Credits: Scripted by Mike Lackey, pencils by Shawn McManus and Roy Burdine doing flashbacks, inks by John Nyberg with Shawn McManus and edited by Eric Fein.
Cast: Ben ‘Scarlet Spider‘ Reilly, Adrian ‘Vulture’ Toomes, Colm Mulligan, Jimmy Mulligan, Whitten and Peter ‘Spider-Man’ Parker.
Synopsis: After the immediate threat towards Seward dealt with Ben is swinging around the city in his Scarlet Spider now determined to stay in the city he loves, even if it’s not as the person he used to be. Elsewhere in the city, a rejuvenated Vulture is also flying around the city. His armoured flying carapace is fine and he’d retained his youth after absorbing power from Spider-Man, but there’s been backslides, where he’s reverted to the older man he had been most of his career as the Vulture. With his age coming back with a lot of pain, causing him to fall onto a car owned by a nearby newspaper kiosk owner. Elsewhere again, hard working Colm Mulligan is having dinner with his family, including his teenage son Jimmy, who’s throwing a potential education away to work for local mobster Whitten. He scolds his dad on not making more money before storming out, determined to make it big.
The Scarlet Spider arrives at the kiosk, after the Vulture has left, but before he leaves, he sees the date, it’s the anniversary of Ben Parker’s death. Riddled with guilt, even years later , Ben swings off. Meanwhile a mugging victim is unknowingly saved by the Vulture, using technology to rejuvenate himself again, the mugging victim then becomes a victim of another kind.
Ben laments the lost of his father figure, but is disturbed by Colm Mulligan who is there to talk to the departed Ben Parker. Ben approaches Colm in the guise of Peter and offers to help Colm get his son Jimmy back. Jimmy is at a planning meeting for a robbery of a warehouse full of electronics components. Whitten wants not evidence to link to him, meaning no witnesses and Jimmy starts to wonder what he’s got himself into. Problem is that this a comic and there has to be a coincidence and the Metro Electronics warehouse is exactly where the Vulture is trying to get equipment to enhance his flight apparatus so it can steal energy more efficiently. Now both sets of criminals are in the same place.
As Whitten’s men descend on the single night watchman, the Vulture descends on them, feeding on their energy. Some escape and come face to face with Scarlet Spider, on the hunt for Jimmy and in another coincidence give over just enough info for Ben to head to Metro and take on the Vulture. After a brief scuffle, Ben and Jimmy are left behind as the night watchman is pulled into the sky by the Vulture.
Ben saves the watchman who informs him that here’s a way to prevent the Vulture from draining energy from someone, meanwhile a fleeing Jimmy runs to Mr. Whitten, who is enraged that Jimmy has returned empty handed and also quit, so intends to send a message to Jimmy and anyone who sees him and beats him to a bloody pulp and has him dropped off at a local ER. His family are called and Colm works out what has happened and goes looking for Mr Whitten. When Ben (still posing as Peter to Colm and co) calls the Mulligans and one of Jimmy’s sisters informs him of what’s happening, Ben decides to go to Whitten to prevent things from getting any worse, grateful that this thing with Mr. Whitten and the Vulture are separate things. Come on guys, you know where this is going. The Vulture has already visited Whitten, killing several of his men, Colm has the chance to kill Whitten who gloats over the hesitation. The Scarlet Spider bursts in and webs Whitten to the ceiling, telling Colm to try again with his son, that he knows the right thing to do.
Then after a subplot scene about Peter swinging around in his Spider-Man suit having visions of Mary Jane’s death and swinging back to his wife, full of panic we get back to the Vulture story. Ben confronts the Vulture, all quips and jumping around, then the Vulture tries to absorb energy from Ben, but it doesn’t work and Ben webs him to a chimney stack on a nearby roof and destroys the absorption apparatus, leaving him for the cops. From a nearby rooftop, Ben reveals (to us I guess) that he had part of rubber wet suit on under his hoodie, insulating him. and before he goes home he checks in on the Mulligans, learning that it looks like it’s going to be alright, that a generation on, Ben Parker’s and Colm Mulligan’s friendship is still as strong as ever, even if one of them exists only in memory.
Notes: I hate this title. There, I said it. The Unlimited line was a way to plug in the gaps in the schedule for titles that had an almost weekly schedule. At this point Spider-Man had 4 on-goings, Web of Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man and Spectacular Spider-Man. This meant 48 ongoing comics per year, with 4 issues of Unlimited, that brought it up to 52, so it was a way to have the comics done weekly. DC did this too during the yellow triangle era of Superman there was a comic called Superman: Man of Tomorrow to make his titles weekly. DC also did 5th week events, one of the best ones being Tangent. Marvel did the odd one of those two, but did the Unlimited titles, with higher page count and pricing. I’ve honestly always considered them a blatant cash grab, or unnecessary filler. This was kind of both. It’s a nothing story, told badly.
The generational element of the story is interesting, Ben (going by Peter again for Colm’s benefit) to connect with an old friend of his Uncle Ben is a nice story beat, but it’s trying to paper over some pretty big cracks of a bland story that could have fit an any comic.
The introduction of a vampiric element to Vulture is also so artlessly handled that you’ve no connection to it. The scenes are rushed, even for a bloated comic like this and it makes me not want to keep going, but I know that better comics are coming, after this there kinda needs to be.
Verdict: Writing 2 out of 5 – Weak characterisation and bad pacing suck the drama out of the story of a man trying to save his son, poured all over a Vulture story and neither really come off.
Art: 1 out of 5 – I vowed never to give less than one and always round up, these are professionals doing work in a gig based industry, but if I could this would be that place. Inconsistency in character design and poor panel progression and action that seems to defy the term. This is not how a Spider-Man comic should look.
Overall: 3 out of 10 – This is bad comic, can’t say it more plainly.
Next Time: Another Age of Apocalypse series on it’s final lap.
My Marvel Life 