3 out of 5

Y’know, I owned this super long ago and got rid of it.  Outside of Gerber’s classic-est runs – Howard, Man-Thing, Defenders – I didn’t really get what he did on the fringes of the Marvel U during the 70s and 80s.  Which was… essentially his own awesome little thing.  I guess you could see it as selfish, but I think it was pretty groovy – Steve found a way to fiddle with his own universe within the Marvel one, sticking to a core cast of characters that he would re-use and re-use in almost every book he touched.  It’s great fun to pick up a Spider-Man book and find Man-Thing references, and new heroine ‘Poison’, who would come back in a Marvel Comics Presents run which tied into an earlier Marvel Comics Presents run which tied into Man-Thing which tied into… everything.  Cool, bro.

Our story here moves surprisingly quick, and Gerber manages to tie this into the High Evolutionary War pap that was happening in ’88 without it feeling forced.  Spidey is on tour for his Webs book in Florida (ah,Webs) and he follows some journalistic urge to snap some pics of a drug stash in the middle of a swamp… where High Evolutionary thugs are hanging out… where the Slug’s henchman are hanging out…  (This is my first and only exposure to Slug, but he’s tons of fun.  A Floridian drug kingpin who suffocates people in his folds of flesh.  Good stuff.) where Poison decides to intervene to drop off her from-another-dimension personality… cue battle, and then Mary Jane shows up and kisses Peter.

It’s mostly a vehicle for Steve to introduce Poison, but Spidey’s still the dominant character and Gerber is good at writing the half-jokey / half-serious version of the hero that somehow always seems to be a precarious balance for most.  The art by Cynthia Martin is passable, she (assuming) never really getting too detailed but nothing too sloppy.  An average book overall, but contains good material for Gerber completists.

Update 06.14.2015: Having Re-read this as a precursor to finishing up Poison’s story in MCP #60 – 67, I should clarify that I have no idea why I thought (mentioned above) that run tied into the earlier MCP run Gerber did.  I also found the comment on this review interesting, giving some insight into the creation of Poison.