Combat

Spider-Man has fallen out of a plane and crashed into the ocean. As he floats in the obsidian depths, he thinks about how he once photographed a war veteran. He talked about being injured so badly that he thought he had died. He remembered everything he saw around him with bemused disinterest because he believed he was already dead and gone to heaven. As a submarine approaches him, Spider-Man thinks how this experience is nothing like that.

He is woken up aboard the sub by the Queen, who tells him that he is going to die. She also grosses him out when she tells him that she has taken his essence and that he will live on through her children. She then sends the wall-crawler off to the next part of this seemingly endless gauntlet.

In the next room he is attacked by both Venom and Carnage. As he fights the two psychotic killers he thinks about it is his fault they exist.[1] Ultimately, Spider-Man manages to fight them off when he trips off the submarine’s klaxon. As the symbiotes have a weakness to sound, Spider-Man is able to escape them. In the next room, he is confronted by the Scarecrow, who is uninterested in fighting because he blames Spider-Man for killing one of his crows. He also finds Tombstone who asks Spider-Man to cave in his skull as he has come to the conclusion that his life is meaningless. Disturbed by both encounters, Spider-Man leaves them to their grief and continues on.

Exhausted after his ordeals, Spider-Man pushes on and in the next chamber, he finds Nitro wired into the submarine’s nuclear power source. Nitro also wants to end it all, telling him that once he got his powers he dies every time he blows himself up only to reform over and over again.[2] He asks Spider-Man if there is any escape from living a life of regret. This makes Peter think of his own regrets, when he let a burglar go away, a burglar that went on to murder his Uncle Ben.[3] Spider-Man tries to tell Nitro that he doesn’t need to commit suicide, offering to get Reed Richards to help him. These offers fall on deaf ears and Nitro makes himself explode one last time, enveloping the entire area in blinding light.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man

Continuity Notes

1. Spider-Man blames himself for unleashing Venom and Carnage upon the world. This is because he brought the Venom symbiote to Earth in Amazing Spider-Man #252. After he abandoned it in Amazing Spider-Man #258 it eventually bonded to Eddie Brock in issue #300. Venom later gave birth to the first Carnage symbiote in Amazing Spider-Man #345.

2. Nitro mentions how Tony Stark ruined him. However, this contradicts his origins, which states that he was forced into retirement as an electrical engineer. He was later given his powers by the Kree Lunatic Legion. There was no mention that Tony Stark had any involvement. See Captain Marvel #34.

3. Amazing Fantasy #15.

Topical References

• When Peter relates the story told to him by the war veteran, he specifically states that the vet fought in World War II. This should be considered a topical reference. As the Sliding Timescale continues to push forward it will become impossible for Peter Parker to have been alive to interview a World War II veteran.