Jammit! All shock is breaking loose and tearing the bits out of Horizon Labs! Can Spider-Pus and Spidey 2099 save the day in time before everything is destroyed FOREVER?! Read to find out!

Written by D. Slott

Illustrated by R. Stegman

 Inked by J. Livesay

 Colored by E. Delgado

 Lettered by C. Eliopoulos

THE PLOT: The fate of Horizon Labs and the future of New York 2099 hinges on an equation Peter Parker configured months ago. Ock must recall the formula or everyone and everything is doomed.

LONG STORY SHORT: The Horizon cast members, Stone and Miguel O’Hara all escape the implosion caused by Oct’s inserting an equation into the Lab’s keypad. The building and Peterpus disappear, and Jonah gives Max Modell the choice to either take a prison sentence or swear never to SCIENCE again in New York. Not being a dope, Max, Grady and Bella Fishbach set sail for “new horizons”, but not before they use their science to bring Ock back to 2013 after he’s been gone for nine hours.

Miguel ends up trapped in 2013 thanks to Tyler Stone destroying the time machine from 2099. He frauds his way into a job as an assistant to Tiberius Stone, who is joining Liz, Mason Banks and Normie in toasting to the birth of Alchemax.

Mary Jane, after leaving several messages on Peterpus’ phone to see if he’s alright, finally tells him off and says they will now go their separate ways. In a made-up Caribbean island, Carlie and Wraith learn that the name on Spider-Man’s secret bank account is Otto GUNTHER Octavius.

Oh right, and this happened.

MY THOUGHTS: I have to imagine that the working title for this issue was “THINGS HAPPEN”. Much like the Smythe three-parter, the third issue packs so much payoff from the consequences of its story that it’s hard not to feel totally satisfied. With issue#19 we’ve got the end of Horizon Labs, the birth of Alchemax, the exile of Max Modell and friends (well, the white ones anyway), Miguel O’Hara being stuck in our timeline, Carlie confirming what she damn well already knew, Mary Jane telling Peterpus off, Ock being gone for a period of time and clearly having gone through some sort of trauma, and, most intriguingly, Peter seemingly returning in Ock’s mind. In the last episode of the SPIDER-MAN CRAWLSPACE PODCAST, Brad said he felt #18 had nothing new to offer and didn’t progress the story. I triple-dog dare him to say that about this issue.

The thing is, I’m not a believer in calling a story a complete success just because the plot moves forward. It all comes down to how it’s handled. Granted for the most part Slott writes it well, but I’m hesitant in putting this close to an “A” grade. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very solid issue. Things happened that we wanted to see, were interested in seeing develop, and never thought we would see. So what’s my deal? What’s holding me back from heaping tons of praise on this?

Hmmm…

Okay, well one thing I know I can talk about is Stegman’s art. Specifically with this issue, I come away thinking that the man is a talented but inconsistent penciller. His people leave some things to be desired, and this is most apparent during the group and crowd scenes where everyone is staring at shiny, glowy things. There are so many times where the Horizon group look nonplussed and uninterested in the “END ALL, BE ALL” happenings that are going on around them. In the first page, Hector looks as though he’s not even paying attention and staring off into space. In the scene where Jameson arrives and chews out Modell, everyone in the background is looking off into different directions despite the fact that New York is about to turn into a smoking crater at any second. It’s the kind of art style or lack thereof that takes me out of the story. I know Stegman has a lot of fans right now, but this type of work where the script demands energy and emotion and the artwork denotes a sense of boredom and confusion says to me that the fellow has a bit of a ways to go before he can live up to his acclaim.

I think that might be what’s causing my resignation with the events in this issue: the lack of emotion. Max and friends are all jobless, Miguel O’Hara is trapped in the past, Mary Jane in a course of a few hours breaks it off with Peter, and Ock was gone for an unspecified amount of time with no explanation. These things happen…yet Slott just has the characters let it roll off their backs. I can roll with Miguel’s quick dealing of his situation since a time machine in 2013 had to exist for him to get to the past in the first place so his deal isn’t a lost cause. The Max Modell stuff felt of thrown in there to make the issue feel more climactic than it needed to be.

First of all, we have more King Jameson crap with Jonah involving himself in a federal investigation that he by no rights should have anything to do with. Secondly, he bans Modell from doing science in New York. On a mental and emotional level I can buy his thought process. However, why is it that Modell is taking all of the blame with every crappy thing that happened in the recent past? I know Horizon Labs was involved heavily with Slott’s last few arcs, but Modell was either not cognizant of any of it or his team helped save the day. They should have been given several passes by this point, especially after Ends of the Earth and the Spider-Island saga. Again, I know why Jonah hates Modell, because he has to play the role of the blustery idiot because if we don’t have Jonah acting outrageously stupid in a Dan Slott script, we won’t know what to do with ourselves. But in a situation like this, I think there’s more people with more political and governmental powers over Jonah that would keep interest in Modell’s future in New York.

Finally, the scene with Modell and friends sailing away lacked the modicum of emotion that would have given the situation enough weight that we would care. The basic fact that he and Horizon are gone might make us feel something in terms of an omission of a fairly regular aspect of the Spider-Man books, but these are supposed to be characters within a story. They’re supposed to have reactions and emotions associated with the directions in their lives that the story puts them in. The only reaction we get from any of the team members is Uatu Jackson saying “There goes everybody.”

What this isn’t is an indictment of Slott’s lack of interest in keeping us invested in the Horizon Labs characters, although it can be. This is a critique of the guy’s flagrant disinterest in any sort of emotional storytelling. Moving on to Mary Jane, how many times in the past have I whined about her not being given any type of reactionary scene after Ock-to-Spidey has committed mass murder on a public scale? Hopefully every issue.

In this story we see that her patience is exhausted with Peter’s lack of communication and tells him that she’s tired of the responsibility of caring for him, throws the deuces and declares that they’re truly done.

If Ock didn’t kill people on television/internet, than this scene would get no objection from me. But he did, so this won’t.

I do appreciate Slott’s showing that Mary Jane hates the fact that she still cares about Peter and wants better for herself. That’s a very real thing to go through and it’s good that she’s finally taken some sort of hint and changing her ways because of it. Of course Peterpus made it explicitly clear back in issue#2 that they were done already, so this whole scene is MJ trying to make herself feel good when Ock (and anyone who’s paying attention) is just rolling his eyes over the phone. I’m sure once Carlie and Yuri get back to the States she’ll want to inform Mary Jane that Peter’s freaking DEAD and that his body is being inhabited by a fat, near-sighted supervillain with a bowl-cut. My point is that I wouldn’t have any issue with this scene if not for the fact that Mary Jane just isn’t using her head at this point. I guess Slott’s just completely forgotten about the Massacre issues and thinks he’s writing the character as best as he can. I don’t know, has anyone asked him why MJ hasn’t been given a reaction to Ock’s public display of violence?

Finally, the scene with Ock accessing Peter’s memories for the equation with a silhouette of Peter coming from underneath the rubble was, in a word, awesome. It was very exciting to read, and what gave it a particularly cool touch is that the images of him lifting the rubble coincided with the memories of everyone’s favorite Spidey issues that Ock was remembering. One question though, what is the scene second on the left of Spider-Man holding up machinery with his clothes ripped and his costume being made visible? It’s directly over the Mary Jane scene. Any one who can guess it wins a no-prize.

Overall this gets a “B” because while Slott has an utter lack of emotional depth to his writing, chess pieces are being moved to the point that the game is definitely getting interesting. I felt satisfied with this issue, although God knows it wasn’t as good as it could have been. Still, here’s to the future.

B