Spider-Man helps boost the emerging New Warriors comic with three of his annuals (adjectiveless Spider-Man didn’t get a 1992 annual).
The story is fairly straightforward: Justin Hammer and some other tech baddies are kidnapping some D-list heroes like Silver and Auric from Gamma Flight. He kidnaps Speedball and puts him in a tube.
\That brings the New Warriors and Spider-Man on his case.
They have Dreadnoughts, and the heroes fight them for about a third of the story.
Then they spend the rest of it fighting a bunch of Spider-Man villains assembled by Justin Hammer, like Boomerang and Hydro-Man and Bombshell and Blacklash…
Firestar gets tied up twice.
Web of Spider-Man Annual #8 is part three, and it promises that Justin Hammer isn’t the real guy behind all this.
So who is the villain behind all this?
Sphinx.
Sphinx is a lame big bad. The New Warriors is a consistently solid comic–one of the best series of the early ’90s. They deserved a better villain for this event. But at least he doesn’t just use a tube to hold his prisoners…
He also uses a ball.
Of course, the heroes escape.
All three Spider-Annuals also have running Venom/Cloak and Dagger back ups as well. So, with additional stories in each issue, it’s easy to understand why the “main event” of Hero Killers is light on plot. It doesn’t take up a full issue of any of these annuals.
The Cloak and Dagger story has them versus Lightmaster and Genetech (the evil corporation from New Warriors), and some light bondage (pun intended). The Venom story is just a solo tale, which I’m assuming is testing the market for his up-and-coming miniserieses (there will be MANY).
For the other Spider backups, we get a solo Solo story, a Black Cat tale (tail–I’m full of puns today!), and a Prowler/Abe Brown adventure. Also this top ten list, which is cool.
Then New Warriors backups are several character pieces, which is useful in introducing the new cast.