Before the Done

A group of villains, all franchisees of Roderick Kingsley’s side-business, were attempting to rob the Diamond District when Spider-Man attacked. Possessed by the Venom symbiote, he brutally disarms Blaze and is about to maime him when the Avengers arrive on the scene. They order him to let go of Blaze, but he refuses and looks forward to fighting his former comrades.

Meanwhile, Blaze calls in to Kingsley to ask for help. Roderick isn’t concerned for his well being and contacts three of his other franchisees: Steeplejack, the Tumbler, and the Ringer. He orders them to take this opportunity to earn their keep, telling them to hand his take over to him, and only him, to avoid his money being taken by an impostor who has been posing as the Hobgoblin.

Back at the scene of the battle, Spider-Man refuses to stand down and battles the other Avengers. When Thor attempts to bring down lightning, Spider-Man is able to evade the attack thanks to his spider-sense, leaving Wolverine and Black Widow to take the brunt of the attack. He then begins trading blows with the thunder god, but is blasted from behind by both Spider-Woman and the Black Widow. His temper growing, Spider-Man contacts his Spiderlings and orders them to come help him destroy the Avengers. Afraid of their employer, the Spiderlings depart from Spider-Island Two in their spider-tanks unaware that the Goblin Knight is recording their crisis response measures. After recording to this information he reports back to the Goblin King, who orders the Knight to return to base while they prepare for the next phase of their plan.

At the Goblin Underground, both the Goblin King and Menace are impressed after Carlie Cooper was exposed to the Goblin Formula. This has not only transformed Carlie into a Goblin, but also apparently made her loyal to the Goblin Nation cause. Carlie is impressed with her transformation which has turned her skin green and given her large black eyes. When Carlie mentions how monsterous she looks in this new form the Goblin King decides to rechristen her as the Monster. The King then asks her to reveal who Spider-Man really is. However, the Monster refuses to reveal this secret without any quid pro quo and asks who the Goblin King really is. He insists that he is really Norman Osborn, but refuses to take off his make to prove it, saying that she hasn’t proved her loyalty.[1] He then decides that they should have a “coming out part” for their newest recruit.

Back in the Diamond District, the Avengers are out gunned by the arrival of the Spiderlings. This prompts Captain America to call for reinforcements. When Iron Man responds to the distress call, Captain America has him go looking for Flash Thompson instead, since Thompson’s loss of the symbiote means he is in danger as well. Searching emergency networks, Stark learns that Flash is at Parker Industries. There, Elias Wirtham and Flash are being treated by Sajani Jaffrey after they were beaten by Spider-Man. While Wirtham is expected to recover, Flash’s vitals are fading because he has been separated from his symbiote for too long and he will die if they aren’t reunited. Flash believes that he can take back control of his other if he could just get close enough. That’s when Iron Man arrives to lend a hand. After patching up Wirthham,[2] he suggests they also get Peter Parker to help with this situation.[3] Unfortunately, Sajani tried to contact him but is getting no answer.

Meanwhile, the battle continues to rage out of control, prompting Captain America to order police to clear the area.[4] The public’s opinions about Spider-Man quickly take a turn when it becomes known that he is fighting the Avengers and people on the street begin smashing the spider-bots they find.[5] At Spider-Island Two, the skeleton crew of Spiderlings are having a hard time keeping track of things because, on top of citizens attacking the spider-bots, something else is making them malfunction. This is caused by the Goblin Protocols installed on the network which is masking the activities of Menace and Monster.[6] The pair have tracked down the Tumbler, Ringer, and Steeplejack and attack the trio. When Monster helps take them down, Menace is pleased to see Carlie accepting her new role. After they leave, the Goblin Knight leaps down and stabs Steeplejack with his flaming sword. Watching this remotely is Roderick Kingsley who realizes that this is Phil Urich. Knowing that Kingsley is watching, the Goblin Knight tells him to surrender before they come after him.[7]

Back at the scene of the battle, Spider-Woman attempts to use her pheromones to calm Spider-Man, but this ploy doesn’t work. That’s when Tony Stark confronts the wall-crawler outside of his armor. This serves as a distraction for Flash Thompson — who is wearing Iron Man’s armor — to attack Spider-Man from behind. He tries to convince the symbiote to return to him, but the alien creature refuses because he keeps it docile with drugs.[8] As the symbiote rages on, Otto realizes that the alien creature is trying to influence him and begins tright to fight free of the creature. Octavius assumes that he can due this due to his superior intellect. However, he is unaware that he is actually being assisted by the spirit of Peter Parker, who has continued to live on despite Otto’s attempts to excise Parker from his mind.[9]

Peter Parker manages to force the symbiote to leave his body and with Spider-Man free, Flash quickly bonds with the alien becoming Agent Venom once again. Peter is revealed that Otto thinks he did this through his own will power, and that his survival is still a secret allowing Peter the time to try and reclaim his life again. Ever the schemer, Otto uses this development to claim that his uncharacteristic behavior was due to particles of the symbiote that still existed in his body began taking control of him and that they were activated the last time he encountered Agent Venom.[10] However, his fellow Avengers are speechless.

While at the Goblin Underground, the Goblin King contacts Roderick Kingsley. Kingsley has figured out that the Goblin has been posing as him in order to rip him off. He refuses to allow this to continue and the Goblin King announces that the War of the Goblins is about to begin. At that same moment, Jay Jameson and May Parker have come to the 18th Precinct to order Yuri Watanabe to release Mary Jane or else Jay will get his son the mayor to do something about it. Yuri releases Mary Jane to them, but warns them that she will be keeping a close eye on her and Peter Parker in order to find out what happened to her friend, Carlie Cooper. Once they are out of the police station, May asks Mary Jane what’s going on. Unfortunately, Mary Jane is exhausted and tells them she’ll explain everything later and leaves in a cab. However, instead of going home, she pays a visit to Peter. Otto sells her on the same lie he told the Avengers and is pleased when she buys it, figuring he has fooled them all.

However, the Avengers don’t buy what went down. However, when Flash tries to access the symbiote’s memories of when it was bonded to Spider-Man he discovers that there is some kind of interference that prevents him from seeing what was going on. When it’s recommended that Flash stay away from Spider-Man in the future, Thompson agrees and heads back for Philadelphia. The Avengers begin comparing notes and mention to Iron Man that they previously ran tests on Spider-Man and confirmed that he wasn’t a Skrull.[11] Since he wasn’t present at the time, Iron Man decides to take a look at the results of that test. However, he discovers that the primary records were erased. Checking his secret security systems, he discovers that Spider-Man was the one who erased the data.[12] This prompts Captain America to order the rest of the Avengers to bring in Spider-Man.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man, Agent Venom, Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Wolverine, Spider-Woman), Peter Parker, Sajani Jaffrey, Elias Wirtham, Yuri Watanabe, Mary Jane Watson, Aunt May, Jay Jameson, Goblin King, Goblin Knight, Menace, Monster, Hobgoblin, Blaze, Bruin, Devil-Spider, Steeplejack, Tumbler, Ringer

Continuity Notes

1. It is Norman Osborn. The reason why he refuses to take his mask off is because Osborn had plastic surgery done to his face to change his appearance. He has been secretly operating as Mason Banks, body guard to Liz Osborn, as we’ll learn in Superior Spider-Man #31.

2. Elias states that Tony Stark has known that he was Cardiac during the super-hero Civil War. This is because Stark considered Wirtham as a potential recruit into the Initiative. See Civil War: Battle Damage Report #1.

3. Iron Man also mentions how Peter Parker used to work for him. Tony recruited Peter to work with him in Amazing Spider-Man #529-531. Parker left Tony’s employ when he later rejected the Super-Human Registration Act in Civil War #5.

4. Cap mentions how Wolverine doesn’t have his healing factor anymore. Wolverine’s healing factor was shut down by a Microverse virus in Wolverine (vol. 6) #6. This will remain the status quo until the Return of Wolverine #1.

5. One of the bystanders mentions how the Avengers saved them from “those aliens”. This is a reference to the Infinity event in Infinity #1-6, Avengers (vol. 5) #18-23 and New Avengers (vol. 2) 9-12.

6. The Goblin King hacked Spider-Man’s spider-bots so they ignored anyone in a Goblin costume back in Superior Spider-Man #10.

7. Phil Urich used to be the Hobgoblin dating back to Amazing Spider-Man #649. When Kingsley discovered that Urich stole his identity, he tracked him down and forced him to pay a franchising fee, see Amazing Spider-Man #695-697. Urich was later outed and arrested, only to be saved by the Goblin Nation who made him their Goblin Knight in Superior Spider-Man #15-16.

8. When Flash joined Project Rebirth 2.0 and became Agent Venom, he was given drugs to keep the symbiote under control. See Amazing Spider-Man #654.

9. When Otto took over Peter Parker’s body in Amazing Spider-Man #698, part of Peter’s consciousness continued to live on as we saw in Superior Spider-Man #1. Otto became aware of this and attempted to destroy the Parker in issue #9. However, he merely submerged Parker deep in his mind and recently, Peter freed himself in issue #19.

10. This is a line of bullshit, but he is referring to when Spider-Man fought Agent Venom in Venom (vol. 2) #4.

11. The Avengers, suspicious of Spider-Man’s strange behavior, examined him in Superior Spider-Man #8, but missed the fact that he had two brain patterns.

12. Iron Man states that he installed an extra layer of security, one that only he knows about following his experiences during the Skrull invasion of Earth. This is a reference to Secret Invasion #1-8, when the Skrulls nearly conquered the planet by compromising all of the world’s Starktech.