Amazing Spider-Man Extra #2
Black & White
Anti-Venom has taken an interest in a young drug addict named Jenna Cole, who has been struggling with her addictions for some time. When some drug dealers threatened her, Anti-Venom decided to become personally involved and slays them. He then uses his symbiote’s curative abilities to pruge the drugs from Jenna’s system and cure her of her addiction. He then hands her a business card for the FEAST Center and tells Jenna to go there and get some help.
Reverting to human form, Eddie Brock decides to go to Our Lady of Saints Church to pray. He thinks about how this is where his entire life changed. A disgraced reporter, Eddie Brock blamed Spider-Man for the loss of his job and went to pray for vengeance. It was there he came upon the Venom symbiote.[1] For years, Brock operated as Venom, unaware that the Venom symbiote was leaving him a withered cancer riddled husk.[2] After being rid of the symbiote, Brock found himself at the FEAST Center to atone for his past sins. It was under the guidance of owner Martin Li that Brock soon discovered that he was cured of his cancer, as if by some kind of miracle. When Venom’s new host came looking for him, Brock transformed into Anti-Venom for the first time and has since been using his new powers to act as a guardian agnel to the most vulnerable in society.[3]
Meanwhile, Jenna Cole has arrived at the FEAST Center where she is welcomed with open arms by May Parker. When one of the other workers says they are at capacity, May refuses to turn the young woman away. When she goes to talk to Martin Li, she is surprised to see that he is training the refugees that recently came under their care in martial arts. Martin explains that he is teaching the women self-defense while the men could use these skills for security jobs. Martin quickly ushers May out as it is a closed session. Overhearing this, one of the other volunteers points out that Li has been ignoring everyone ever since he took in the refugees.
Meanwhile, Brock has become Anti-Venom and has tracked down the drug dealers who had been victimizing Jenna. He is led to the Brooklyn Naval Yards where a drug deal is going down with some of Mister Negative’s Inner Demons. Although Anti-Venom crashes the drug deal, he discovers that the Inner Demon’s are not so easy to kill as they instantly heal from any wounds he inflicts on them. Surprisingly, when he gets some of their blood on him, it burns like the venom that Mac Gargan used against him when they last fought. At that same moment, Mister Negative is confronted in Chinatown by one of the refugees Martin Li has taken in. She refuses to become one of his Inner Demons even though he has helped her people since they were freed from Oscorp. In response, Mister Negative grabs the woman infecting her with his negative energy, making her more agreeable. That’s when one of his men comes back from the shipyards to warn him of Anti-Venom’s attack. He is furious because they knew about their planned raid on an Oscorp shipment and mobilizes his men to speed up that operation.
Sure enough, when Mister Negative and his men attempt to capture the Oscorp truck, Anti-Venom is there to interfere with the job. Although Mister Negative and his men outnumber him, Brock has a means to deal with the situation. Disguising himself as one of the Inner Demons, Eddie manages to sneak away from the ambush and take control of the truck of Oscorp supplied. Deciding to put it to good use, Brock takes the truck to the FEAST Center. However, there he shocked to see Mister Negative at the center and is even more horrified to see Negative revert to his human form, that of Martin Li. Brock flees the scene and cannot believe he was betrayed so heavily. Worse, nobody will believe him that Martin Li is really Mister Negative because people only see Anti-Venom as a monster.
Recurring Characters
Anti-Venom, Mister Negative, Jenna Cole, Aunt May
Continuity Notes
As explained in Amazing Spider-Man #300: Eddie Brock was a reporter for the Daily Globe who made it big for interviews with a man claiming to be the spree shooter known as the Sin-Eater. However, when Spider-Man caught the real Sin-Eater, Brock was discredited and fired from his job. When he went to the Our Lady of Saints to pray he came into contact with the Venom symbiote, and bonded with it, learning all of Spider-Man’s secrets.
Eddie Brock was led to believe that he was dying of cancer in Spectacular Spider-Man (vol. 2) #4. However, this was later revealed to be a deception created by the Venom symbiote in an attempt to make Brock more dependant on the symbiote. Brock later auctioned off the symbiote in Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #6 and it ultimately ended up in the possession of Mac Gargan in Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #9.
Brock’s time at the FEAST Center and his transformation into Anti-Venom and battle with the Gargan Venom occurred in Amazing Spider-Man #568-573.
Birthday Boy
Spider-Man ventures out into the freezing cold to meet up with Wolverine who is waiting for him in an alley. Wolverine is glad to see the wall-crawler as he needs help, and reminds Spider-Man that he owes Wolverine for helping him against the “Mayan Ninjas” that they fought during the recent freak blizzard.[1] Since there is still time to kill, Wolverine suggests that the duck into a nearby dive bar. Spider-Man follows but isn’t happen when Wolverine takes off his mask, since it’s going to make him stick out like a sore thumb and Spider-Man doesn’t want to take off his costume to maintain his secret identity.[2]
At first, the patrons aren’t happy to see Spider-Man in their bar, but he and Wolverine convince them that he’s not really Spider-Man but just a normal guy dressed up as the wall-crawler. Getting a bottle of Canadian whiskey, Wolverine and Spider-Man take a booth. Wolverine gets to drinking and as his healing factor pushes him through a crash course of rapid recovery from the booze, he goes on about how he used to think he was a good guy but over the years he realized that he couldn’t be a good guy all the time. Spider-Man can relate, telling Logan about how his best friend’s girlfriend kissed him recently and how he feels guilty about it.[3] Wolverine understands, remembering how he used to chase after Jean Grey affecting his relationship with her and her husband Cyclops.[4] The pair then admit they have things for redheads.[5] That’s when Logan says hello to one of the female patrons of the bar, making her boyfriend jealous.
This leads to a bar fight, which Wolverine instigates. Spider-Man stands by and waits for the fight to end. Back in their booth, Logan gets to talking again and says that Spider-Man reminds him of his lieutenant in Wold War II.[6] This lieutenant saved himself for the woman he thought was the one, but when he finally found this woman he didn’t know how to please her and she left. When Spider-Man doesn’t pick up on what he means, Logan explains that it is a metaphore for the fight he just had, saying it wasn’t pointless because it prepares him for the ones that matter.
That’s when the man Logan beat in the fight comes barging back in with a shotgun and shoots Wolverine in the back of the head at point blank range. As Spider-Man subdues the shooter, Wolverine recovers and tries to attack the man with his claws out. Spider-Man holds Wolverine back, not willing to let him kill the man who just shot him and confident that Logan won’t hurt him because they are friends. Logan gets himself under control and thanks Spider-Man for stopping him. Noticing that it is after midnight he says they can go because his birthday is over.[7] After all this, Spider-Man asks why Logan brought him out on his birthday instead of one of the X-Men. Logan explains that most people he fought with knows what kind of guy he is and that he decided to go out with Spider-Man because the wall-crawler thinks that Logan wouldn’t have brought himself to kill the guy in the bar, because the wall-crawler is a good guy and is dumb enough to think Logan is too.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Wolverine
Continuity Notes
Wolverine is referring to the events of Amazing Spider-Man #555.
Wolverine used to know Spider-Man’s secret identity in Spider-Man Versus Wolverine #1. However his memory of Peter’s identity, along with virtually everyone else who knew his secret, had their memories erased by Mephisto in Amazing Spider-Man #545. Logan won’t learn Peter’s double identity again until New Avengers #51.
Spider-Man is talking about Lily Hollister, who is dating his best friend Harry Osborn. Lily kissed Peter in Amazing Spider-Man #573. Peter thinks he she is trying to make a move on him, but in reality — as we’ll learn in Amazing Spider-Man #586 — she was just preventing him from finding a cache of Goblin weapons she was using as Menace.
Since joining the X-Men in Giant-Size X-Men #1, Wolverine has consistantly made it known that he was romantically interested in Jean Grey even though she was regularly involved with their teammate Cyclops (Even marying him in X-Men (vol. 2) #30) At the time of this story, Jean Grey has been dead following the events of New X-Men #150. She will return from the grave again in Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #1-5.
The redhead in Spider-Man’s life is Mary Jane Watson, who Peter dated for years since Amazing Spider-Man #42 until she broke up with him in issue #545.
Thanks to Wolverine’s healing factor he has lived for a long time, as revealed in Origin #1-6, Logan was born in the 1880s. The first mention of his being active during World War II was detailed in Uncanny X-Men #268.
Wolverine’s actual age fluctuates because the Sliding Timescale makes him consistantly older as the Sliding TImescale slides forward. To figure out how old he was at in an older story like this you have to do the math backwards. As I write this, it is May 2020. Per the sliding timescale the Modern Age has existed for 15 years. This story takes place during year 12. According to Origins, Wolverine was born as early as 1882. That would make him 138 years old today and per the sliding timescale that would make him 135 at the time of this story. The formula for calculation Wolverine’s identity would work like this: (A - B) - (C - D) = X
A = The current year
B = Whatever year you decide Wolverine was born (it’s been pegged somewhere between 1882 and 1885 per Origin #2)
C = The current year of the Modern Age based on the Sliding TImescale
D = The year of the modern age Logan’s birthday celebration is being made.
X = How old Wolverine is from our perspective.
So in the calculation above, A = 2020 as that is the year I write all this. B = 1882, because I’d like to go for the earliest date. C = the current year of the Modern Age. As I write this, we’re in “Year Fifteen”. This comic was published in March 2009 part of “Year 12” so (2020 - 1882) - (15 -12) = 138 - 3 = 135
