can murder anyone else.

Production Note: This is a sixty-four page one-shot, reprinting the Wolverine serial from Marvel Comics Presents issues #109-116.

Review: Ann Nocenti used to carry Typhoid Mary around with her on various assignments, which explains how the Daredevil villain met everyone from Wolverine to Spider-Man to Ghost Rider in just a few years. I’m not complaining; Typhoid’s a great character and likely the most memorable aspect of Nocenti’s Daredevil run, which was filled with fantastic stories. Described by Nocenti as a way to "shatter the female stereotypes--virgin, whore, bitch, ditz, feminist, girl scout, all-suffering mother, et al.--into tiny fragments and yet keep all the pieces in the same little female bundle," Typhoid isn’t what most people would expect to find in a Marvel comic circa 1988. As many others have pointed out, Nocenti was writing warped, Vertigo-esque stories for Code-approved Marvel books years before Vertigo even existed. She also contributed, with John Bolton, quite a few twisted Classic X-Men back-up stories during that era. Steve Lightle was the cover artist during this time, which is where I first discovered his work. I’ve always loved Lightle’s covers, and while his interiors during this story are occasionally murky, most of the art lives up to his reputation.

This is one of the first MCP stories to appear following the Weapon X serial, so the threads Nocenti picks up on regarding shadowy government conspiracies and human experimentation hadn’t been exhausted by numerous Wolverine writers yet. While writing Daredevil, she dropped hints that Typhoid had undergone her own days as a government guinea pig, so the connection with Wolverine doesn’t feel particularly forced. You could argue that there’s a sameness to most of Typhoid’s stories (hero meets innocent Mary, becomes enraptured in some way, Typhoid appears, hero is either repulsed by her violence or drawn in, established female love interest begins to wonder what’s wrong…), but I’ve always found it a plausible treatment of how a villain with psychic powers would interact with her opponents. Unless your hero has the mental prowess of Professor X, he’s going to get sucked in by Typhoid in one way or another. Wolverine is a great character to pair with Typhoid, since it’s conceivable that he could be attracted to either side of her personality. I don’t know if Nocenti had this in mind while writing the story, but Typhoid Mary directly parallels both of Wolverine’s love interests from his original miniseries -- sweet, reserved Mary matches Mariko, while the violent, liberated Typhoid is analogous to Yukio.

I’m not sure how tired government conspiracy stories were by 1992 (Nocenti even hints that the Project played a role in JFK’s assassination), but there is an effort to move past a few of the clichés. One of the problems I often have with government conspiracy stories, especially in comics, is the casual portrayal of human experimentation. Obviously, the real world brought us atrocities like Nazi experimentation and the Tuskegee syphilis study, but in the realm of comics, it seems as if there's no shortage of truly sadistic scientists willing to do anything for a paycheck. Rather than paint everyone with a giant brush, Nocenti introduces at least one sympathetic scientist, and even gives him a few pages to justify his involvement with the Project. The killer, Roberts, isn’t given a sensitive monologue, but his madness is successfully portrayed by a series of psychedelic fantasy sequences. These scenes could’ve been an excuse for arbitrary weirdness, but they serve the story by emphasizing just how badly the Project has damaged Roberts.

The most notable characterization of the story belongs to Wolverine, which is fitting since he’s the star, of course. Instead of dismissing him as a one-note killer, Nocenti emphasizes Wolverine’s strong moral code that actually limits his body count. As an extended narrative scene in Chapter Six explains: “Logan -- he can incapacitate, immobilize…maim and cripple a hundred ways. But he rarely kills. If you don’t believe it -- check their heartbeats.” This is the Wolverine that’s been lost over the years, as Marvel’s pandered to an increasingly bloodthirsty fan base. Wolverine knows how to kill, a part of him might still lust for the kill, but he’s heroic enough to use only the force that’s necessary. This might’ve simply been a repercussion of Jim Shooter’s mandate to tone him down (which also lead to the Hellfire guards Wolverine sliced up later becoming cyborgs), but I think it added another layer to the character.

The mastermind behind the experiments, Sid, is so confident that Wolverine isn’t a true killer, he taunts him even as Wolverine’s claws reach for his neck. When Wolverine asks who would even know if he killed him right there in the empty room, Sid responds, “You…you’d know.” Wolverine counters, “Don’t I always?” The story then concludes in darkness, leaving a black, empty panel to tease the reader. Did Wolverine give in to his urges? After learning what Sid’s done, could anyone blame him? Conversely, as Sid points out, he’s not the scientist who experimented on Wolverine, and nothing Wolverine does is ever going to erase the torture he’s already been forced to endure. The audience is left to decide Sid’s fate, and while it’s not hard to guess where a modern Marvel editor would stand, I miss the days when a Wolverine writer could get away with this kind of ambiguity.