Dark Reign: Sinister Spider-Man #2
We Need a Hero
Venom has framed mayor J. Jonah Jameson for murdering a stripper by dumping her dead body in his bedroom at Gracie Mansion. As expected, the discovery has turned the incident into a media circus. Jameson, true to form, is furious and is trying everything he can do to damage control as the NYPD collects evidence from the crime scene. Police Chief Ibanez is in the middle of assuring Jameson they’ll try and be as professional as possible when one of the detective points out something big came crashing in through the window, suggesting that whatever broke the window planted the body and that it was done with someone with superpowers. Jameson isn’t overly impressed with this obvious deduction.
Meanwhile, Venom is passing the time waiting for some contacts by eating squirrels in the park. Under the assumed alias of Kilgore Trout, Gargan meets with a bomb making expert named Ham and his boss, Red, who is in charge of the Rolling Sevens gang who control the drug trade in Harlem. He has hired them for a job and gives Red a bank card that has quarter of a million dollars in a bank account in the Grand Cayman Islands. Gargan thinks to himself how he sold all of the old suits of Iron Man armor that Norman Osborn had recently inherited.[1] He tells Red and Ham that he wants a hit taken out on the Park Avenue Players. This however, is all so later — when he attacks the Park Avenue Players as Venom — Gargan can tell them that they were ratted out by the Rolling Sevens. Not only does this turn out to be a significant drug bust, but it will also ensure that there is a gang war. He then can’t wait to see how Jameson handles this.
Sure enough, there is a full blown gang war going on four days later, leaving J. Jonah Jameson wondering what officials need to do to get things back under control. Meanwhile, Doctor Shep Gunderson pauses in the subway to look at a photo of the new Avengers and wonders if they are aware of the cancer in their ranks. As the Redeemer, he meets with villains that have been maimed by Venom in his capacity as Norman Osborn’s Spider-Man. It is a therapy session and he has the Hippo talk first. The anthropomorphic animal explains that he was just an ordinary hippo in the zoo when he was hyper-evolved by the High Evolutionary. Suddenly, he found himself wanting material possessions but having no means of getting a normal job he started robbing banks until Spider-Man stopped him by biting his leg off. General Wolfram understands the Hippo’s pains since he had his arm eaten by Spider-Man as well. He then tries to tell everyone how he was a Nazi scientist during the war when the Redeemer reminds him that he’s actually just a normal man in a wolf costume.
When he tries to get Eleven to talk, all she wants to talk about is how she wants to shatter Spider-Man’s bones. He moves on to Dementoid, who explains that he invented the Dementoid Gel which transformed him into his current form. He was able to drive people mad with a touch until he met Spider-Man who appeared to be immune to his powers and ate one of his tentacles. That’s when Doctor Everything, who is allegedly omnipotent, suggests that Spider-Man must have already been insane. When they ask how he couldn’t see that Spider-Man was going to eat his arm, Doctor Everything explains that he never encountered Spider-Man before and removed his own arm so that he could join this support group in order to learn what it is like to be human again. This prompts Redeemer she show them all a big surprise, he has purchased a number of cybernetic limbs so that his group are fully able to help on his mission to redeem Spider-Man.
Meanwhile, J. Jonah Jameson has come to Avengers Tower to meet with Norman Osborn.[2] Jameson is reluctant to come out and say it, but eventually asks Osborn to have one of his Avengers to help him with his crime problem. Although Jonah suggests Ms. Marvel, Norman Osborn has a different idea. Osborn chooses his Spider-Man to be the one working with the mayor’s office in order to keep Gargan out of trouble. Enduring a press conference with Jameson, Mac thinks about how he is going to kill the mayor by the time this is all over.
Recurring Characters
Venom, Redeemers (Redeemer, Dementoid, Doctor Everything, Eleven, General Wolfram, Hippo), J. Jonah Jameson, Norman Osborn, High Evolutionary (flashback)
Continuity Notes
Norman Osborn was hailed as a hero after killing Veranke, the Skrulls queen who staged an invasion of Earth in Secret Invasion #7. From here, Norman was put in charge of SHIELD (which he rennamed HAMMER) and formed his own team of Avengers taking over Avengers Tower in Dark Avengers #1, giving him access to all the suits of armor originally kept there by Tony Stark.
Jonah mentions how his former newspaper, the Daily Bugle, had published negative things about Jameson. The facts about this:
For years, J. Jonah Jameson was the publisher of the Daily Bugle until he suffered a heart attack in Amazing Spider-Man #546, forcing his wife to sell the paper to Dexter Bennett, who rebranded the paper as the DB! in Amazing Spider-Man #548. Jameson subsequently got elected as mayor of New York in Amazing Spider-Man #529.
The “bad press” is in reference to the times that the Bugle outed Norman Osborn as the Green Goblin on two different occasions. The first time was when Ben Urich published his book “Dynasty of Evil” in Spider-Man: Legacy of Evil #1. Norman purchase the Daily Bugle in Spectacular Spider-Man #249 strictly to have that revelation retracted.
The second time Osborn was outed at the Goblin was in The Pulse #1-5. More recently, Dexter Bennett — the current published of the DB! — retracted that revelation as well in Amazing Spider-Man #568.
