Ultimate Spider-Man: Carnage, Part 4
Issue: #63
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inker: Scott Hana
Colors: J.D.Smith

Aunt May has come home to an empty house. She looks out the window and sees something that causes her to run outside. It’s Gwen’s body, mummified. Peter is at work, thrilled about the fact that the Daily Bugle has for once declared Spider-Man a hero. The phone rings, and we see Peter’s reaction to the news of Gwen’s death. Peter swings home (in civilian clothing) and finds the police and a crowd at his house. The police let him cross the lines, and he hears snippets of conversation as he stares down at the covering over Gwen’s body. The police are questioning Aunt May, who is explaining that she and Peter took Gwen in because she had nowhere else to go. The investigator begins asking Peter where he was earlier. When the questioning suggests that Peter might have had something to do with Gwen’s death, Aunt May intervenes.

Captain Jeanne De Wolfe arrives on the scene and compares this case to the one she’s been investigating at Empire State University. The theories range from mutants on the loose to a virus. Someone even suggests vampires. Peter asks to go inside; once in the house, away from everyone’s attention, he rips open his backpack to reveal his Spider-Man costume, and look of resolve comes over his face.

Later, Aunt May calls Gwen’s mother and discovers the woman has left without leaving any kind of forwarding information. Aunt May shouts at the person the line to tell Gwen’s mother that her daughter is dead and hangs up, upset. Mary Jane and her mother are in the kitchen, and MJ’s mother says that Peter and Aunt May can come over and stay with them if they want.

Peter is getting ready for bed in the Watson living room. MJ brings him a pillow and comments that she was probably the last person to see Gwen alive. She talks about their conversation at the mall earlier that evening. MJ wonders if Gwen’s death is related to Spider-Man, but neither she nor Peter can tell. Peter asks what the point is to his being Spider-Man if he can’t keep the people he cares about from dying. He breaks down and cries on MJ’s shoulder.

Later, Peter sits awake and remembers pieces of the police conversations he heard at the house earlier that night. He thinks about the various villains he’s fought until the words “Empire State University” click. He looks out the window and sees a man standing in front of his house across the street. It’s Curt Conners. Peter goes out in his pajamas and, when Conners speaks to him, punches Conners in the face. He accuses Conners of killing Gwen and demands to know why Conners is in Queens. Conners tells him about the escaped experiment.

Conners had combined his own DNA with Peter’s, and had then taken ideas from Peter’s father’s research notes. Peter shouts at Conner and accuses him of stealing from his father’s work and of creating a monster. In the middle of the confrontation, something rustles in the bushes and Peter’s spider sense goes off. On the last page, Carnage leaps out at them.

Submitted By: Seldes Katne