We start with a sweet conversation between Mary Jane and May.
She recalls Nate and has a nice character moment.
Then Vulture shows up. Vulture is dying, so he seeks forgiveness from Aunt May (remember, her fiancee Nate Lubensky died due to Vulture’s criminal activity).
But he also wants to finally succeed in killing Spider-Man, so his vision of his own last days is a little scattered.
Still, he’s an old dude who flies around in green spandex, so that’s probably par for the course. After Spider-Man learns that Vulture is dying, he gives him his opportunity to apologize…
And Aunt May does not forgive. That’s a great moment–showing the human side of a character whose life has been marked by constantly loss and sacrifice. (Later, she visits Vulture in prison and is much kinder to him.)
JM DeMatteis does a good job with criminal “death” stories in Spider-Man–starting with Kraven’s last hunt.
And while Vulture is dying, Harry Osborn is busy bringing Green Goblin back from the dead. And while he’s at it, he beats up Molten Man, who you’ll recall went “straight” working for Osborn.
He messes around with knowing Peter Parker is Spider-Man, like sending him a “gotcha” note. Incidentally, there’s lots of wordless sequences in all these issues–very nicely handled by Sal Buscema.
Spidey defeats Harry fairly easily, and there’s a whole page of Osborn staring at the reader, with a crazy smile, after he gets taken to the Vault.
That’s pretty damn creepy.
From the asylum, he still hatches plans–he hired Rhino to attack Peter Parker (because Harry knows Spider-Man is really Peter). But Peter/Spidey also pretty easily beats Rhino.
A solid “epic” about three of Spider-Man’s best villains, well written and excellently drawn.
Sal is…well sal, one of the all time greats with his brother. i missed these issues when i left comic collecting its good to see great stories still were made and no super slick image art