Issue(s): Web of Spider-Man #47
Cover Date: Feb 89
Title: "The face in the mirror"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Alex Saviuk - Penciler
Keith Willaims - Inker
Jim Salicrup - Editor

Review/plot:
With this issue, Gerry Conway is now writing two of the three monthly Spider-Man books. In earlier, more innocent times, Marvel made some effort to distinguish the Spidey books. Peter Parker was never really meant to be the book that focused more on Peter's personal life, but at least that book focused more on him as a student and TA whereas Amazing focused more on him at the Daily Bugle. And Marvel Team-Up was of course Marvel Team-Up. More recently under Christopher Priest's editorialship, Peter Parker was the darker and edgier book; he wore his black costume more and had stories like the Death of Jean DeWolff (and Priest intended Kraven's Last Hunt to run exclusively in that book, too), whereas Amazing had Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz's more traditional super-heroics. And, well, not necessarily by design, but when Marvel Team-Up changed to Web of, it seemed mainly to be the book of one off stories by various creators. At the very least, each book had its own identity by virtue of the fact that each had a different creative team. There's no doubt that Amazing currently has a very different style and tone, but now the other two books are written by Gerry Conway and drawn by traditional artists. On the one hand, that should lead to tighter coordination between titles, but on the other hand it makes you wonder why Marvel didn't just cancel one book and make the other one permanently bi-weekly (which would have been a precursor to what Marvel will eventually do with Spider-Man circa Brand New Day).

In any event, these are Inferno issues, and we're at the part where the Hobgoblin/Green Goblin storyline is running through all three Spider-titles, so any question of each book having its own identity is put on hold for now anyway.

Spider-Man returns to the site of the Osborn factory where things got weird last issue. And he encounters the Hobgoblin again.

But their reunion is cut short when crazy Inferno stuff continues to happen, something that surprises both of them.

While Spider-Man is fighting off that animated debris man, Alex Saviuk gives us a bland splash panel and Gerry Conway fills it with the strangest story about a crab. I'm not going to post the splash, but here's the text.

Once when he was very young, Peter Parker went to the beach at Coney Island with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. It was a sunny summer day, with the kind of once-in-a-lifetime weather that seems to only brighten childhood. Young Peter swam in the sea, ate ice cream on the boardwalk, and built castles in the sand with his uncle. In many ways, it was the happiest day of his life. He still remembers the shock he felt when something black and ugly pushed up through the sand, wrecking the castle and bringing a scream of horror to his lips. It was just an ugly black crab looking for the light. But to Peter, at that moment, it was nothing less than a monster. Since that day, he's met real monsters, and known true horror. But he'll always remember the thing in the sand, and how it spoiled his summer day at the beach.

That's a very... i don't know what, exactly, but it feels to me like it's written by someone that would prefer to be writing prose instead of comics. The crab isn't referenced again. Hobgoblin taunts Spider-Man and leaves him to die at the hands of the debris monster, but Spider-Man escapes without once thinking about crabs.

Peter then stops in for a breakfast at Aunt May's house. He had actually spent the night there with MJ and Kristy, and snuck away to inspect the factory. Peter and MJ get the idea to leave Kristy with Aunt May so they can get their privacy back.

We see that Kristy really does have designs on Peter.

Peter then goes over to the Osborn household to check on Harry. He finds a jumpy Liz and Harry squirreled away in the attic, and then the Hobgoblin shows up there. I guess everyone's too wrapped up in their own problems to notice that Peter slips away to become Spider-Man.

Hobgoblin is after Harry's father's Green Goblin formula. Harry gets him to leave by telling him that the formula is kept at his office in Manhattan, but he's lying. After Spider-Man follows Hobgoblin in pursuit, we see Harry run back to the attic to get out his Goblin suit.

Also in this issue, we see Glory Grant continuing to date Eduardo Lobo, and we see Inferno possessing escalators. There's also talk of blowing manhole covers. Dangers on escalators and exploding manhole covers are real things that can happen, so it seems to me to be another case where Inferno is meant to be an amplification of the negatives of city life. By the end of the issue, though, we see storm clouds circling the Empire State Building, fire below, and J. Jonah Jameson talking about Doomsday.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Spectacular Spider-Man #146 is said to have taken place "yesterday"; this issue begins early the next morning. Amazing Spider-Man #312 occurs next, and that issue has concurrency with X-Terminators #3/New Mutants #71, so this takes place prior to that.

References:

• We saw the Osborn factory out of control in Spectacular Spider-Man #146.
  
• When an escalator goes crazy due to Inferno, Ben Urich feels a fear that he hadn't felt since he was stabbed by Elektra in Daredevil #179.
  
• It's again mentioned that Harry was the Green Goblin. Again no footnote, but it was circa Amazing Spider-Man #137.
  
• Hobgoblin notes that his predecessor, Ned Leeds, was killed. No footnote but we learned about that in Amazing Spider-Man #289.

Crossover: Inferno

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

The first image is repeated midway through the page.

Thanks, Luis. Fixed.

Conway was, I believe, behind an infamous Firestorm annual that was just prose with illustrations. Come to think of it, a couple of Spidey annuals around '87 were just illustrated text as well, like bad Handbooks. Was that also Conway? (I must be thinking of the Web Annual circa '87.)

So then Aunt May and Uncle Ben go to relax (or to see any traces of their daughter Linda ;p) and Peter is playing with giant enemy crabs? O...K...

The text in 1987's all-pinup Web of Spider-Man annual #3 was by Danny Fingeroth and Roger Stern.

Thanks, Fnord. Here's a link to the Conway Firestorm annual, as reviewed in Nobidy's Favorites, http://www.armagideon-time.com/?p=9514

I guess it's kind of like Doctor Strange: Into Shamballa but while i didn't love that for similar reasons, at least the art was equally experimental and it fit a certain mood. That Firestorm annual really does look like a children's picture book.