Amazing Spider-Man #548
Blood Ties
Spider-Man was too late to stop Mister Negative from unleashing his Dragon’s Breath virus on a meeting of the Karnelli mob family. Surprisingly the virus seems to have killed mostly the Karnelli family members and nobody else. Spider-Man briefly worries about the gas getting outside until he hears the lone mob survivor, Carmine Karnelli, vowing a blood feud he remembers that Mister Negative made the virus out of blood he drew from Bruno Karnelli and realizes that it only targeted those with Karnelli DNA. When he asks Carmine how he survived, he admits that he was secretly adopted by the family. That’s when Carmine remembers that they sent the Karnelli children on a tour of the city with their wives and he has to do something to save them.
As Spider-Man swings away, Harry Osborn is driving by in his limo with his girlfriend Lily Hollister and her friend Carlie Cooper. Harry is not happy to see Spider-Man swing by but quickly changes his attitude when Lily asks what’s wrong.[1] Carlie sees that they have happened upon a crime scene and gets out to lend a hand. Despite her eagerness to help, one of the officers on the scene tells Carlie to go back to the morgue to work on some normal cases. As she walks away, one of the other officers tells him that she is Ray Coopers daughter and that she was robbed by the Spider-Mugger the night before.[2] At that same moment, Sean Boyle, the man known as the Spider-Mugger confronts his fence and asks for the credit cards he recently sold to him.[3] This is because he recently mugged Spider-Man in his civilian identity, stealing one of his web-shooters and intends on finding out who the wall-crawler really is. When the fence refuses, Sean tries to web him up, but the mugger grabs the web and uses it to pull Sean close enough to start choking him. He demands to know what Sean wants.
Meanwhile, Spider-Man is trying to get to the Cirque D’Esprit show at Battery Park. However, with only one web-shooter Spider-Man quickly runs out of web-fluid and has to flag down a cab to get there in time. At that same moment, at Mount Sinai Hospital, J. Jonah Jameson has awoken following a heart attack. The first thing that he asks his wife, Marla Madison, is if the Daily Bugle is okay, a question she hesitates to answer.[4] At the Bugle, Joe Robertson tells his staff that Jonah just got out of surgery and is expected to recover. That’s when Dexter Bennett comes barging into the Bugle’s offices.[5] When Joe Robertson asks what’s going on, Bennett tells Joe that while J. Jonah Jameson was non compos mentis, his wife sold him their shares of the Daily Bugle, making him the owner. He then tells Joe to get him a sandwitch, to which Joe tells Bennett that he is editor-in-chief of the paper and for his own well being he should forget the last two minutes.
By this time, Spider-Man arrives at the circus in record time just as Mister Negative’s men have finished planting a bomb with Dragon’s Breath in the circus. Spotting the wall-crawler, Negative orders his Inner Demons to keep the wall-crawler busy so the timer can run out. When Spider-Man tries to interrupt the circus to get people to evacuate but they think that it’s all part of the show, especially when the Inner Demons rush onto the stage to attack him. The wall-crawler faces a challenge since he is all out of web-fluid but is able to hold his own thanks to all the circus equipment laying around. He then picks up the Dragon’s Breath bomb with is spider-sense and snatches it and tosses to the opposite end of the tent from where the Karnelli family are seated. He then ushes the mob wives and their children out of the tent before the Dragon’s Breath can reach and kill anyone with Karnelli DNA. Unfortunately, one of the Kanrelli children, Katie, is separated from her family and taken hostage by Mister Negative. He then threatens to kill her if Spider-Man doesn’t follow what he says. Negative explains that he hoped to take over the rackets that the Karnelli’s controlled. Now, due to the rarity of the ingredients needed to make Dragon’s Breath, Negative can only make a small batch. He demands that Spider-Man give a sample of his own blood so that he can make sure Spider-Man never interferes with his operations ever again. After Spider-Man gives his blood sample, Mister Negative tosses Katie into the Hudson River to cover his escape while Spider-Man dives in after the girl. After returning Katie to her mother, one of the other mob wives thanks Spider-Man for saving their children, telling him that for putting his life on the line for theirs, they now consider him family. Not knowing how to take this, Spider-Man leaves the scene wondering how much weirder his day can get.
While at the Medical Examiner’s Office, Carlie Cooper is given a body to perform an autopsy on. At first, she thinks it’s one of the “mobster mummies” from the Vandermere Hotel, but learns that this is just a body that the fished out of East River. Carlie begins her examination and is shocked when she finds one of Spider-Man’s spider-tracers inside the victim’s mouth. While up on a rooftop, Spider-Man takes stock of the day and is glad that Mister Negative’s Dragon’s Breath will only be a danger to him since he has no living blood relatives.[6] With that, he decides to call his Aunt May and see how she is doing. She tells him that she’s volunteering at the FEAST Center again. While she is talking to Peter, she is unaware that Mister Negative has arrived in one of the back rooms of the FEAST Center. He is furious over Spider-Man’s interference and considers turning Spider-Man over to the dark side. Suddenly, Mister Negative undergoes a transformation that changes him into Martin Li, the owner of the FEAST Center. He then goes to May Parker as he offered to bring May home after her shift. As Peter ends his call he suddenly picks up the signal from one of his spider-tracers. When he arrives at the scene he is surprised to discover that someone had murdered the mugger who robbed him a few days earlier. As he is recovering his spider-tracer and stolen web-shooter, he is approached by Officers VIn Gonzales and Alan O’Neil. Vin, who thinks Spider-Man as nothing more than a vigilante, orders Spider-Man to put his hands in the air. However, the wall-crawler quickly flees the scene while Alan argues with his partner over busting Spider-Man, not believing that the wall-crawler is capable of murder. As the web-slinger makes his escape he bemoans the possibility of being accused of murder on top of all of his other problems.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Mister Negative, Harry Osborn, Lily Hollister, Carlie Cooper, J. Jonah Jameson, Marla Madison, Joe Robertson, Glory Grant, Aunt May, Spider-Mugger, Dexter Bennett, Quentin Palone, Vin Gonzales, Alan O’Neil, Maggia (Carmine Karnelli)
Continuity Notes
Harry has not had positive experiences with Spider-Man dating back to when his father, Norman Osborn, seemingly died in a battle with the wall-crawler in Amazing Spider-Man #122. This led the first of Harry’s many mental breakdowns culminating with his becoming the Green Goblin for the first time in Amazing Spider-Man #136. When Harry was last seen he seemingly died due to his exposure to the Goblin Formula in Spectacular Spider-Man #200. In reality he survived and was secreted away to Europe for years (as revealed in Amazing Spider-Man #581-582) until his return to New York in Amazing Spider-Man #545. Although Harry used to know that his best friend Peter Parker was Spider-Man he lost that knowledge after Mephisto erased everyone’s knowledge of Peter’s double identity in that same issue.
Carlie Cooper was robbed by the Spider-Mugger in Amazing Spider-Man #546.
The Spider-Mugger realized that he robbed Spider-Man in his civilian identity last issue.
J. Jonah Jameson suffered a heart attack while arguing with Peter Parker in Amazing Spider-Man #546. Marla, fearing that the Bugle would be the death of him, ordered their lawyer to sell the Bugle to Dexter Bennett last issue.
One of the Bugle staffers says they saw Dexter Bennett on Perezhilton with Brangelina. Perezhilton Perezhilton.com is a celebrity gossip website run by they very unoriginally named Perez Hilton (real name: Mario Lavandeira, Jr.) This failed actor’s gossip blog was quite popular in the late 2000s (The post 9/11 world was a very dark place). “Brangelina” is the term used for celebrity couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who were dating at the time this issue was published. All of these should be considered topical references, particularly in the case of Brangelina as the couple were married in 2014 and divorced in 2019. We should also not acknowledge Perez Hilton since he’s a big piece of shit.
As far as Peter knows, all of his blood relatives are dead. There’s poor Uncle Ben who was shot back in Amazing Fantasy #15 and his parents who were killed on a government mission while he was still a baby in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5. What Peter doesn’t know is that he has a long-lost sister whom he won’t meet until Amazing Spider-Man: Family Business #1.
