Daredevil Villains #80: Bullet
DAREDEVIL #250-251 (January/February 1988)
“Boom!” / “Save the Planet”
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Penciller: John Romita Jr
Inker: Al Williamson
Colourist: Max Scheele
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Ralph Macchio
It’s taken over a year, but at long last Ann Nocenti is joined on the book by a regular penciller. John Romita Jr will be with us until issue #282, and this is where Nocenti’s run really kicks up a gear.
Romita was an established name by this point – he’d already had runs on Iron Man, Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men. However, 1987 had seen him take a career detour to draw the first six issues of Star Brand. In a 2017 interview, Romita essentially says that this was an unhappy experience, that he was thinking of quitting comics, and that he was talked into taking the Daredevil assignment by an offer of more creative input. Some of what Romita says in that interview doesn’t seem quite right – he talks as if Ann Nocenti was also new to the book, and says that Al Williamson was hired at his request, when he’d been inking the book on and off for a while already. But Romita’s central point, that his run on Daredevil was where he really had the opportunity to come into his own as a creator, is hard to argue with.
It’s not just that Romita’s art in this run is good, though he was certainly at his best around this time. He’s good in a way that complements Nocenti’s style – he gives the stories weight, he can play it straight when required, but he also has a degree of abstraction that matches the slightly distanced, stylised elements in Nocenti’s writing. There’s a dreamlike quality to some of the Nocenti/Romita issues that works to their advantage. By the end of Romita’s run on the book, Daredevil will have gone slowly mad.
The art isn’t the only thing that changes at this point. For most of her first year, Nocenti focussed on one-off villains; now we get a string of recurring ones. That started with Bushwacker in the previous arc, and when she does the traditional “hero fights all his villains at once” story in a few months time, she starts with him and ignores everyone who came before. We’re into a new phase.
The first Nocenti/Romita creation is Bullet. He makes his debut as part of the Kelco storyline, which started in issues #248-249. Kelco are an evil chemical corporation, and their dumped chemicals have cost a young boy his sight. An environmental group, Save The Planet, approaches Matt’s law clinic for help against them. But behind Kelco is the Kingpin, who’s still trying to finish off the job from “Born Again”. He’s engineering this conflict in order to break Matt’s spirit and his faith in the law. The idea is for the Kingpin to prove that he can win by a combination of money and corruption, and to enrage Matt by hiring Foggy to represent Kelco. Foggy doesn’t know about the Kingpin’s involvement, and he’s perfectly comfortable with arguing Kelco’s case.
Bullet is a US government agent who gets loaned out to the Kingpin as a hired gun by a corrupt general. When we first meet Bullet, he’s receiving a briefing from a very nervous general, who tries to sell him on the idea that he’s protecting American values against subversive environmentalists. So far, so Nuke. The plan is for a fake terrorist to frame Save The Planet and for Bullet to arrest him. The general is clearly expecting Bullet to have a problem with this – which suggests that up to now he’s been doing basically legitimate black ops work. But Bullet couldn’t care less. He does care about the fact that there are armed guards keeping an eye on the meeting from behind a two-way mirror, and he warns the general not to hide things from him, but that’s about it. He’s a bullet – you fire him at the problem.
This is basically Bullet’s thing. He’s not evil, so much as completely amoral. He simply doesn’t care about the justifications for anything, and sees himself as a cynical realist. In the context of Nocenti’s story, he represents someone who’s already embraced a complete lack of faith in the system, and a realpolitik worldview where justice is something for the rubes. And on the surface, at least, Bullet differs from most of Nocenti’s creations by seeming completely sane. There are hints of things going on beneath the surface, and we’ll come to that, but Bullet is a Nocenti villain who could get by in the day to day world. In his mind, at least, he has no dogma to drive him.
Naturally, the plan to frame the environmentalists goes awry when Matt gets in the way – and in the course of this, we also learn that Bullet can shrug off charging head first into a metal door. Matt quickly figures out the scam, but since Bullet is a genuine government agent, Matt allows him to “arrest” the fake terrorist. In issue #251, Bullet frames some more campaigners, all while thinking to himself that the world could use a few less humans in it. Daredevil catches up to him, beats him, and turns him over to the police – and of course he’s released by the end of the issue. From the Kingpin’s point of view, this is Bullet’s purpose in the story; he’s there to aggravate Daredevil by being indifferent to morality and above the law
But Bullet also has another side. His son Lance is a paranoid obsessive who’s convinced that the end of the world is coming. Lance looks about ten, but lives alone in Hell’s Kitchen – Bullet apparently has his own apartment nearby, and resists Lance’s cheerful pleas for daddy to come and live with him, claiming that “I can’t live here, I’d go buggy”. Lance, meanwhile, has turned the apartment into a makeshift fallout shelter and is stockpiling tinned goods.
Bullet is not exactly father of the year, then. He’s vaguely concerned about Lance’s fallout shelter obsession but doesn’t really do anything about it. He does drop by with supplies, though, and when he and Lance are together, Bullet genuinely does seem to love the kid, even as he’s exasperated by Lance’s eccentricities. We’ll see in future stories that he defends Lance fiercely from any threat. He seems to have convinced himself that Lance is just going through a phase and that everything else about their relationship is basically normal. On one reading, Bullet is a distant father who sincerely loves his child and thinks he’s showing it appropriately. On another, Bullet knows that he can’t cope with Lance, knows that he’s dangerous when he loses his temper, and is torn between keeping his distance and trying to support Lance. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
As for Lance’s mother, when she eventually appears in issue #291, she seems to have no interest in the boy at all. But Bullet and Lance’s relationship feels entirely genuine and gives him a redeeming virtue of a very warped sort.
As a fighter, Bullet is just a big durable guy who’s faster than you’d think and charges headlong at his targets. Matt claims that he wouldn’t survive a direct hit. If we were going solely by powers, Bullet would be a budget Rhino. But Romita gives him a great design – a hefty guy in a black suit and mask with a white line running down it that doesn’t look quite standard for the genre. It’s the material with Lance that really humanises him, though, and explains why he comes back. It’s hard to pin down quite why it works – the heartless villain who loves his son is a cliche, but somehow there’s more to it in Bullet’s case, perhaps because of his general cynicism. Lance isn’t just a typical weak spot; he undermines Bullet’s outward persona more generally.
Nocenti seems to have liked Bullet, as he comes back again for her final issue. After Nocenti’s run, he’ll bounce around the Marvel Universe a bit, and eventually gets brought back as more of a supporting character by Chip Zdarsky. While he’s never been a major villain, people have found a role for him. That makes sense – Nocenti’s run is full of high-concept characters, many of whom wouldn’t quite make sense outside the context of their original story, but Bullet has a fairly portable concept (he’s a cynical hired gun) and a unique personality hook (his relationship with Lance). He’s the most traditional villain Nocenti has created to date, yet somehow he feels different.
“What if Nuke was an actual character.”
Possibly the Most Nocenti character in the run, even more so than Mary. You don’t have to be a bad person to do bad things, and loving your family doesn’t absolve you of your choices.
Bullet is just a guy who works for the government. He does what he’s told. Sometimes we even get hints that he feels bad about it, but at the end of the day, he has a son to keep buying tinned goods for.
He’s a great foil for Matt. Matt also used to have a day job embedded in a corrupt system, which he justified to himself in his own way. His best friend used to be DA. He has two exes who kill people for money. What moral high horse does Matt have to tell Bullet he’s wrong?
The untouchability is also great. The Kingpin gets his immunity through corruption, the people he bribes are not supposed to take the money. Bullet’s immunity is not actually illegal in the same way; there is no paper trail that will lead to his getting what he’s due. To deal with the Bullets of the world you need to deal with the system itself.
Future writers will not always get the point. Bendis had Bullet lined up as a generic mob boss in one story, which I think is a complete misreading. Bullet would never take a job without a pension.
Rubbish name, though.
“But Bullet and Lance’s relationship feels entirely genuine and gives him a redeeming virtue of a very warped sort.”
Nocenti played with that. For example, in issue 259, when Typhoid Mary telekinetically threatens Lance with a knife, he surrenders and offers to do whatever she wants. But when she offers to hire him to beat up Daredevil and flirts with him, he chats with her while she still had the knife telekinetically pointed at Lance.
Nocenti depicts Lance’s mental health issues as starting after a teacher taught a lesson about nuclear war. Because mental illness is that simple. (To be fair, I suppose it’s possible Lance had some sort of mental health issues before that and he merely FIXATED on nuclear war instead of getting mugged or something.)
Lance was seemingly killed by Bullseye in Old Man Logan. but Zdarsky forgot about that in 2020 and had Bullet working with Bullseye with no signs of friction between them. When that was pointed out to Zdarsky ,in 2023 he revealed that Bullet faked Lance’s death and used Bullet and Lance as supporting characters in his Daredevil run. (it was Glob that confirmed Lance’s death. Don’t trust Glob to confirm someone’s dead.)
The villain Overrider, who fought Captain America and Wolverine, also had a son with an obsession with nuclear war. Nuclear war was a common subject in the 1980s. But it feels weird considering the sliding timeline- people rarely worried about it after 1991.
The general on the Kingpin’s payroll doesn’t seem to be Haywerth ,who was on the Kingpin;s payroll during Born Again. How many generals does the Kingpin have on his payroll?
@Skippy- Ed Brisson had Bullet working with another Nocenti villain called Shotgun, so I guess the two names work if they’re partners.
Gosh, I hated Bullet with a burning passion, not least because of his influence on Lance.
Which I suppose was the point.
Zdarsky seems to have made good use of him, though.
Romita Jr and Williamson made a much better art team than Romita Jr and Dan Green.
@Luis Dantas- What’s wrong with Bullet raising Lance? Deadpool was been raising Ellie and that’s worked out well so far. It’s not like Wade got Ellie trapped inside a black hole as a result of his recklessness and stupidity. Um, never mind.
Nocenti’s “it’s all on the surface” style of writing reminds me of Deniz Camp’s work on Martian Manhunter and Assorted Crisis Events. Nothing really falls into subtext with them.
Kind of the opposite of writers like Grant Morrison, who frequently elides events and buries themes.
I wonder if Tom King fits into the Nocenti/Camp group or if he leaves too many ambiguities in his work.
If his Mister Miracle series is a proper sample, @Thom H., I would think that Tom King is something of a meta-commentator. His runs probably are not even meant to be in continuity.
I always read Lance’s fixation on nuclear war as tied to his relationship with Bullet. In Bullet’s debut two-parter when Bullet gets upset at Lance, Lance asks if his father is going to “explode.”
Thematically, if Bullet is a black ops type, he could be read as part of the same system that could bring about the nuclear war Lance fears.
There’s also the sequence in #251 in which Bullet pats Lance on the head with a hand still coated in toxic waste from the Kelco job. It’s an especially on-the-nose metaphor for the way Bullet’s cynical willingness to do the dirty work of a corrupt system subtly hurts his son and risks the future more generally.
As it turns out, Frank Miller’s first run ends with #191 and Nocenti’s ends with #291.
Probably a coincidence, but I can hardly be expected to reject the thought that Ann Nocenti may have meant so. Frank Miller had Hank, Liz and Chuckie Jurgens in #191 (their only appearance), and Nocenti has Bullet, his presumed former wife and Lance in #291. Depending on one’s perspective, one trio may be perceived as a parody or logical commentary on the other.
Myself, when I first read #191 I simply assumed we were to find Hank and Liz to be remarkably short-sighted. You can restrict tv watching, but at some point you will have to mention Vietnam and Iran or else attempt to live in Neverland and to bring your son with you.
Apparently at least one letter writer took them more seriously than I did.
No idea on what Frank Miller thought of the Jungens family. I wonder if he ever spoke on the matter.
Al Williamson was the best inker JR Jr ever had. The contrasts and connections between his spotted blacks and thin lines enhanced everything JR Jr. did on the title. The faces were definitely JR Jr faces, but Williamson’s inks softened them, especially women’ and children’s faces (while not doing so for Typhoid Mary, appropriately). I’m not a JR Jr fan, but I recognize his skills. The shots of DD swinging and flipping through the city were gorgeous, and the weirdness of his figure drawing fit Nocenti’s stories. It’s too bad the Nocenti/ JR Jr/ Williamson team never did a Vertigo series.
I wouldn’t say Bullet is like Rhino, beside his tendency to do running headbutts. Rhino is a bull in a china shop, and usually a patsy. Bullet is more like Juggernaut when he was a bad guy: an unstoppable force that can only be redirected, not overcome or resisted.
And the analogy is definitely Bullet as a nuke (small N). I kind of love the way Nocenti screams her subtext through a megaphone.
I like JR Jr’s 80s stuff, before he leaned into his style. These days his art is like everyone is a Transformer.
Yes, I agree. I was a real fan of his run on Uncanny with Claremont. When he returned to Uncanny after Claremont, I always wondered what happened to Romita Jr.’s pencils. The characters all looked like they had a large amount of body hair and everyone seemed square (and not just like Scott in the ‘60s, daddio). Everything he drew after that looked too much the exact same. It was after his 2nd stint on Uncanny that I first read the Nocenti/Romita Jr. DD, and I discovered work by Romita Jr. I enjoyed even more than the Claremont Uncanny. It’s sort of the midway point between his earliest drawing and the later stuff I didn’t enjoy, but it hits that sweet spot. The Romita Jr. of his first Uncanny and DD ranks among my top twenty comic artists, no doubt. The Romita Jr. from the early-‘90s onward just isn’t the same.
It was amazing how well Romita Jr. worked with Nocenti on DD. Nocenti’s run went from could be great or could end up a disaster, to undoubtably my favourite writing on DD after Romita Jr. started.
Add me to the list of folks who love JRJr’s ‘80’s oeuvre and dislikes his work in the ‘90’s.
While some of it is that his unique style became more exaggerated, it may also be partly the technology changed and it didn’t suit his work. The glossy stock and Comicraft lettering in his second X-Men run didn’t do him any favors. (Indeed, Comicraft lettering was an odious uncanny valley across the line).
I like his 90s and onewards artwork. A bit different from his 80s stuff, but still good.
One thing of his that I am not a fan of though is the lines he sometimes draws on the faces of his women (to highlight the cheekbones?). They almost look like they have the Joker’s smile, if that makes sense.
@wwk5d, those cheekbone lines are one of the things that bugs me about JR Jr’s later work. The blocky figures and odd expressions are others.
But… I’m not a huge fan of his earlier work in Uncanny X-men, either. He did a good job, definitely, but it’s a little too “house-style” for my tastes. I find his first run on Uncanny
to be frustrating because a) he’s not Paul Smith, whose art I love. Not JR Jr’s fault, not many artists could follow-up Smith; 2) the stories aren’t as good in the issues he drew, with notable exceptions (the bar issue, Mutant Massacre); 3) I don’t like the Kulan Gath issues, but I give JR Jr full credit for drawing the hell out of them; 4) inkers like Dan Green weren’t the best match (as pointed out by someone else above). By the time his art gets closer to his DD work, around the time of the Massacre, he’s gone.
Somewhat hilariously, Buck Cashman, Arty Froushan’s character in Daredevil: Born Again, is meant to be the MCU’s version of Bullet (same real name, same hired gun morality, though MCU Buck has yet to reveal a son).
John Romita Jr. is a legacy talent and a legendary talent all his own, and I agree he was near the peak of his skills in the late 80s, and long after.
That said, I am always reminded of a line quoted from Alex Toth: “I spent the first half of my career learning what to put into my work, and the second half learning what to leave out.”
That is very wise, but I have found that many artists have taken that credo FAR FAR TOO LITERALLY and after a decade or two their art becomes a parody or exaggeration of itself, boiled down to simple visual tropes. It could be age; pencilling monthly issues of comics is a gruelling, low paying process even for young hands, and achieving that industry “page and a half average” is something few can maintain for long. Back in the day, fill-in issues were covered by either origin reprints or “inventory issues” an editor kept in a drawer; now a guest artist comes in or the comic is just late while an editor shrugs like Nick Cage in “FACE OFF.”
But regardless of why, some legendary artists become exaggerations of themselves in their later years, and unfortunately I’d say JR JR has hit that era for the last 15-20 years. I still like seeing his work, same with Mark Bagley (and BOY HOWDY is HIS style flawed sometimes). But there’s no denying it is what it is, or has become.
The Claremont/Romita Jr. era was my favourite period on the X-Men (not the Kulan Gath two-parter though). It was dark and had a dystopian feel to it. It felt like the 1980s in a way so much like so many of my other favourite comic runs (Delano on Hellblazer). It fit with how I felt the X-Men should have been portrayed at that time, living under the shadow of “Days of Future Past”, when this was fresh and new, not a cliche for the X-Men as it became post-Claremont.
Byrne and Cockrum were too traditional. Silverstri was too sexy and “pop”. Jim Lee was too cool. Smith was good, but his run was short and I didn’t feel set a distinctive mood like Romita Jr. I’m not saying those other artists were in any way poor choices. I love all of Claremont’s original run on X-Men. It’s just my reasoning for why I love the Romita Jr. era best.
In a similar way, DD moved from Nocenti rewriting Howl in comic book form during the earliest part of her run to Nocenti writing the comic book equivalent of “Mad World” by Tears for Fears under Romita Jr. Nocenti’s writing is very alienated and hopeless as we watch the world further unravel, yet Romita Jr.’s visuals make it all feel more strange and unreal, like you can’t look away from the darkness of Nocenti’s pens, which is very much akin to the juxtaposition of the song lyrics versus more upbeat musical style of “Mad World”.
The one thing we all seem to agree on is that the Kulan Gath storyline was not one of Claremont’s better works. One particularly ridiculous scene is where Dani uses her power on Janet Van Dyne and shows that she’s afraid of turning into a Wasp. Yes, Jan’s well known fear of turning into a Wasp. That was reminiscent of a sequence Claremont did with the Neo in 2000, where all of the X-Men experience generic visions of fears, except for Gambit, who beats his guilt over the Mutant Massacre with a “Don’t worry. be happy” speech.
Agreed that most of the stories between issue 175 and the Mutant Massacre were good, although it sometimes seemed that the book lacked direction. I’ve heard different opinions about Romita’s art, though. Kurt Busiek has suggested that he never was comfortable with the soap opera stuff that was the core of the X-Men.
In hindsight, Dani was showing us all our future fear of the coming Crossing days of Avengers, when Wasp does turn into a wasp.
“The one thing we all seem to agree on is that the Kulan Gath storyline was not one of Claremont’s better works.”
No, that isn’t something we all agree on. I enjoyed that story.
The CC/JRJr run is one of my favorite X-men runs, if not the favorite.
I liked the Kulan Gath story. I suspect they used the concept in the WandaVision TV show, but knowing Claremont it was probably nicked from some other work of fiction that I don’t know.
One of my favorite things about Claremont’s X-Men run is how the different artists affected the storytelling. Cockrum’s super-hero exploits, Byrne’s wider scope and expanding characterization, Smith’s gorgeous cinematic action and character acting, JR Jr’s increased darkness, Silvestri’s sexiness mixed with horror, Lee’s poster-worthy action portraits, greats like BWS, Sienkiewicz, Davis, and Art Adam’s dropping in for an issue or three… there’s something for everyone, even if everything doesn’t land.
Janet had already mutated into something of a real wasp back in 1973’s Ant-Man feature in, well, Marvel Feature.
I’ll be a dissenting voice by saying I VASTLY prefer JRJr’s blocky, angular style to his earlier work. Maybe it’s a nostalgia bias. I have a lot of affection for his second X-Men stint, which realistically would have been my first exposure to him. Regardless, this Daredevil run through his DC tenure all really lands for me. It admittedly falls off in the later years, and I’m less enthusiastic about about his output since returning to Marvel, but honestly it’s nice to see a legendary artist still getting regular, high-profile assignments today. He’s in a class by himself in grinding it out across six decades of consistent work, which is remarkable for any pro let alone one so celebrated.
I find his first run on Uncanny… fine, but also kind of a tough push. It definitely feels more “house style” than what I associate with the best of Claremont’s X-Men, which in my view are his collaborations with the most groundbreaking artists. Going from Paul Smith in particular to Romita felt reductive, kind of similar to the earlier transition from Byrne back to Cockrum. Issues 180-197 are the roughest patch for me to get through on re-read (with “Life Death” as an obvious exception – though with guest art by BWS, so go figure). At the same time, it’s probably Claremont’s purest vision for what he wanted for the book. Low on events, but big on emotion, depth of character introspection, and crunchy interpersonal drama. All great things, it just has a tendency to drag and gets a bit meandering for my tastes.
I say this with the acknowledgment it is all relative, of course. Even at its worst, the Claremont/Romita X-Men still ran CIRCLES around just about every other ongoing series Marvel was publishing at the time. With the only real competition being, well, Claremont himself during Bill Sienkiewicz’s time on New Mutants. (And, OK, Simonson’s Thor definitely belongs in the conversation). In fact, it’s as a companion read to New Mutants that makes the Romita X-Men era a lot more palatable for me. Makes wish the Claremont omnibus collections included New Mutants right from the jump, rather than holding off on combining them until the “event” volumes. With the way they share subplots and characters, you really did need to be reading both books to get the complete picture.
Part of the issue with the Kulan Gath story is that there was a lot of magicians basically waving their hands and a plot development happened and people getting killed because Claremont knew there would be a reset at the end. And since when does Rogue lose her invulnerability when she touches someone who isn’t invulnerable?
And maybe it’s just my pet peeve, but I cannot stand stories where Strange is helpless because he a villain renders him incapable of speaking and gesturing. Ditko established that he can still send forth his astral form and manipulate the Eye of Agomotto and Cloak of Levitation in such circumstances. And I hate it when writers ignore that.
I like the Kulan Gath story. Until now, I didn’t realize so many people had problems with it.
I enjoyed how it brought the wider Marvel Universe (and Conan universe) into the X-Men without actually bringing them in.
I never wanted to see a big X-Men/Avengers team-up (and I still don’t), but it was fun to see all the New York heroes captured with only the X-Men being able to save the day.
I didn’t like the fantasy elements, the use of some of the characters, the pointless brutality with Spider-Man, or the villain. I found the Kulan Gath story a mean-spirited slog.
But that’s just me, and I’m glad some readers enjoyed those issues! I’m not a huge Conan/ sword & sorcery fan, even though I’ve liked some comics, movies, and books in that genre.
I came on board Uncanny during the Silvestri run, so I collected the JRJr run as back issues. The Kulan Gath issues were some of the later ones I bought and I only remember the story dimly. Unlike the Selene issues, or the Secret Wars tie ins, or the trial of Magneto, or Nimrod, or Rogue Storm, or a dozen other 1-2 issue arcs that I read multiple times over the years, I probably only read this story once and it made very little impression on me.
It is also worth a mention that in Bullet, Nocenti finally delivered unto the Daredevil franchise something that it had lacked for long stretches: a large amoral brick of a villain who could be trucked out as a formidable henchman, mercenary, or “dragon” of a big bad as something of a reoccurring figure (like Jaws from James Bond). It was something Stan Lee arguably tried to do in the 1960s with the Ox, but it didn’t take. Various writers tried to make Mr. Hyde fill that role, but like Ox, he was from another franchise so it felt unnatural. During the 70s there were a few one note grunts, including a couple literally named “Smasher,” but they didn’t stick either. At times Gladiator was shoved into this role, but more focus on him being a nutcase (at times a tragic one) undermined that; reoccurring formidable bricks can have a personality, but they can’t be nutjobs. Man-Bull was too close to the Hulk motif of “unstable monster” to fill that role, either.
But with Bullet, Nocenti nailed it. Though he’s similar to Ox and Rhino, he’s uniquely part of DD’s franchise (with a nice, simple design). He has enough personality and connections (his son) to be memorable without it undermining him or lessoning his threat level or purpose in various stories. He’s the punch clock villain; it doesn’t matter if he’s working for Kingpin or the President, so long as the check clears and there’s at least the formality of it being legal or at least unpunishable. He fits nicely into DD’s franchise as a missing cog, much like the Kingpin did (who, while also from another franchise, had mostly been abandoned by it at the time).
Future writers would lose their way with Bullet a bit, as tended to happen when the last guard of editors retired or died and were replaced, by and large, with useless hacks who made sure writers like Bendis had coffee that day and let them run roughshod over everything. But the concept is still strong enough for a better writer to dust off and reuse.
It’s interesting to know that JRJR didn’t have a great time with Star Brand. It’s not overly surprising given how utterly cursed the New Universe was but I always liked his work on that book.
I still love the premise and the concepts of the New Universe despite the execution of the books being hugely uneven, due to the massive budget cuts.
I didn’t care for JRJR’s 90s X-Men run but that’s also in part because I don’t think the book is especially good in that period either (and he had that brief period of drawing occasional pages sideways for no particular reason).
I really loved his Spider-Man run with JMS in the early 2000s though. That was a fantastic-looking book.
I liked that era of Spider-Man, but even at the time it felt like retconning Norman Osborn’s death was a bad idea. If no one ever really dies, then there are no consequences for anything. Also “I was in France for 20 years” kind of leads into “and btw I had an affair with Gwen Stacy and these are our adult children” ughh