Dig This

Spider-Man has arrived at the Abyss club to stop a gamma-spawned created calling itself Digger from trashing the place. Digger tries to smash the wall-crawler with one of the building’s support pillars but he easily evades the attacks. As the two battle, Spider-Man quickly determines that Digger’s green skin isn’t for show, suspecting that the monster is powered by gamma radiation. After taking two powerful blows, Spider-Man discovers that Digger is gone. Not only that, but the police have arrived including Lieutenant William Lamont. Comparing notes with Lamont, Spider-Man says that Digger didn’t know who he was, spoke like someone from the 1950s, and was ranting and raving about someplace called the Starlight Club. William tells him that this is similar to other eyewitnesses and tells the wall-crawler that the Starlight Club was very popular in the 1950s and had closed down fifteen years ago. This also follows the evidence they found at the first crime scene where they found Digger’s handprint and forensics determined each finger belongs to a different mobster who disappeared in 1957.[1] They are soon interrupted by a tall man in a suit who comes to tell Spider-Man that his boss, mobster Morris Forelli has asked for the wall-crawler to meet with him.

Spider-Man soon finds himself in the mansion of Morris Forelli, where the aging mobster tells Spider-Man that this Digger creature has been attacking his businesses and that he wants to hire Spider-Man as a bodyguard. At first, Spider-Man refuses to do so, but that’s when Forelli points out that he’d protect him from Digger anyway and he’s offering to pay the wall-crawler 10 grand a day, plus expenses, for his time. Since he’s not going to doing anything illegal, Spider-Man decides to take him up on the offer, as long as he answers one question: Why Digger is coming after him. Morris knows what the police has found thanks to his sources and tells Spider-Man how the mobsters, the so-called Vegas Thirteen, went missing in the 50s but he doesn’t know why.[2] Knowing that Morris is lying, Spider-Man tells him that the deal is off until Forelli tells the truth. Forelli promises Spider-Man to give him everything he needs the following day. He also asks Spider-Man that he must also promise to protect his family, introducing him to his daughter Lynne. Lynne doesn’t think Spider-Man is really there to protect them because she reads the Daily Bugle. Morelli then heads off to bed, but not before giving Spider-Man a mobile device so they can keep in regular contact.[3]

The next day, Digger is wandering the sewers trying to get his thoughts together, he decides that he needs to come up with a plan on how to deal with Forelli. He ends up finding scraps of old newspapers in the murky waters and begins reading them to catch up on what has happened since the 1950s and decides that the world has gone mad.[4] At that same, Peter Parker is giving a lecture to his class about the scientific process, observation, analysis, and replication. While Digger comes up with his revenge scheme, Peter Parker is talking to Mary Jane about the ethics of accepting money from Morris Forelli. He tells her that he needs the money if they’re going to be able to afford an apartment together and wants to give her a home that is worthwhile. Mary Jane tells Peter that it doesn’t matter where they live because all she wants is him. That’s when Peter gets a text from Forelli and has to go out as Spider-Man. Soon, the web-slinger arrives at Pier Seven on Staten Island. There he is shown the wreckage where a boat belonging to Forelli was docked. It was destroyed by Digger who ripped the cargo vessel apart with his bare hands. The entire crew, innocent people from Italy, had no idea that what they were carrying and were innocent victims of Digger’s rampage. He then admits that he doesn’t really care what happens to him as long as innocent people, like his daughter, are not killed in the process and decides to tell Spider-Man the whole truth about Digger and his connection to the Vegas Thirteen. Soon, Spider-Man finds himself being flown to Las Vegas on one of Forelli’s private jets. As he reads the files on the members of the Vegas Thirteen, the flight attendant tires to offer him her sexual services, prompting the web-slinger to weave a wall of webbing to keep her away from him.

In a rented car, Peter Parker drives out to the site where Morelli claims that the Vegas Thirteen were buried. He’s surprised to find a mob of people protesting the military’s gamma bomb testing in the area. When one of the hippie protestors sees Peter’s map, he says the X marks the spot where they dropped the first bomb. That evening, Peter returns to the site as Spider-Man and sneaks over the fence put up by the military. Then, after stealing a radiation suit, the web-slinger follows a group of scientists out to the crater of the gamma bomb test to examine the results of the explosion. Along the way, he learns that the test site used to be a chemical dumping ground. They also found traces of bullets and human bodies. Amazingly, they found a piece of irradiated flesh that reconstituted itself without the help of a heart or circulatory system. This puts it all together for Spider-Man, that Digger is the reanimated corpses of the death mobsters. He then begins to wonder how he’s going to stop an immortal gamma-irradiated composite corpse with the strength of a Hulk.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man, Digger, Mary Jane Watson, William Lamont, Morris Forelli, Lynne Forelli, Joey Joey Gastone

Continuity Notes

1. Digger is an amalgam of the Vegas Thirteen, mobsters who were murdered in 1957 and buried in a mass grave. They were brought back to this mockery of life by a gamma bomb explosion. This was all detailed last issue.

2. Morris Forelli talks about the Vegas Thirteen as though he knows them personally. However, as the Sliding TImescale pushes the Modern Age forward it becomes increasingly difficult to explain how Forelli managed to still be alive in the modern age without prolonging his lifespan through artificial means. Marvel hasn’t provided an official explanation, but I made my take on it in the summary for last issue.

3. Forelli specifically gives Spider-Man a pager. This should be considered a topical reference per the Sliding Timescale of Earth-616 as pagers are an obsolete technology.

4. Things Digger reads about: The Vietnam War, the evolution of home entertainment (cassettes, CDs, DVDs, etc.), the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, Ronald Reagan’s election as president, a priest sex scandal, and the musician Madonna. All of these references should be considered topical references per the Sliding TImescale. His statement that it has been forty-six years since the death of the Vegas Thirteen should also be considered topical as it measures the length of time between 1957 and 2003, the year this comic was published.