Web of Spider-Man Annual 4 - The Evolutionary War

Spider-Man finds a book tour takes him into chaos in the Everglades.

Web of Spider-Man Annual #4

1st story: Sweet Poison
Writer: Steve Gerber
Artist: Cynthia Martin
Letterer: Rick Parker
Colorist: Janet Jackson
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

Peter Parker is on a tour promoting his book of Spider-Man photographs and gets caught up in the attempts by the Slug's men to secure a reserve supply of drugs for New York, following up on the supply problems established in the Punisher and Amazing Spider-Man chapters of The Evolutionary War. Meanwhile the High Evolutionary has sent his Eliminators and Purifiers to the Everglades to find the Nexus of All Realities in order to locate alien genetic pollutants that make it through and bond with human hosts, seeking the eliminate both the host and its offspring. The host turns out to be Cecilia, a maid at Peter's motel who has a double life as the being Poison with a second entity inside her. Poison confronts and destroys the Purifiers when they come to her home to eliminate her and her son, then the alien inside her separates off to return home. Meanwhile Spider-Man finds a hidden reserve supply of cocaine in the swamp which leads to a battle between him, the Slug's men, the Eliminators and the Man-Thing.

If this sounds chaotic it's because it is. The cover promises Spider-Man will be battling the Slug (an existing foe previously seen in Captain America) but the Miami drug lord only actually appears on a couple of pages in phone conversations with the Kingpin and demonstrating his ability to use his own fat to asphyxiate a man and he never encounters Spider-Man directly. It's a sign of the problems with this annual as it doesn't really know what it's about.

This story sees the return of Steve Gerber to mainstream Marvel books after many years (and an abortive lawsuit) and a few strips in Marvel Comics Presents but it's not a particular triumph. Far too many elements have been thrown into this story and they don't all meet up. Gerber was never the most conventional of writers but sometimes this could work against him. Web of Spider-Man was a title that still had a reputation for an inability to get a lasting permanent creative team and frequently functioned as little more than a set of fill-in issues though Alex Saviuk was now half a year into what would turn out to be nearly a seven year run so it's unsurprising that the annual wound up being written by an irregular writer. However Gerber doesn't seem to be especially interested in Spider-Man who is used only sparingly with a lot of attention instead devoted to his own new creation Poison, of whom more in the second story. All in all this is easily the worst chapter in The Evolutionary War so far.


2nd story: Night Stalking
Writer: Steve Gerber
Artist: Alex Saviuk
Letterer: Rick Parker
Colorist: Janet Jackson
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

This is the origin story for Poison, telling how Cecilia was one of the Cubans who came to the US in the Mariel boatlift. A university student who got pregnant by Vassily, a Soviet diplomatic attaché, she found her world crumbling around her when she was discovered and Vassily blamed her. Then when giving birth she was visited by the extra dimensional being Ylandris who merged with her and gave her power that remains even now they are separated. Poison is now hunting Vassily for revenge and searching the streets for him.

If this story was setting out to make Poison a viable recurring character to use it fails heavily. Already succumbing to the cliche of an immigrant Hispanic maid and giving her a costume that makes her look like a prostitute, she is now shown walking the streets on a mission of vengeance. There's very little to this story to open the character up for a viable ongoing use and so it's unsurprising that for many years her only other use was a multi-part story in Marvel Comics Presents by Gerber. The origin does make her sympathetic but does nothing to explain why she expects to find Vassily on the streets of Miami.


3rd story: The High Evolutionary: All My Children
Story: Mark Gruenwald
Pencils: Ron Lim
Finishes: Tony DeZuniga
Letters: Ken Lopez
Colors: Gregory Wright
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

This is a relatively sedate chapter, focusing upon the aftermath of the battle with Cthon as the High Evolutionary finally accepts the existence of the supernatural and that his partner really is possessed by a sixth century sorcerer. But the main focus comes with various children around the mountain. Jessica Drew is released after decades in suspended animation to be raised by the New Man Bova with no real mention of where her father is now that his body has been restored to him. But it's the twins Pietro and Wanda who get the highest turnover of parents. Their birth mother Magda disappears without an explanation given here and so the Evolutionary commissions an aid to find a couple to raise them. The first candidates are Robert and Madeline Frank, whose thoughts touch on their heroic past but they are not explicitly identified here. Madeline is pregnant and the plan is to present all three children as hers which seems a little fanciful. However she dies in childbirth with her own baby stillborn. The twins are presented to Robert as his own but upon news of his wife's death he runs away at super speed. Eventually the twins are given to a Romani couple Django and Marya Maximoff who lost their children in the Second World War with a caption telling us they will grow up to be Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

If this seems convoluted it's because there had already been two retcons of their parentage over their years, first to make them the children of the Golden Age heroes the Whizzer and Miss America and then to make them the children of Magneto. The original stories had sought to explain why each set of parents had been absent from their childhood whether through death, desertion, ignorance or a desire to hide the children's existence from their father out of fear of him (this version predated Star Wars). As a result each version wrote one explanation on top of another and now this saga recounts it all. This is also one of the chapters that could do with more narrative captions to establish the context, particularly of just who the Franks are. It also highlights an inadvertent theme of absent parents as no explanation is given as to where Jonathan Drew now is when his daughter is finally revived even though his possessed body has only recently been at the mountain.

This chapter does its best with what was already a huge continuity mess (and which has been since changed yet again) and manages to present a coherent narrative out of the order of events but can't hide the difficult nature of it. Normally Mark Gruenwald can be given a pass in this saga as he was working with what others had come up with but he was one of the co-plotters of the Avengers issue that introduced Magda to the story and so bore at least some responsibility for what he was working with. What's also surprising is the way that the Maximoff's own children are explicitly identified as having died in the Second World War. Although no date is given for when this chapter is set (beyond Magnus having been there for a decade) even in 1988 chronological problems with linking characters' personal histories to the war were clear and also the original telling of these events didn't mention it. Fortunately the chapter works to present everything in an understandable order but it can't hide the mess it's working with.

Other material includes "The Year in Review!" which is a series of pin-ups by artists including Arthur Adams, John Romita Sr & John Romita Jr, Mike Zeck & Bob McLeod, Cynthia Martin and others not explicitly credited. It's hard to escape the sense that at least some of these are from inventory and were intended as covers and/or promotional pieces rather than being specifically drawn for this annual. Still it's handy to have a catch-up on one of the most intense years in Spider-Man's life which included his wedding, the introduction of one of his most popular foes, the abandonment of his black costume and one of the contenders for his most popular story of all. However this might have been better placed in the first of the three Spider-Man annuals to come out that year instead of the second.

Web of Spider-Man was a title that was still struggling even in its fourth year, having not yet found a writer that would last more than half a dozen issues or so and this annual was at the point where its longest lasting artist had only just reached that particular milestone. So it's natural to expect this annual to be a forgettable tale by a fill-in writer even before coming to the contents. However the main story is just utterly unfocused in trying to balance numerous different elements and the needs of the title character against the desire of the author to push his own creation. The second story doesn't redeem it being the origin of a new character instead of a tale from the regular series's world whilst the saga chapter is a recounting of what was already one of the most convoluted parts of the whole origin. This is a highly disappointing entry in the event.

The Punisher Annual 1 - The Evolutionary War

The Punisher encounters an Evolutionary War on Drugs.

(Due to the large number of creators the labels for some have been put in a separate post.)

The Punisher Annual #1

1st story: Evolutionary Jihad
Script: Mike Baron
Pencils: Mark Texeira
Inks: Scott Williams
Letters: Jim Novak
Colors: Janet Jackson
Edits: Carl Potts
Eliminator in Chief: Tom DeFalco

The problem with a line wide crossover, or at least one encompassing all the series with annuals, is that it's going to take in some extremely different series with very different power levels and perspectives. Both this annual and the next one demonstrate the extremities of this as they take in what were in 1988 Marvel's hottest new series.

The Punisher had been running for less than a year when this first annual came along and so it's very likely The Evolutionary War was approved before it was realised there would be an encounter on such a scale. The nature  of this crossover overall is such that individual events can be easily added or dropped from the overall plan but the different power levels can result in some very strange aspects to the plan.

The solution here is to tell a relatively straightforward typical Punisher story in which one faction is armed with high tech weaponry. The High Evolutionary's Eliminators aren't that much more advanced than some of the other more technological foes the Punisher and so don't feel out of place here whilst the Evolutionary himself is never seen, only mentioned. However the goal in this annual is ridiculous.

Here the High Evolutionary has launched a war on drugs and comments by his Eliminators imply that they're going after the whole chain from producers all the way through to users. It just feels absurd that such a broad target would be selected for such physical resources. It would be easy to refine the target to some particular drug variant only grown in the vicinity but as it stands it's an unbelievable goal. Still the practical result is that the Punisher gets to fight some hi-tech guys in Colombia.

This is yet another tale of a fight with a  Latin American drug baron, a cliche even at the time. However Mike Baron's script gives some good development to "El Caiman", presenting him as also a devoted father and popular philanthropist who has done far more for the local people than their own government. He and the Punisher end up in an alliance of convenience against the Eliminators and there's a real sense that they've come to respect one another enough that they'll let each go when the threat is removed. However both know that this cannot be and so when they find themselves in El Caiman's aquarium at the end the Punisher has no option but to fire a bullet to break the glass and feed the drug lord to his own pet from whom he takes his nickname.

As a Punisher story this is a good one-off tale that doesn't require an in-depth knowledge of the character and his continuity to understand it. But as a chapter in The Evolutionary War it's struggling to disguise just how difficult it is to fit that event into this series. The Evolutionary's goals are just too unrealistic to make sense.


2nd story: 3 Hearts
Writer: Roger Salick
Artist: Mike Bosburg
Letterer: Ken Bruzenak
Colorist: Max Scheele

This solo tale for Microchip is named after a Japanese proverb that a person has three hearts - the one they show to the world, the one they keep to themselves and the one they don't even know about. Microchip finds out what he is capable of when he goes to the help of the widow of an old friend whose new husband has become an assassin for hire and is even trying to kill his wife lest she report him. Although Microchip has developed many weapons for others, here we see his private nervousness over whether he himself can pull the trigger when he tracks down the assassin reporting back. We also get the comedy as he smuggles an anti-tank gun into a hotel. And then the story ends with showing his deviousness and ruthlessness as he confronts the assassin and seemingly makes a deal.

It's a good exploration of Microchip's character and capabilities when he doesn't have the Punisher around him but the story's title is rather over laboured with excess dialogue seeking to justify it. But otherwise this is just the sort of piece that super-size annuals should have.


3rd story: The High Evolutionary: Pet Project
Story: Mark Gruenwald
Pencils: Paris Cullins
Inks: Tony DeZuniga
Letters: Ken Lopez
Colors: Gregory Wright
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

Herbert Edgar Wyndham was expelled from Oxford after losing his temper with key professors and then he found his home was insufficiently isolated to carry out his experiments. Salvation came when he met again with Jonathan Drew whose wife had inherited land in the Balkans and so they set up a laboratory there.

It's a relatively straightforward chapter that continues the themes of Wyndham being in a hurry, impatient with the conventional speed of science and being detached from conventional society. But it also exposes a problem with the character's name and aims. Evolution is the development of a species as it adapts to conditions with beneficial mutations coming to dominate as best able to survive. By definition it is not possible to stick an organism in a machine and flick a switch to turn it into what a later evolved descendant will be. Yet that is precisely what Wyndham is shown attempting. At best he can accelerate the individual organism's development to deal with the rays of his machine but nothing more.

This flaw goes back to the character's original appearance and suggests that his creators did not have the strongest understanding of evolutionary science when they named him. It raises the question as to what is the character's actual goal.

Also included is a guide to the Punisher's Battle Van and a diagram of his New Jersey warehouse.

Overall this is a good Punisher annual but a disappointing The Evolutionary War one. The Punisher was always going to be one of the hardest characters to fit into the overall event but even so the draw here just doesn't stand up well. It is unfortunate that both the first two annuals in this event have been disappointing.