The webslinger’s wrapping up loose ends...

(Panini Books)

Imagine the adventures of a bankrupt Mark Zuckerberg, infamous across the planet and generally shunned and avoided by all but his closest friends, and you’ll come close to the current status quo of Peter Parker following the collapse of his multinational company. For the first time ever Pete’s arachnid alter ego is actually enjoying better press, which makes it even more tempting for him to don the red and blues and start webslinging at every opportunity.

Unfortunately being broke means having to work, which for Parker is back at his old stomping ground of the Daily Bugle, now heading up the scientific journalism department, where he is also unpopular!

In fact, there are very few people who are prepared to give Peter the time of day, with his supposed girlfriend Bobbi (Mockingbird) Morse joining the list after realising they have absolutely nothing in common.

This revelation follows a jaunt to England to wrap up a loose-end, the year-long incarceration of supercriminal Zodiac after he gained prescient knowledge of the last 12 months. Escaping with an hour to spare, it’s up to Spidey and Mockingbird to stop him before he can complete the scheme he’s literally spent a whole year devising…

Another loose end, this one dating waaaaaaay back to ASM #503 (almost 300 issues ago!), is wrapped up when the Norse god Loki, now Sorcerer Supreme following events in the Doctor Strange series, remembers that he owes Spider-Man a favour and decides to pay clear his debts.

With the Spidey annual following up on a plot-strand from the Clone Conspiracy epic, you’d be right in thinking that outgoing writer Dan Slott was clearing the tables for his successor if it wasn’t for the final issue collected here, which sets things up for the forthcoming rise of the Red Goblin…

A mixed bag of stories then, which serve to close the doors on the past more than open any for the future, and although there is an obvious necessity in doing so, it does mean there’s a feeling of treading water until Slott’s grand finale, Go Down Swinging, in the next volume.