Spider-Man Unlimited #1 (Story 3)

Story 'Long Way Down!'

Last week an infant was killed when the ceiling at City Hospital collapsed.

After some research, Cardiac learns that Assistant Public Works Commissioner Gerard Anders and his corrupt contractor Steven Polk have been intentionally using sub-standard building materials to complete their projects and pocketing the remainder. He sends both of them an anonymous blackmail letter, instructing them to meet him at one of their construction sites where he forces them to confess.

At this point Code: Blue arrives having received a tip from one of the innocent people Cardiac tried to blackmail. They do their best to capture Cardiac, but it's not good enough. Their firefight weakens the structure of the skyscraper, causing parts of it to collapse.

Once they have Polk on the ground, Cardiac summons his metallic falcon and escapes.

General Comments

Ow. Ow. Ow. My head hurts from reading this. Too many things happening all at once in a very small amount of space. It feels like they crammed a below average 22 page story about corrupt contractors into 8 pages hoping that nobody would notice.

I'm not blaming Bagley for this as he can only draw what he's told. Kavanagh's script is simply bad. The rapid fire exposition does not work in this case. He needed to allocate at least a page or two to set this up properly and establish a minimal amount of interest. That choice was not made as he provided minimal setup and lots of pointless gunfire.

Overall Rating

1/2 web. 3 webs for the artwork, negative 2.5 webs for the writing. I understand the frustration with corrupt contractors, but this was not handled very well.

Footnote

Cardiac was introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #342