Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine #2
Another Fine Mess Part Two
After being trapped in the distant past, Spider-Man and Wolverine have found themselves sent to the distant future. It is a future where humanity has fallen and a new race of ape-men rule the Earth scrounging knowledge from the ruins of the world that came before them.
Spider-Man has spent his time teaching the children of this world the principals of science. Meanwhile, one of the locals — a ape-man named Mikal — continues to search for items of power from the old world that may be able to return Spider-Man and Wolverine to their proper era. Unfortunately, everything they find is broken, including a Cosmic Cube that no longer harnesses its reality-altering power. That’s when he hears an alarm bell that sounds familiar and goes out to see what the cause is. It turns out to be another world-destroying threat.
Wolverine on the other hand is worshiped as a god and he has barricaded himself in a building where he spends his day in constant death matches with the robots that reside there. Spider-Man eventually pays him a visit to try and convince Logan to come out of his exile, as he could be a lot of help since the people of this world worship him. Logan refuses, but Peter points out that these people exist because he taught their distant ancestors how to survive the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. With the world about to end again, Spider-Man asks Logan for his help. Eventually, Peter realizes that he’s not getting through to Logan and leaves, ignoring his friend’s offer of a drink.[1]
When Spider-Man returns to his schoolhouse and wonders why he continues to bother with Wolverine. When he goes to enter his teacher’s lounge his spider-sense goes off and he narrowly avoids getting blasted by the Orb, who is also somehow in this era. The Orb demands to know where the diamonds he was trying to steal went because they are the reason they find themselves being bounced back and forth through time. Before the Orb can explain himself any further a portal opens from behind him and someone pulls him into it. Spider-Man tries to grab the Orb, but the portal closes before he can. That’s when Mikla contacts Spider-Man and tells him that his minors have found something. Rushing to the dig site, Spider-Man is surprised to see that they have uncovered the X-Men’s headquarters. There Spider-Man finds a case with a glowing phoenix symbol on the lid. Opening it up, he discovers that what is inside could save them all, but to use it someone has to die.
Spider-Man heads off to tell the elders what he has found when suddenly his spider-sense goes wild. Looking up in the sky he sees that Doom the Living Planet has arrived. He claims the planet for his own and launches armies of robotic insect drones to take control of the world. Spider-Man races back to get the device from the box. It is a gun with a single bullet that contains the Phoenix Force within it. However, after Spider-Man loads the weapon he is knocked out by Wolverine. Logan knows what he has to do and leaves to use the Phoenix Gun against Doom the Living Planet. As he leaves he is unaware that he is being watched a previously unseen gang. Their leader, whose baseball bat and teeth are encrusted with the same time travel diamonds that put Spider-Man and Wolverine in this predicament, is getting bored watching the two heroes bicker with each other and wants to kill them and get it over with.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Wolverine, Orb, Devil Dinosaur, (unidentified) Czar, Big Murder,
Continuity Notes
Wolverine states that he had a brother that tried to kill him. Actually, he has two half-brothers. One is John Hawlett, Jr. However John-John died before Logan was bored as explained in Origin #2. His other half-brother was Dog Logan, who we first saw in Origin #1. Dog Logan will live on into the modern age as we’ll see in issue #6 of this series.
