Sins Past Part Five

Peter Parker and Mary Jane have just put together the mystery of the long lost Gwen Stacy letter. Gwen, Peter’s old girlfriend, had an affair with Norman Osborn resulting in a pregnancy. These children are now rapidly aging thanks to the goblin formula that was passed along by their father. Convinced that Peter Parker is their father and that he killed Gwen, these twins now want to kill Spider-Man and his family.[1] With all this out on the table, Peter decides he wants to try to find a way to cure Gwen’s children before they rapidly age to death and tell them the truth about their parents. When Mary Jane asks Peter how he plans on getting into contact with Gwen’s children, he decides that he has no other choice but to go to the media.

With the announcement that Spider-Man is going to make a press conference, the local news station checks with their resident Spider-Man expert to tell let them know if Spider-Man has ever held a press conference before. Although this expert uses this moment to show off some of his personal footage of the wall-crawler, he doesn’t have an answer for them.[2] At the press conference, Spider-Man deflects everyone’s questions so he can send out a message to Gabriel and Sarah, telling them to meet him at the place where he saw their mother for the last time, telling them that their lives are in danger.[3] With his message sent, Spider-Man ends his conference.

As he swings to the George Washington Bridge, a news crew follows him and sets up their cameras as Sarah and Gabriel show up. He tells them that they are in at risk of dying due to their rapid aging and that their father was really Norman Osborn, the same man who killed their mother as the Green Goblin. Gabriel doesn’t believe this, saying that Norman Osborn raised them after Peter abandoned them. However, Sarah isn’t so sure anymore. She points out to her brother that Peter get a DNA sample from their mother’s body. If Peter was actually their father he wouldn’t have needed Gwen’s DNA to do a paternity match. Gabriel refuses to listen and as police arrive on the scene tries to shoot Spider-Man. The wall-crawler evades the shot and kicks Gabriel over the edge of the bridge.

Hearing the gunshots, the police begin opening fire and Sarah is struck by a bullet and she also falls off the bridge. Not wishing to see a repeat of Gwen’s death, Spider-Man leaps over the bridge and is able to swing down and catch Sarah before she falls to her death. As Spider-Man rushes Sarah to the hospital, Gabriel flees into the sewers where he decides to follow the directions of a map given to them by Norman Osborn to a location they were told to go to after they destroyed Spider-Man. He decides to enter the facility anyway. Inside he is shocked to discover that everything Spider-Man said was right as there are two goblin costumes in display cases inside.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man, Mary Jane Watson, Gabriel and Sarah Stacy, (in video footage) Galactus, Sentinel, (in flashback) Norman Osborn

Continuity Notes

1. Gwen Stacy had an affair with Norman Osborn around Amazing Spider-Man #61. When she discovered she was pregnant she went to Europe to have her children sometime around Amazing Spider-Man #119. She never told Peter because she was murdered by Norman Osborn shortly thereafter in Amazing Spider-Man #121. Peter has slowly learned the truth about this affair over the course of the last five issues.

2. There are a lot of references here during the sequence involving the Spider-Man expert. They are:

   • Footage of Spider-Man fighting Galactus happened during Fantastic Four #243.

   • The Chronology Project places the Sentinel incident as happening after Venom #10.

   • The Chronology Project places Spider-Man cussing out Ray as happening around Spectacular Spider-Man #162

   • The newscasters ask if Spider-Man has ever called a press conference before and Ray doesn’t know. In fact, at the time of this story, Spider-Man had not.

   • Lastly, he states that he got a lot of his pictures from a site called alt.binaries.spiderstalker and a number photo of Angelina Jolie from alt.fakes. The sites referenced are fake Usenet newsgroups. Newsgroups were highly popular in the early days of the internet where people could discuss various topics. They were also used to share pictures including pornography. Since the advent of other methods of communication, particularly social media platforms, these Usenet groups aren’t widely used but still exists. “Fakes” usually images where the heads of actresses are imposed onto the bodies of sexually explicit photographs. They were widely created and circulated in the early days of the internet. They still exist today but are less common. Anyway, the references to the Usenet groups and Angelina Jolie should be considered topical.

3. One of the reporters asks Spider-Man is he is going to reveal his identity like Matt Murdock has. This is a reference to Daredevil (vol. 2) #32 where Murdock was outed as Daredevil.