Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #406

Background

This is the final story before the Scarlet Spider titles take over. It's a three part tale which quite unashamedly borrows from the "If This Be My Destiny" story from Amazing #31-#33, with the New Doc Ock standing in for the Old, Mary-Jane cast as Aunt May, and as a bonus - twice as many Spider-Men as in the original epic.

Story 'Crossroads'

Peter and Mary-Jane are starting to rebuild their lives after the "Time Bomb" story. MJ's baby is starting to kick, and Peter is rapidly becoming aware of the responsibilites of parenthood. Also, seems to be coming to grips with the fact that he is a clone. I just wonder how Ben and Peter cope with the fact that they only have one passport between them.

Speaking of Ben, he's kicking around in 'Cyberspace' courtesy of a nifty virtual reality machine of Dr Trainer's. He's trying to recover the files which were stolen by what looked like Doc Ock, back in the "Exiled" storyline. Cyberspace is the latest buzzword. As someone who knows about this stuff, it is just baloney of course - but then again if you knew about biophysics then clones and radioactive spiders would be baloney too I guess.

Anyways, Ben and Seward run into the New Doctor Octopus. She's got purple hair, and she's a bad little girl. She's got stronger arms with a couple of new gimmicks, plus a personal force field. Not only that, but it turns out that she is Dr Trainer's daughter, Carolyn. She and Seward seem to have some dysfunctionality to sort out. Looks like they're going to sort it out by killing each other.

General Comments

Angel Medina does a good job on guest pencils for a DeMatteis story. In fact, J.M. is a trooper in these difficult times. He's a top Spidey writer, and this story is no exception. Sure, it's a shame to see Doc Ock being muscled over by some purple-headed chick, but hey, things change.

Overall Rating

Fun stuff, four webs.