My hopes were high from the cover: Mephisto looming over Scarlet, as he's about to crank the lever of a slot machine. I was thinking of dead heroes trying to win their way back to life, via the slots, from somewhere in Incredible Herc. Nope! Ben was in Vegas, still trying to redeem himself after some recent bad decisions; and still had a weirdly scarred eye that made him look like Pete the Pup from Little Rascals shorts. Ben notices "Aunt June" wasn't at her usual machine today, and while checking for her, is approached by a little jezebel. I mean, a little girl that introduces herself as Jezebel. (Is that term still used as an insult? I don't know if I've ever actually heard it spoken in real life!) She knows he's the Scarlet Spider, and her "employers" have Aunt June, and they need him to...
...do something he probably would've had to do anyway. After Las Vegas was severely damaged in Secret Empire, Doctor Strange repaired the damage...why? Seems like he put a lot of teamsters out of work. Moreover, Strange unleashed something, which is underselling it: the Hotel Inferno, which looks a lot influenced by the Inferno crossover, run by Mephisto! Ben freaks out a bit, claiming this was out of his league and should be an Avengers problem, or Strange should fix it himself. Jezebel tells them they would be there...and absolutely no help, they'd all be turned into demons. The Midnight Sons might help, though. No, they aren't the Inferno's house band. Jezebel lets on she was working for something called the Diogenes Initiative, which Ben had heard of before; and she orders him to get out there and take care of it. Ben asks if she was really a little girl. No? Then it's okay to punch you across the room...actually, that's probably still not okay, Ben.
After saving a gun shop owner from a demon, Ben gets all kitted out...for reasons? I got nothing; and it looks ridiculous. Maybe he thinks he needs it, since when the Avengers show up, their heads are on fire, Ghost Rider-style. Which also looks somewhat ridiculous. But a proper Ghost Rider is also there, with the Midnight Sons! Who include, more importantly, Moon Knight! I think this came up recently when he saw Wong...was that in the regular series, or Death of Doctor Strange? I may have to read some issues to recollect! But, this issue was part of some crossover thing called Damnation. There was a Doctor Strange mini with it, maybe some other stuff; aside from Moon Knight offhandedly mentioning it, I would swear I had never heard of it until just now.
Moon Knight already looks like he's going to bag out, hit a buffet or something. (The cover in that entry looks pretty fun, though!) I don't know which Ghost Rider that is: if it's the 90's version, I just want to see him complaining about 'new' Midnight Sons the whole event. "...who the hell is Johnny Tracksuit? Iron what? Back in the day, we had proper Midnight Sons. That guy couldn't carry Frank Drake's lunch..."
3 comments:
If those two pictures of Ben smacking the girl & his dressed to the nines in all that gun wear aren't meme-worthy I don't know what it is.
Somebody's going to ask for Gun Ammo Ben to become an ML action figure aren't they? I just know it. And honestly after giving us 90's Deathlok arm-ed Spidey, can they really say no?
I think that's why he's got so much hardware- it's a very 90's thing, and so is Ben Reilly.
Very true, very very true.
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