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Marvel Knights Spider-man Issue 19a

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Synopsis:

Submitted by: WallCrawler on Mar 06, 2007

Last edited on: Mar 09, 2007

As the second installment of "The Other" opens, Mary Jane Watson Parker sits at her dressing room vanity reading about the exploits of her husband, Spider-man, in J. Jonah Jameson's editorial that answers the burning question from the first part of this story arc (Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man #1.)

The headline merely reads "HE'S CRAZY!"

Standing behind her is a tall dark man with long black hair and a long black coat...

"I don't believe it. This can't be happening. It's like every time I turn around, there's some new horror."

If only you knew, MJ.

A fellow thespian enters the room to borrow the paper when MJ's done, only to realize she won't get the opportunity as MJ crumples it up. Apparently the man has vanished into thin air in the blink of an eye. Mary Jane starts to complain about her husband - about why he does these kinds of things. Trying to help, her colleague asks "'HE' who?"

Knowing that she can't confide in anyone about this, MJ merely retorts "No one you know."

As she leaves to take her mark on stage, we see that the man hasn't vanished but is only hanging from the ceiling of the dressing room in much the same manner that our hero is able to.

A flash-back sequence ensues, of MJ asking Steve "Captain America" Rogers why her husband - why ANY of them do what they do. They are playing pool, ostensibly in the Avenger's Tower Rec room. MJ brings up the musical "Man of La Mancha" (which Steve hasn't seen - he's "not much for musicals") - in which a woman sings a song to Don Quixote "Why do you do the things you do?" She feels the same way with her husband - he doesn't get paid to do it, people aren't asking him to do it...

Steve answers her: "I suppose it's a sort of... a calling. Serving a higher purpose. Priests, Nuns... they have to give up things up to do what they do."

"Look... you're not priests and nuns. You're Captain America and my husband is Spider-man..."

Just then, Peter Parker, her husband, Spider-man, enters the conversation: "What's going on?"

He then makes some thinly veiled accusations against both his wife and Steve - how he's "making time with his wife" and how she could "do a lot worse." That she "could stay here at Stark Towers..."

She asks why she wouldn't stay here with him, and as he pulls on his mask and shoots a webline out the window, he retorts "Good question" and swings away.

Back in the present, while the actors are taking their curtain-call, we learn that MJ may have an over-zealous fan. One who has made it to fifteen performances in a month so far. They are interrupted by "Murray", another actor, calling everyone in to see "spider-man, maybe getting himself killed!" on TV.

We learn our hero is once again fighting Tracer and that our villain has "some kind of flying platform with a bomb under it!" He's apparently holding the city hostage for ransom. As two guys start to argue about that amount, MJ gets frustrated that the volume is down and storms out.

On her way out the door, she encounters her biggest fan as well as another who wants an autograph, who, when rebuffed calls her a name. Her biggest fan "Johnny" gets mad at the second, and pummels him without mercy. He turns to the man next to him to see if he's "got anything to say, smart guy?"

The man calmly tells him his name is Morlun, not "smart guy" and points him in the direction MJ headed.

Meanwhile, MJ runs towards a bar where they are watching the Yankees, and asks them to change the channel on the pretenses of an emergency. She buys the guys a round and they change the channel. We join the news crew as they cover the battle high above the East River. Spider-man relieves Tracer of his gun, and at that moment Iron Man appears on the scene, "apparently to aid Spider-man in apprehending Tracer."

This alleviates Mary Jane's anxiety... for a short time, until Iron Man begins to attack Spider-man! He gets hit with an energy blast from Iron Man's armor square in the back. He regains his focus only to narrowly grab onto Tracer's glider, but is again accosted by Iron Man, who tells him that he's sorry, that Tracer is somehow controlling his suit. Iron Man tells him to break free of his grip, but our hero is too weak to do so, and then the news chopper is told to break it's coverage by the police helicopters. MJ is dismayed by this, and the guys in the bar ask to put the Yankees back on.

"Can I buy you a drink, pretty lady?" Just then "Johnny," MJ's biggest fan, enters the bar.

MJ tries to be nice, but tells him her obligation to him ends when the curtain goes down. As she turns to leave, he gets angry, and grabs her arm. The bartender tries to help, but is interrupted by the sound of shattering glass and the explosion of a bullet from it's chamber. "Johnny" is holding out a gun, and commands that everyone keep their hands up. He asks what's on draft, but then is taken out by a pool cue to the back of the neck. MJ presses the advantage, continuing to hit him until he's unconscious.

Just then one of the denizens of the bar shouts "Holy cow! Spider-man's dead for sure now!"

Apparently the glider that Tracer has been riding has crashed, but no one can tell who was on it or if they were okay afterward. An argument ensues between the regulars at the bar on how the one guy couldn't tell the difference between Iron Man and Spider-man, and MJ runs out again, leaving her biggest fan an unconscious lump on the floor of the bar.

She calls for a taxi which screeches to a halt as Morlun steps out in front of it. He convinces the cabbie he's not off duty by telling him he's talking to "a man who returned from the dead to kill Spider-man."

Back at Avenger's Tower, Peter and MJ lie about how boring their evenings were, but neither buy it. MJ laments about how she was hoping it would be different - that she'd have others to turn to now that they were living with the Avengers, how there's no "SuperHero wives anonymous" support group to join.

She talks about how sloppy he was in today's ordeal, and how she thinks it's "survivor's guilt" for being the one to live while his Uncle Ben died - how he would "run out of web fluid at the worst moment" but never installed a gauge that would tell him when that would happen. "Why risk running out again?" she asks.

So he'll keep pushing himself, pressing his luck, taking chances, getting sloppier, until he's with his Uncle again, she continues. "You want to die." She says.

"You're wrong." He replies. He picks up a piece of paper. "Because I read this. And I didn't want to believe it." She reads the paper, he says he's scared, never been so...

And they embrace.