Random Back Issues #33 - Spider-Girl #87

'Doohickey'? Mayday, please, the appropriate technical term is "dingus" What would your father say?

We're looking at the middle chapter of a three-parter today, where Spider-Girl gets mixed up in a fight between the the Fantastic Four's kids and Apox, the Omega Skrull. Think "Super-Skrull, but with the Power Cosmic".

So you've got Franklin Richards (as Psi-Lord), plus Kristoff (wearing a Dr. Doom faceplate), Alyce and Jake (Ben and Alicia's kids), and Torus (Johnny and Lyja's son, but he's got Namor's eyebrows, although I guess they're supposed to take after his mom). Apox lost last time (about 40 issues ago) because there was a device at the base of his skull that fed him energy, but as Mayday finds out, that flaw's been corrected.

The kids aren't doing much more than annoying Apox, who is there to kill the originals, but it's enough for Apox to signal his Skrull warship to put a force field around the HQ. He thinks it's just to keep anyone from interfering, but the Skrulls aren't complete dopes. It's actually an extermi-field, which absorbs solar energy and will eventually blow up the entire city.

The team has a plan, but Torus gets cocky and gets taken hostage as Apox goes tearing through the building. Franklin and May give chase and pass by a bunch of inactive robots that Reed projects his consciousness into. That seems like the sort of thing you'd see in Earth X, but I picked up some of that last week and Reed's just moping around in Doom's pants. Lame.

Franklin explains Reed's body was damaged by radiation from a villain's doomsday weapon in the Negative Zone, and that Sue has been keeping the tear in reality the weapon formed closed with a force field ever since. The villain isn't named, only that he's a 'cosmically-powered warlord from another dimension'. I'm assuming some from DeFalco's generally derided FF run, but I don't know who it would be.

Apox gets the information from Torus (from telepathy or hypnosis I'm not sure) and reaches the Negative Zone portal. Jake and Alyce (whose powers remind me of X-Ray from the U-Foes) slow him down enough for Franklin and Mayday to catch up and Franklin has him pinned, but Jake makes the same mistake Torus did and distracts Franklin where he loses focus and Apox flattens the lot of them. Jake gets blasted through at least five floors, and Alyce gets knocked clear out of the building and bounces off the extermi-field. Ouch.

May pulls out the classic Spider-move of leaping around and hitting Apox from every angle really fast and. . . it doesn't work. Apox swats her (although he compliments her as the only one who attacked him like a warrior), and rips open the doorway to the portal while May barely keeps Franklin and Torus from being sucked in. Next issue, she charges in alone after Apox to try and stop him.

For a Tom DeFalco book, there is surprisingly only one subplot mentioned in the issue (if we ignore Mayday's long-established crush on Franklin Richards). Normie Osborn is running Oscorp and telling his designers to work on building some weapons. Glider-like weapons. He's being vaguely threatening about it, too. Normie had bonded with the Venom symbiote recently, and so the implication is the symbiote is influencing him. I think there ended up being a swerve there, that Normie's just trying to be focused and confident, but not evil.

[10th longbox, 90th comic. Spider-Girl #87, by Tom DeFalco (writer), Ron Frenz (writer/penciler), Sal Buscema (inker/finishes), Gotham (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)]