I'm hopefully going to make it through issue 50 soon, if everything works out.

Picking up from last issue, Spider-Man is searching for Kraven, and all he gets is... the terrible second Vulture. Raniero "Blackie" Drago. A character that most people would forget existed if not for Spider-Man: Blue and Ultimate Spider-Man featuring him. I think he has two whole outings as Vulture before hanging it up? I remember as a kid seing, in passing, this weirdo hook-faced Vulture and being in some slight awe over the legacy and continuity of comic books. Once you're tuned into them, at least as a kid (The magic quickly dissipates as you grow into a teenager, and later an adult, and cynicism and insider Wizard magazine information about the comic book industry creeps in and you realize regular people write these things), comics seem like this huge albatross of interconnected storytelling that only becomes more impressive with age. To realize the reality of it - This is a failed attempt at creating a legacy character that hardly lasts over a year. We get a fakeout early on that Adrian Toomes is going to die, but luckily for everyone involved, they made sure not to go through with it entirely. I'll be honest, I can't recall when this plot point is resolved/retconned. It can't happen but so long after this. Maybe it's next issue. I can't say for sure that the intent was to kill Adrian off, in that case. We'll see.

Spider-Man gets a cold in this issue, which is something Stan Lee seems to rely a ton on to raise the stakes in this series. I wonder if a writer has ever taken advantage of that in order to tell a story about Peter having an auto-immune disease as a result of the spider bite. I can't say it'd be a good story, but it is an idea. And Spider-Man will always need more of those. But you know, I wasn't around in the 60s, so maybe colds took more out of people back then. But to me, it seems like Spider-Man has something worse than a cold. Maybe even a flu. Now, I don't go swinging through the skies and fight costumed villains when I have a cold, but I have a feeling if I was a super-powered person, it'd be akin to the regular exertion that I do day-to-day when I have a cold. Unless maybe his super powers also turn his cold into a super cold. Another idea for the Spidey writers.

There's not a ton of stuff in this issue. It's mostly just picking up where the last one left off. Something becoming more and more noticeable in this series is the continuity. We don't necessarily have arcs yet, but you can no longer just hop in anywhere. I'm waiting for the day where they start numbering issues as parts. It can't be too far away... err, aside from the "Destiny" arc from the Ditko era. I'm surprised that Kraven doesn't actually appear in this issue. We know he comes back next issue, but this is what I mean by there not quite being arcs yet. Things are connected, but loosely.

Something that this issue has that I wish writers were a bit better about now is how it manages to have every person in Spider-Man's supporting cast show up. A lot of times, this is done through some fourth wall breaking narrator pointing out how flippant it is to the story. Regardless of intent, it keeps these characters on the mind, and you never tire of seeing MJ or J. Jonah Jameson, or even Gwen and Harry. It may be brief, but these moments are very nice.

Spider-Man gets killed forever at the end, obviously.

Quote of the issue: "I Just Had an Economy-Sized Brainstorm!"
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