Issue(s): Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #107, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #108, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #109, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #110
Published Date: Oct 85 - Jan 86
Title: "Original sin" / "Sin of pride" / "He who is without sin" / "All my sins remembered"
Credits:
Peter David - Writer
Rich Buckler - Penciler
Brett Breeding / Brett Breeding & Kyle Baker / Many Hands - Inker
Adam Blaustein - Assistant Editor
Christopher Priest - Editor

Review/plot:
Issue #110 is inked by "Many Hands". Kind of disappointing to see a rush job at this point during the Shooter years and on a high profile story.

And this is a high profile arc. It's the "Death of Jean DeWolff".

DeWolff has been a mainstay minor character for years, introduced by Bill Mantlo in Marvel Team-Up. Spider-Man's sympathetic contact at the police department. A relatively strong female supporting character (especially if you overlook the hints and more-than-hints that she was actually in love with Spidey). She quickly evolved past "sister of the Wraith", never went crazy, never developed super-powers, wasn't a perpetual hostage, never actually became a romantic interest. She just showed up in various comics (not always Spidey titles) and played the gritty police chief role.

So why kill her? Well, maybe because at some point she would develop super-powers, or become the focal point of some other stupid story, so better to end the character unmarred. But more likely because it was a pretty painless way to add some gravitas and make an "event" of this story. In the afterward to the trade paperback, Peter David puts the blame on Owsley/Priest: "He wanted to see a story in which Jean DeWolff was killed and there were all sorts of cover ups in the police department." That's not quite the way it worked out, but i guess that was the initial impetus. We know that Priest wanted Spectacular to be the "dark" book, with grittier stories that happened mostly at night. It was an interesting book to have Peter David, who mostly had done exactly the opposite sort of Spidey story (the Misfits, "Spidey in the Suburbs", the Nightmare dream sequence).

In the same afterward, PAD writes:

As for me, there were two storylines I wanted to pursue. First, I wanted to do a story in which Spider-Man was confronted by a villain who committed crimes so heinous, so appalling, that Spidey was pushed to the edge and over. It always struck me as unrealistic how super-heroes could turn fights on and off. When you're in a fistfight, your heart is thumping. If you knock the guy down and he's not getting up, most time you kick him because you're so pumped and angry. You don't back off and say "Had enough?" Usually someone has to pull you off the guy. I wanted do to that to Spider-Man because I felt it would bring some hard-edged reality to him.

I also wanted to do a story underscoring the philosophical differences between Daredevil and Spider-Man (although DD's views have gotten somewhat weirder since then)...

The story opens with a poignant scene of Jean's life flashing before her eyes...

...and we don't realize that's what's happening until we see the police breaking into her apartment to find her dead.

(Not to ruin the moment, but those flashback scenes appear to contradict what we learned in Jean's first appearance, which said that her mother died in childbirth.)

Then the scene shifts to Peter Parker bumping into one of Aunt May's boarding house mates, Ernie Popchik, who is assaulted by some thugs.

As Spidey, he hunts down the thugs, and you can already see that Peter David is pushing him down the path of being unable to hold back.

But he does hold back, and turns the thugs over to the cops. They tell him about Jean.

Spider-Man tracks down the detective in charge of the case, Stan Carter.

Peter David left clues that Stan Carter was DeWolff's killer. He says that no one wrote in guessing so, and i wouldn't have guessed it either. But we learn early on that Carter was a SHIELD agent; i guess it should be suspicious that he went from SHIELD to a New York detective. It also explains his better-than-average physique (it'll later be revealed that SHIELD R&D was experimenting with modified PCP in order to gain the drug's extraordinary strength safely).

We also learn that Carter's partner was killed six months ago, explaining how he would become unhinged. He also knows a lot about this Sin-Eaters concept (Peter David got the idea from a made-for-TV called The Incredible Journey of Doctor Meg Laurel).

Later, Matt Murdock is able to detect Sin-Eater's heartbeat at DeWolff's burial but not able to pinpoint it (his reluctance to act while not in his Daredevil guise is a factor).

Back to the story, Matt Murdock, doing some pro bono work, gets bail for the thugs that beat up Popchik.

Peter is unimpressed. Also note that Murdock recognizes Peter's heartbeat as Spider-Man's.

After the arraignment, Murdock goes back to talk to the judge, an old friend. But the judge is then attacked by the killer, calling himself the Sin-Eater. Hesitation over jeopardizing his secret identity makes it possible for the Sin-Eater to kill the judge.

Sin-Eater escapes. Spider-Man encounters him outside, but is rattled when Carter fires his shotgun in the vicinity of bystanders, and Sin-Eater gets away.

Sin-Eater's next victim is a priest.

The priest is black, and Peter David had also introduced an angry Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton character called Rev. Jackson Tolliver. He'd been shown to have a chip on his shoulder even prior to the death of the priest, but he goes into firebrand mode at this point.

He's also shown to be a phony.

There's already a lot of themes going on in this arc, so i'm not sure why this was added when there's not really a lot of room to address it properly, but it does add another layer to the plot.

Next, the Sin-Eater attacks the Daily Bugle, looking for J. Jonah Jameson. While still in his Peter Parker civvies, Spider-Man is able to take him down.

But the guy, Emil Gregg, turns out to be a fake (per Daredevil's reading of his heartbeat) and a mentally unstable man (In the Characters Appearing section, Stan Carter is Sin-Eater, and Emil Gregg is Sin-Eater II. Both will have additional appearances.). DD and Spider-Man go to his apartment to investigate, and learn that he lives next to Stan Carter.

The unbalanced Gregg would hear Carter speaking into his audio diary and thoght he was hearing voices telling him what to do. The heroes realize that if Gregg was after JJ, the real Sin-Eater might be going to JJ's home. JJ himself is with Ned Leeds in Florida, but Betty Brant is staying over with JJ's wife Marla. Peter calls Betty, potentially risking his secret ID (a recurring theme) but it's too late.

Actually, Betty dodged the blast, and Sin-Eater isn't really after her (but he changes his mind when he finds out he works for the "cursed" Bugle).

But after killing Jean DeWolff who knew what to expect. The last issue of the series has Daredevil and Spidey rushing to the scene.

As Peter David described in the Afterword, Spidey keeps hitting Sin-Eater after he's defeated.

Daredevil tries to stop him...

...but Spidey just turns on him.

Because Spider-Man is fighting mad and wild, Daredevil is able to win.

Later, with word that Carter could get off an an insanity plea, a riot is brewing outside the police station as they're getting ready to transfer him to Riker's. As the crowd descends on Carter and Daredevil leaps in to help, Spider-Man closes his eyes. Daredevil is overwhelmed by the crowd.

It takes Daredevil calling Peter by his real name to get his attention.

While all of this was happening, Ernie Popchik leaves Aunt May's house with his old army revolver. He finds the trouble he was looking for.

May had asked Peter to look after Popchik, but he was simultaneously given an assignment by Robbie. I really don't understand how Aunt May expects Peter to keep track of all her boarders, but clearly he failed here. Luckily, now that he and Matt Murdock are on a real-name basis...

...Matt is willing to take up Ernie's defense.

And that's how it ends. A really nice four part story. Lots of threads, lots of themes (beyond the ones PAD mentioned, there's a major emphasis on the limitations of a secret identity, there's the vigilantism question that's raised in multiple ways: Sin-Eater's beliefs, Popchik's reaction to being assaulted, and the lynch mob, as well as Spidey and DD's conversations). We've come a long way from Al Milgrom's run on the title.

One thing that was a little disturbing, probably deliberately so, was when Spidey investigates Jean DeWolff's apartment, and discovers evidence of Jean's love (obsession?) of him.

It's a nicely handled scene from Parker's perspective but it sort of confirms an alternative impression of DeWolff, that she was not only in love with him but unhealthily so, to the point where she was cutting out pictures of the Black Cat in her pictures of Spider-Man. Instead of making me sad for what might have been, it kinda makes you think, "Man, what a crazy person."

When Spider-Man goes to the Kingpin on a fruitless attempt at getting info about Sin-Eater (Daredevil also went to him for info, but the Kingpin says he has no truck with priest killers), the Kingpin is in the middle of writing a letter to a C.B. Kalish, aka Madame Fate, rejecting her bid to become a "staff assassin". This is actually an in-joke. Carol B. Kalish was Marvel's head of sales; Peter David worked for Kalish prior to becoming a writer and was friends with her. There has never been a character called Madame Fate at Marvel.

Unlike Daredevil, who simply knocked on the Kingpin's door, Spidey fought his way in. Similarly, when Daredevil is next looking for information at Josie's Bar, he knocks over a few thugs but doesn't break the window ("for once!" says, presumably, Josie). Then Spidey shows up, crashing through the window.

At another point in the investigation, Spider-Man hits up drug dealer Gerry Jablosnski for information on the Sin-Eater. He doesn't have any, but he was beating a drug rap. Spider-Man brings him to a local criminal hangout and loudly proclaims that he and Gerry are good friends.

This encourages Jablonski to turn himself in. Daredevil later takes Peter to task for this action; "roughing up" a criminal is one thing, but actually putting someone at risk is out of bounds for DD.

Also in this trade there's a sub-thread with a burgler dressed like Santa Claus. It's setting up a future story; i am pleased that Marvel handled this by having David explain that in the afterward rather than simply cutting those scenes, as they've done with other trades i've wound up with.

Rich Buckler is doing the best work of his career with these issues. I always considered him a bad John Buscema based on his 70s Fantastic Four work. It was nothing like this, even factoring in Breeding and Baker on inks.

I especially like the art on issue #107. When Kyle Baker is inking, the art looks like... Kyle Baker, not Rich Buckler.

Quality Rating: A

Historical Significance Rating: 5 - death of Jean DeWolff. Spider-Man learns DD's secret ID. 1st Sin-Eater.

Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP places this between Web of Spider-Man #11-12.

References:

• No footnote, but when Spidey busts through Josie's window, one of the patrons says he saw Spider-Man like this before, when he was after the Master Planner, which would have been circa Amazing Spider-Man #32-33.
  
• The only footnote in this arc (unless Marvel erased others as they sometimes do with reprints, but i don't think so) is to Amazing Spider-Man #271, which is when Aunt May's boyfriend Nathan Lubenski got put in the hospital because Peter didn't keep better tabs on him; similar to the situation with Ernie Popchik.
  
• At the end when Daredevil is in Spider-Man's apartment, he notes that it smells a little acrid. Peter says that there was a fire recently. That's probably a reference to something in 1986 i haven't read yet; it's probably not the fire from Amazing Spider-Man #213-215.

Cross-over: N/A

Continuity Implant? N

Reprinted In: The Death of Jean DeWolff trade paperback

The fire started in Web of Spider-Man 11.
This issue started the confusion about whether Betty's mom was dead or alive. In issue 109, Betty says that she's finishing a letter to her mother, who's worried about her, and Marla acts like there's nothing strange about that. Then, in issue 289, Betty speaks of her mother like she's alive, and Peter says that she must be crazy, since Betty pretty much raised her brother, since her mother died when she was young. Then Untold Tales of Spider-Man comes along, and we got the story about how Betty's mother was brain-damaged when her brother was studying for the bar, and alive until after her brother's death.
Matt claiming that endangering people is out of bounds comes across as hypocritical since Matt has endangered people in the past, (e.g. risking a war between Latveria and its neighbors to stop Doom in Daredevil 38) and would do so later on.

The Ernie Popchik subway scene is most likely Peter David's take on Bernie Goetz.

There was a Madame Fatal in the 1940s published by Quality Comics, but Peter probably didn't know that.

According to a letter by Scott Edelman, Rich Buckler actually was encouraged to swipe Kirby on Fantastic Four and Thor in the 1970s as higher-ups thought the Kirby look sold the book. Buckler's Deathlok was supposedly agreed to in order to placate him.

I read that DeWolff was picked because she was a relatively obscure, but already existing supporting character, and no one had written in asking for her return, so the writer & editor thought she wouldn't be missed, but still have an emotional connection to Spidey. Then when they killed her, they were deluged with people who were aghast since she was their favorite supporting character.

I liked DeWolff too. She was a character who had a sense of style and should have appeared more.

I know it's months later but I hope Mark Drummond sees this: Mark, where is this letter of Scott Edelman's? Was it in a Marvel comic back then?

Never mind, I found the letter: it's from The Comics Journal #48, from 1979. Thanks anyway!

Shar, if there's any way for you to link to or quote from that letter, it would be appreciated. It's interesting in light of Marvel's more recent (seemingly) condoned swiping (Mike Perkins cribbing directly from Alan Davis, Greg Land generally).

fnord12, I'm so sorry--I didn't see your comment earlier! I actually found the issue--not a link. I'll quote from some of Scott E's letter. btw, his letter is a rebuttal to Peter Gillis's letter in CJ #45, in which Gillis writes that "the folks at Marvel were objecting quite strenuously to Rich's wholesale swiping."
In Scott E's letter in CJ #48, he writes:"...Rich was encouraged in his Kirby swiping because the powers-that-be believed that the Kirby look was what sold Thor and The Fantastic Four. The only book in which Rich was allowed to be himself was 'Deathlok', a title which was pubished as an artistic bribe to Rich. "If we keep him happy," they reasoned, "he'll keep on swiping Kirby for us where it counts."...Indeed, Buckler was molded into a Kirby clone for the sake of sales."

So the letter basically says what Mark D. said in his post.
It's so, shall we say, interesting to look at Buckler's FFs (I haven't read a lot of Thor), he's using Kirby layouts from the Silver Age all over the place. For example in #FF 168 the splash is the Torch from the cover of FF #3. The rest of #168 is filled with layouts from FF #79 (among other FFs). Not action shots, mind you, but even pictures of Ben (in his human form) and Alicia are based on pics from #79. And as I've mentioned in your post of Giant Size Avengers #1, there's a ton of layouts pulled from FF Annual #4.

That should read "not [i]only[/i] the action shots..."

Any way to edit one's own posts here? :)

Shar, thanks for the quotes. Incredible stuff, and amazing how deep Kirby's legacy was at Marvel. To bring it back to this issue, it's clear that Rich Buckler was a good artist on his own when he was allowed to be...

No way to edit your comments in my primitive system. Sorry!

A good example of Buckler swiping Kirby in Thor can be found on the last page of the Ego Origin issue. It's really, REALLY blatant.

I like how the artists drew Betty's blouse with those crazy circles Ditko was always so fond of. It's a nice touch.

The first mention of Peter David at Marvel would seem to be reports of a November 1982 fan press conference, where Peter was described as being in Marvel's PR department. The conference was almost completely about editor Tom DeFalco castigating the press for not realizing that the "backwards Spider-Man issue" announcement was a hoax, as well as complaining about "yellow journalism" in general. Among other things, Peter added "Jim Shooter did not kill Gene Day". Jim Shooter was at the conference, but only long enough to ask for questions and then immediately leave when he didn't get any. The Comics Journal later questioned DeFalco about the claims of poor journalism, but DeFalco couldn't cite any and stated that the first issue of Marvel Age(to be supposedly edited by Peter David) would detail them. Actually, the Comics Journal did quickly catch on to the hoax and stated so in the same issue of its announcement; it was the Comics Reader's Mike Tiefenbacher and The Buyer's Guide's Cat Yronwode that got the most deceived(and irate) about it. Tiefenbacher actually sent back the title list with the joke issue on it for Marvel to confirm before the conference, and Marvel confirmed it as truth anyway. The Comics Journal wasn't bothered by the hoax, but it was extremely critical of DeFalco's "weaselly" performance at the conference and later questioning, and to a much lesser extent of Peter's "non sequiturs" there.