Amazing Spider-Man #700.5
Save the Universe
Spider-Man collapses on his bed hoping to get a good nights sleep. However, not long after his head hits the pillow he is woken up by the Human Torch who has come to get Spider-Man’s help. He says that Mister Fantastic is in trouble and shows him a device that can collapse the entire universe. Spider-Man tells Johnny to back up and start from the beginning.
Johnny says it all started last night when he was woken up by a version of the Thing from the future.[1] This future version of the Thing explains that in his timeline Reed Richards accidentally activates the Calvin Mechanism causing something bad to happen. He hands off the device to the Torch before returning to his own time, without explaining things any further. That’s when the rest of the Fantastic Four arrive having tracked the Calvin Device. Johnny fears that something bad will happen and flees before Reed can take the device as he needs to keep it away from him until sundown.
Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four track Johnny down to Mary Jane’s house, as he is trying to score points with her by hiding out. The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man convince Johnny to let them all wait until sundown together. When the time elapses, Spider-Man opens the bag to look at the device and finds a note from the future Ben Grimm. As it turns out it was all a prank played by the Thing in the future and Spider-Man is furious that he wasted an entire day he could have been sleeping.
That evening, as Spider-Man goes to bed, the Thing is reading in bed when the future Johnny Storm arrives to try and play the same prank that the Thing did to his youngerself. However, this time it falls flat since the Thing already knows this is all a prank.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Fantastic Four (Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, Thing), Mary Jane Watson
Continuity Notes
The Unofficial Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe designates the future this version of the Thing comes from as reality-14257.
What Would Spider-Man Do?
Spider-Man rushes a young man to the hospital and asks for a doctor. When the kid is carted away, Spider-Man returns home. There, Mary Jane returns home and asks Peter what’s wrong. He tells her that a kid got shot because of him. He tells her how earlier he was stopping a bank robbery when the kid stopped one of them from shooting Spider-Man in the back and got shot for his trouble. Despite Mary Jane’s assurances, Peter blames himself.
He later goes to the hospital, out of costume, to check on the kid who is on life support. Peter tells the comatose boy about how he blames himself for what happened. That’s when the boy’s parents come in and demand to know who he is. Peter explains he was on the scene and they go on a tirade about how this is all Spider-Man’s fault.
Peter waits outside until the boy’s parents tell him that their son, Tommy, wants to talk to him. Tommy reveals that he was conscious the whole time and knows that Peter is really Spider-Man. He tells Parker not to blame himself saying that he was living by Spider-Man’s example and that he had been a fan of the wall-crawler since he first saw him when he was six years old and saw him save a little girl from being hit by a bus. Since then he has always asked himself what Spider-Man would do. Suddenly, the boy goes into cardiac arrest prompting doctors to come rushing in.
Tommy doesn’t make it and Peter attends the funeral. Tommy’s parents see him and tell him that they know he is Peter Parker, a photographer for the Daily Bugle, as their son told them before he died. The hand him an envelope and tells him to give it to Spider-Man and tell him that they no longer blame Spider-Man for their son’s death. Peter opens the envelope and is touched to see a Spider-Man comic book written by Tommy when he was six years old. It tells the story of Tommy becoming Spider-Man’s sidekick and learning from his example. Peter is touched and thank Tommy, saying that he owes the boy one.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Mary Jane Watson
