>When it comes to daily woes in comic-dom, no ones got more than Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man. In the past couple of years he’s had his marriage to super-hottie Mary Jane erased from continuity setting him back to his down-on-his-luck bachelor status, also setting him back to having to scrounge for rent. The arch nemesis of his personal life, J. Jonah Jameson is now the mayor of New York, and to make matters worse, is also his step brother thanks to the wedding of Aunt May and Jameson’s father J. Jonah Sr. And too make matters even worse than that, Pete accidentally walked in on some old-folk ugly-bumping action. Traumatizing to say the least.

Lately, life as Spider-Man hasn’t been much easier thanks to the fact that Norman Osborn is now basically in charge of SHIELD, now re-named HAMMER, and has his own team of Avengers who were previously criminals and psycho killers. Norman is flying around in a modified Iron Man suit and calling himself the Iron Patriot while enforcing the Super-Hero Registration Act which of course puts him at odds with Spider-Man even more than usual. This past week saw the release of the one-shot Dark Reign: the List- Spider-Man, in which we find Parker and the staff of Front Line ready to expose Osborn’s past indiscretions as a mad scientist at Oscorp, and discredit him once and for all as the public at large seems to have forgiven the whole Green Goblin thing as a moment of un-medicated psychosis. Pete swings into action as Spidey, breaking into Oscorp and downloading video footage of Osborn experimenting on human subjects to re-create the super-soldier serum, which is in effect, torture. This of course outrages Norman and initiates a knock down, drag out fight between the Iron Patriot and the wall-crawler. As epic as their confrontation is, you can tell by the end of the story, that this isn’t over yet. Not only is Spidey at odds with the most powerful man in the country, but in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man he faces the combined forces of his rogues gallery mainstays in a story titled the Gauntlet. Electro is back, more unstable than ever, but more organized as the Spidey-villains are out for the web-slinger with a vengeance!

Also at the end of the List issue is a backup story reprinting the Pulse #5 from 2004, where Norman Osborn is finally exposed as the Green Goblin to the public after endangering Jessica Jones, who was pregnant at the time. Jones’ baby’s father is Luke Cage, and as this story shows, you do not mess with Cage’s family. Normally, I just enjoy a watching a story unfold, but I found myself rooting for Cage to inflict some major hurt on Osborn.

-Jim

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