Master of Illusion!
For those of you who do not know from my review of the first issue of this series, in this universe of Spiderman's early days Peter Parker's life is different. He has not met MJ yet, dated Gwen for a small while, and is now dating Chat, a girl who can talk to animals. Captain Stacy is younger and knows peter is Spiderman and allies himself with him. Now, lets get to the review!
The Plot: The issue begins with Spiderman swinging into Captain George Stacy's office. George is there to talk about how there have been twenty six armored car robberies over the past few weeks and nobody ever knows who is robbing the truck since they see hallucinations. The police have been study security footage and everything but they are unable to find anything. George says that Gwen was studying one of the security photos and saw Mysterio from a while away and now that they know who is causing all these robberies, George wants Spiderman to help them. Spiderman demonstrates what Mysterio does with a can of air freshener and how the security guards were probably seeing their worst fears and how Mysterio robs the truck easily. Spidey and George talk about Gwen's break up with Carter Torino briefly and Spidey leaves. The next day, Spidey and Chat meet up with George and some of the police force at a driving lesson course. The plan is to disguise Spidey as an armored car driver and with George as the passenger to somehow foil Mysterio. Spiderman practices driving for a while and does... terrible. Spidey gets enough of the hang of it to start the plan the next day though. Chat lets Peter also know that she will have one of her birds watching if they are hit by gas so she can tell him what's really going on. The Next Day, Spidey and George are driving the armored car and spidey starts to wonder when George tells him the only people who inspected the car for anything out of the ordinary was the security company. Spiderman looks up through the window and catches sight of Mysterio and the "security company" standing on a rooftop overhead. Spiderman realizes too late that the "security company" are actually Mysterio's goons and installed hallucination gas dispensers in the car. The dispensers release gas and as George and Spidey try to roll the windows down and put on gas masks it's too late, since it has already gotten into their lungs. After a lot of swerving around Spidey pulls over and him and George stumble out of the car. George sees two huge figures of Gwen and Carter Torino holding hands and is horrified. Spidey thinks he is on a beach and is fighting all of his villains coming from the water. Spidey knowing that the gas got into them, fights against the illusions. While fighting against illusions of ninja's to zombies to robots to werewolves, George lets it slip that he had always wanted Spidey and Gwen to be together since he always wanted the best for Gwen. Spidey asks him why he would think that since he likes Chat. But, before George can answer, they are forced to fight more illusions while Mysterio sneaks past them and opens up the back of the armored car. People dressed as Spiderman rush out as it was part of the plan to fool Mysterio with Spiderman duplicates, but they are soon under influence by the gas and are also trying to fight illusions. The real spidey fights the gas enough and says that he think the illusions they are fighting are really thugs. Mysterio starts to get a little shaky knowing that Spiderman might be free of the gas's effect. He goes through the Spidey duplicates trying to find out which is the real one but the real mccoy sneaks up behind him and takes him down with a gas mask on. Later, as George and the police are taking Mysterio and his goons away, Spidey gives George some advice about how to treat Gwen and swings away. The End... for Now!
Good Parts of this issue:
- The splash page of Spidey with a gas mask about to throw his punch into Mysterio.
- Spidey's funny demonstration about Mysterio with the air freshner
- Spidey's funny first time driving
- Peter revealing his favorite ice cream flavor is plain vanilla!?!
Bad Parts of this issue:
- none that I could see!
This issue like all the others in this series are great! It's is awesome to read ASM and USM, but it's great to read this also for just some old classic Spiderman stories without any complex stories and plots(not that they aren't good!)
5 out of 5 stars!!
Pick it up for some great classic spiderman and cool art!!
