Amazing Spider-Man Annual #35
A Tale of Two Jackpots
The Past
After fighting side-by-side with the new superhero named Jackpot, Spider-Man finally convinced her to reveal her secret identity to him. Thinking it was his ex-girlfriend, Mary Jane, Spider-Man was surprised she was a woman named Sarah Ehret. However, following the death of mayoral candidate Lisa Parfrey, Spider-Man paid a visit to the home of Sarah Ehret to try and cheer her up. However, Sarah Ehret acted like she never met Spider-Man before and after learning that Jackpot gave him her name, Sarah told the wall-crawler to stay out of their affairs.[1] After getting rid of Spider-Man, Sarah furiously calls her friend Alana Jobson and tells her that they need to talk.
Now
Spider-Man is in the process of stopping a new villain named Blidnside who is attempting to rob a bank. However, in the process of taking the villain down, Spider-Man is interrupted by Jackpot who is upset that the wall-crawler is fighting a foe that she considers to be part of her rogue’s gallery. As the battle continues, Spider-Man learns why the villain calls himself Blindside when he grabs the wall-crawler making him go blind. While Jackpot is worried about Spider-Man, Blindspot manages to make his escape, much to the annoyance of the web-slinger. When they her police sirens, Jackpot helps Spider-Man get away since he is still an unregistered superhero.[2]
Later, as the effects of Blindspot’s temporary blindess wears off Spider-Man and Jackpot talk about their careers as superheroes. Jackpot doesn’t understand why Spider-Man doesn’t just register with the government as it would save him a lot of grief. Spider-Man then grills her about the her true identity after revealing he paid a visit to Sarah Ehret. Jackpot explains that Ehret is the name she chose to register under and points out that when she gave him her “real name” Spider-Man gave him a false name as well.[3] When talking about her own career, Jackpot says that she has gotten nothing but criticsm, particularly after her battle with Menace that led to the death of Lisa Parfrey. Since then, she has tried to avoid battling super-villains and begain going up against ordinary criminals. One such criminal, Walter Delcun, who she learned has been bankrolling Blindside. Unfortunately, Delcun is a respected businessman and has been using his media connections to do a smear job on Jackpot. When Spider-Man presses Jackpot for his true identity, Jackpot tells him to register and he might find out and leaves. However, Spider-Man has other ideas and collects the empty coffee cup she left behind.
Spider-Man then pays a visit to Mister Fantastic at the Baxter Building to get some help on determining how Blindside’s powers work and how to counteract them. After some analysis, Reed Richards determines that Blindside’s powers are probably caused by the most simple solution, a neurotoxin that causes his victims to go temperarily blind. Drawing a sample of the toxin from Spider-Man’s blood, Reed runs an analysis and is surprised to discover that it is a neurotoxin called Oedipus which is patented by Delcun International. Later, Peter Parker meets up with Betty Brant at the Coffee Bean to get her to find out what she can about Delcun. Walter Delcun turns out to be a well known businessman in the world of media as he owens three media companies and is currently in the process of buying a radio station. She also tells Peter about how Delcun publicly battled Wolverine resulting in the feral mutant ripping Delcun’s eyes out.[4] Miraculiously, Delcun somehow survived despite the fact he apparently does not have any superhuman powers. He convinces Betty to interview Delcun and bring Peter along as a photographer in the hopes of learning more about the businessman.[5] When Betty asks why he is so interested in Delcun, Peter explains that he is looking into the businessman as a favor.[6] Adding to all this, Peter also asks Betty to get one of her sources to run some fingerprints on Jackpot’s coffee cup.
Later, Betty and Peter meet with Walter Delcun for the interivew and during it they Walter admits he was attacked by Wolverine but wasn’t killed. In fact, he can still see thanks to getting new cybernetic eyes implanted to replace the ones he lost. Peter uses the opportunity to pump Delcun for information about his business involvement in the development of neurotoxins. This only serves to annoy Betty, who wants to ask the questions, and leads to indifferent responses from Delcun, who pretends to not know much about his business dealings. Later, Peter calls Betty to apologize for how the interview went earlier but he is delighted to hear she got back the fingerprint results and tells Peter the prints belong to a woman named Alana Jobson.
That evening, Spider-Man breaks into Alana Jobson’s apartment to learn more about her, feeling like a creep while doing it. He finds a bunch of strange vials in a dresser drawer and wonders what Jackpot is getting into when she suddenly returns home. The wall-crawler leaps up to the ceiling before being seen and hopes she doesn’t look off. However, Spider-Man blows his own cover when he is shocked to see how scarred Jackpot’s back is when she removes her costume’s overcoat. At first she is furious at the wall-crawler for invading her privacy and threatens to call SHIELD when Spider-Man points out that he will reveal that she uses drugs to get her powers if he does. Jackpot admits that she uses Mutant Growth Hormone — among other drugs — to artificially gain powers. She explains that she always wanted to be a super-hero and do something for the world, and the government enacting the Super-Human Registration Act allowed her to accomplish that. She goes on to say that she bought the Jackpot persona from Sarah Ehret, who got her powers from a genetic experiment gone wrong and decided she didn’t want to be a superhero and sold her identity to Alana.[7] After hearing all of this, Spider-Man demands that Jackpot hand over all her research into Walter Delcun, telling her that she has to quit being a superhero before she gets herself killed. Reluctantly, Jackpot hands over her file to the web-slinger, telling him that she only wanted to make a difference. As he leaves, Spider-Man suggests that if she wants to make a difference she should volunteer her time at the FEAST Center.
Later, Spider-Man looks through Jackpot’s file on Delcun and is surprised about how thorough it is. He learns that the formula for Odeipus neurotoxin was apparently stolen and the lead suspect was the designer, a scientist named Nick Chernin. However, Delcun dropped all charges against Chernin for unknown reasons. Having an address for the scientist, Spider-Man decides to pay him a visit. When Spider-Man comes knocking at the Chernin residence, he catches Blidnside off guard. Although Nick manages to get his Blindside glove on, his attempts to blind Spider-Man fail as he has taken the counteragent to negate his powers. Unfortunately, Spider-Man didn’t account for the fact that supervillains date and he is ambushed from behind by his old foe Commanda.[8] Thankfully, Spider-Man is saved by the arrival of Jackpot. As the four battles, Blindside attempts to use his powers on Jackpot, but Spider-Man tosses her the antidote. The pair then quickly wrap up their foes. However, as they go to contact the authorities, Jackpot suddenly has an adverse reaction to all the drugs in her system and dies in Spider-Man’s arms. Fearing that this was his fault, Spider-Man rushes Jackpot to the Baxter Building for an autopsy. There, Mister Fantastic tells the wall-crawler that it was Blindside’s neruotoxin that killed Jackpot and assures him that her death was not Spider-Man’s fault.
However, Spider-Man does blame someone for Jackpot’s death and goes to confront Sarah Ehret. He tells her that while Sarah had the power, she shirked on her responsibilities and Alana paid the ultimate price. When Sarah says she doesn’t want the responsibility, Spider-Man points out that people like them don’t have a choice and swings off. After Spider-Man leaves, Sarah pulls out the Jackpot costume and begins to think about what Spider-Man told her.
Recurring Character
Spider-Man, Jackpot, Blindside, Commanda, Mister Fantastic, Walter Delcun, Betty Brant, Sarah Ehret
Continuity Notes
This was all detailed in Amazing Spider-Man #551, in case you don’t remember.
Although Spider-Man initially suppored the Super-Human Registration Act in Civil War #1-2, he later renounced the act in Amazing Spider-Man #535, making him an outlaw.
The name that Spider-Man gave Jackpot in Amazing Spider-Man #551 was Flash Thompson. She says Flash Thompson is serving a tour in Iraq. Flash Thompson returned to the military recently as we saw in Amazing Spider-Man #574. At the time this story was published Flash’s “tour in Iraq” was a reference to the Iraq War of the early 2000s. Any suggestion to this specific conflict should be considered a topical reference.
Wolverine fought Walter Delcun in Wolverine (vol. 3) #47
The Coffee Bean has a poster advertising comedian Stephen Colbert’s bid for President of the United States in the 2008 US election. Colbert did this as a joke on his show, The Colbert Report and Colbert’s “run for President” was jokingly endorsed by Marvel Comics. It’s depiction here should be considered a topical reference because this is a very dated reference. Particularly since Colbert’s was —obviously—- not elected president (it was Barack Obama in case you forgot) and Colbert’s show ended it’s run in 2014 and Colbert retired the character — a fictional version of himself — when the show ended its run.
Peter quips that his relationship with Betty Brant didn’t work out for reasons other than the possibility that Peter is gay. Peter and Betty Brant dated from Amazing Spider-Man #7 to 18; Peter being gay would have certainly been a less complicated reason for their break-up. In reality, Peter’s double life as Spider-Man and Betty’s jealousy of the other women in Peter’s life (namely Liz Allan and Mary Jane Watson) drove them apart.
The details of Sarah Ehret’s origins and the reason why she quit superheroics are detailed in Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Jackpot #1-3.
Spider-Man thinks to himself that it has been a long time since he last fought Commanda. The pair last clashed in Untold Tales of Spider-Man #9, in a story that took place during the early days of Spider-Man’s career.
