Issue(s): Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man annual #6
Cover Date: 1986
Title: "Ace II"
Credits:
Peter David - Writer
Mark Beachum - Penciler
Mark Beachum - Inker
Christopher Priest - Editor

Review/plot:
This issue is a follow-up to last year's featuring the urban zen master Ace. There are no credits in the issue. The art is obviously Mark Beachum's...

...but if you had asked me to guess who wrote it, i would have never said Peter David. The story is so dry, so lacking in his characteristic humor, and it very awkwardly inserts the idea that Spider-Man's encounter with Ace has been tearing him up inside in a way that i wouldn't expect of David.

But he did write the first annual, and the internet confirms that it was him here.

The story is also more explicit about the fact that Ace has super-powers. The previous annual used phrases like "as if just being near him shorted out my own spider-sense"; this issue has Peter Parker thinking about Ace's "strange super-powers" and more definitively stating that he could short out his spider-sense and also anticipate his own moves.

The story here is that Ace is scheduled to testify against his own brother, Lorenzo, after the events of the previous annual. But Ace doesn't like the questioning from the prosecution and therefore bails on the trial. After Ace's mom dies, Ace takes his younger sister and leaves the city, telling the residents of his community that his brother is their problem now.

The annual sets up the possibility for future stories, with Lorenzo getting ready to take control of the local gang, and the son of the man Lorenzo previously killed setting out for revenge. It may be that no future stories were intended and that those scenes were just meant to show the continued cycle of violence. In any event, the characters were never used again.

Which is kind of a shame because there is definitely room in the Marvel Universe for a Michael Jackson/Prince hybrid super-hero.

Ok, maybe not really.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Ace first appeared in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man annual #5.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Absence of credits on a 1980s Marvel comic is truly unusual. Maybe this story was forced on Peter David by editorial and he requested his name be removed?

It happened quite a few times on Web of Spider Man I noticed.
I was trying to hunt down all of Peter David's work on the Spider Man character, and ended up finding a few issues of Web from around this time period with no creator credits.
Perhaps the Spidey editors were lax.

Having read this in real time, I can't even articulate how confusing it was to find no creator credits anywhere.

This was from the marvel wikia:

"Powers and Abilities
Powers
Ace has superhuman strength, speed, and reflexes. He also possesses a "danger sense" which allows him to anticipate disaster and/or his opponent's moves. Presumably because his danger sense is similar to that of Spider-Man, Ace's powers cancels out that of Spider-Man's.

Abilities

Skilled street fighter"

Another gang called the Reapers. If Marvel ever did a crossover featuring only Reapers, Destroyers, Patriots, and Guardians they'd have so many characters that George Perez would say "Screw this."