BHOC: PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #31

This is something of an underwhelming cover for the conclusion to a long-running story. But I was there for it either way. This extended Carrion sequence in PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN was, I believe, my first experience with a long-running mystery figure plot, and so even though the end result was a just a shade dodgy (thanks to writer Bill Mantlo having to change his plans mid-stride, as we’ve spoken about when recounting the prior issues) I was fascinated by it all nonetheless. And none of it so much as this final issue, which references a whole bunch of past continuity that was unfamiliar to me. This made it feel like I was excavating the past as well as experiencing an exciting story in the present. It’s one of the things that Marvel used to do particularly well, making use of its past to propel events into the future. There was a lot less history then, and consequently a lot more room for a writer to maneuver in.

Last issue, having finally succeeded in capturing Spider-Man, the malevolent Carrion revealed his true identity to his beaten foe: he was a clone of the late Professor Miles Warren, who had become the villainous Jackal after the death of Peter’s girl friend Gwen Stacy, with whom he was obsessed. The Jackal’s bit thing was cloning, and so he cloned himself a new Gwen and also a second Peter, learning that his student was Spider-Man in the process. And it turns out here that he cloned himself as well, which really makes a lot of sense. That said, depending on who you ask, when this storyline began, Carrion was initially intended to be either a resurrected Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, or else that aforementioned clone of Spider-Man himself. No such luck, though. Mantlo’s plot was shut down by AMAZING SPIDER-MAN writer/editor Marv Wolfman, and so he had to come up with a different identity for his villain. Let’s see how well he did.

Spidey spends the first batch of pages of this story goading Carrion into monologuing about his origins. Just before the Jackal headed off to his final confrontation with Spider-Man, he made a clone of himself just in case. But never coming back from that fight, the cloning chamber didn’t open properly, and so the clone somehow died while still being kept alive. Once it was eventually found by undergrad student Randy Vale, whom Carrion had turned into his operative Darter, the clone found that he possessed several undead abilities, including the ability to float on air, to become intangible, to kill with a touch, and to read minds. Pretty good deal for a process that had gone wrong. Carrion was also driven by a twisted desire to avenge the Jackal, hence his campaign against Spider-Man.

While they’ve been talking, Carrion has been putting the finishing touches on what he’s been growing: a massive Spider-Amoeba grown from Spidey’s own radioactive blood. He unleashes the thing, in tending to have it finish the prone super hero off. But at that point, Darter appears and attacks Carrion, having been promised Spider-Man’s powers by his undead master. In a pretty gruesome sequence, Carrion hits Darter with his dust of death, causing his lackey to wither and decay away in horrific fashion. I’m kind of surprised that the comics code let this go out like this. But in the confusion, a stray shot from Darter’s weapon destroys the power source of Spidey’s restraints, allowing the wall-crawler to break free and fight back.

As Spidey and Carrion clash, Carrion tells the hero that once he’s dead, Carrion intends to go out and kill all of his loved ones as well, starting with Aunt May. This just makes Spidey fight all the harder, but also makes him a bit sloppy, which allows the Spider-Amoeba to grab him once again. At this point, the White Tiger shows up, having recovered from his fight with Darter, and he attempts to intercede. But he finds that his strength is no match for that of Carrion. In the brawl, a fire breaks out in the lab, threatening all of the combatants.

The White Tiger is the first to withdraw, driven outside by the flames. Meanwhile, Spidey is able to extricate himself from the Spider-Amoeba by using his full strength. In the melee that follows, the Spider-Amoeba reaches for Carrion–and the villain is stunned to discover that his ability to become immaterial won’t release him from the amoeba’s grip. having been created through a similar process, the critter is impervious to Carrion’s powers. And so, despite his futile struggles, Carrion ends up digested by the Spider-Amoeba, an ignoble end for a super-villain.

And that’s about all she wrote. Spidey manages to crawl out a nearby window as the flames engulf the laboratory, presumably cooking the Spider-Amoeba as well as destroying all of Carrion’s equipment and notes and stuff. It’s kind of a lackluster end beat, one that feels like maybe artist Jim Mooney simply ran out of pages and tried to wrap everything up quickly. And worse, the following issue immediately moves on to new business, without any sustained debrief on what Spidey has just been through. It’s a bit of a flaw with the plotting here. But with the action-adventure story concluded, that’s about all she wrote for Carrion–at least for a number of years.