Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine #5

Dec 26

Dec 26 Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine #5

Another Fine Mess Part Five

Spider-Man and Wolverine have been send across time and space all for the purposes of Mojo to record their advantures for the captive audiences in his home dimension. As he makes demands about the creative direction his show is going, Major Domo asks what they are doing about the woman that they are setting up to be Spider-Man’s love interest. Mojo tells him to set it up and then tells a documentary film crew how he made his greatest show ever: time travel.[1]

He is interrupted by Czar who has arrived with his sidekick Big Murder. Czar would like to know more about how Mojo “discovered” the keys to time travel when all he really did was find Czar and his Time Stick. Mojo says he was just embellishing the truth. Czar decides to change the subject and says they have a problem, Spider-Man managed to snatch one of the time diamonds during their last encounter. He worries that they could lose Spider-Man and Wolverine in time and space or worse….

Before he can say it, the two heroes appear in the control room and realizing that they were being manipulated by Mojo are spoling for a fight.[2] When they lunge at Mojo, Czar gets in the way and hits Spider-Man with his Time Stick. At Mojo’s cue, the wall-crawler lands on the woman he has been seeing in his dreams. Suddenly, the battle is interrupted by some expositional cutaways.

The first is of Spider-Man talking about his early career as a professional wrestler and how he could always go back into it if he wanted and how he is surprised he hasn’t been invited to host a popular late-night comedy show.[3] Next, Mojo addresses the audience telling them how he brought this all together for his eager audience of Spineless-Ones. When Czar and Big Murder have a moment in front of the camera, they throw shade at Kang the Conqueror, saying he hasn’t conquered shit. Suddenly we see the Orb, who warns the audience that the Minutemen are coming for them all. Next is the woman, Sara Bailey, who doesn’t understand why she is here because all she did was work at the bank that the Orb robbed. She has grown tired of bouncing around time and asks if she can go home yet. When the camera turns to Wolverine, he yells cut and the battle is back on.

By this point, Big Murder has managed to grab the stolen time diamond from Spider-Man. Czar has decided that he has had enough of this and decides that it’s time for Wolverine and Spider-Man to die. His anger growing, Logan suddenly bowls everyone over when he suddenly erupts in flame. Everyone is shocked by this, but Czar still wants to kill them. Tapping the diamonds on his teeth he summons both a caveman and a futuristic robot to attack Wolverine. He makes short work of them. As Czar brags about all the skills he has learned across time he is interrupted when his older self appears before him. Old Man Czar warns his younger self to kill Wolverine or else he is going to die. The two begin arguing over one another and an increasingly annoyed Wolverine steps in long enough to cut off the hand Czar is using to hold the Time Bat. With the weapon in hand, Wolverine tells Spider-Man they are leaving and they teleport away. That’s when another future version of Czar arrives, this one is younger than the old man. He realizes that he is too late to warn his past self that Wolverine is going to cut off his hand.

Wolverine brings Spider-Man to an alien world in the distant past. It is filled with trees that are growing time diamonds. Somehow, Logan knows that when this planet explodes some of the diamonds arrived on Earth on the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. When Spider-Man asks how Logan can know all of this, he tells the web-slinger to shut up and start picking diamonds. While Logan encrusts his claws in the diamonds, he tells Spider-Man to load up because when they go back to the Mojoverse they’re going to end things.

Back in the Mojoverse, Czar continues to argue with his future selves. He eventually gets fed up and shoots his oldest self in the head. The other future Czar is shocked, but his present-day counterpart points out that if he turned into that pathetic old man he’d want to be put out of his misery. That’s when Spider-Man and Wolverine return, Logan tells Peter to deal with the older Czar while he deals with the one that started all of this. When face-to-face with Czar, Wolverine tosses back his Time Stick so the two are more evenly matched. When Spider-Man hits the older Czar he is shocked when his opponent suddenly turns into a baby. Meanwhile, Wolverine’s rage continues to grow and as he slices through Czar’s Time Stick his body begins to burst in flames. Seeing what is happening, Mojo hopes someone is recording this because Wolverine has suddenly turned into a Dark Phoenix.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man, Wolverine, Mojo, Czar, Big Murder, Sara Bailey, Major Domo

Continuity Notes

Mojo sarcastically says having Spider-Man in a long term relationship is something nobody has seen before. This is probably a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane was erased from history in Amazing Spider-Man #545. In this new reality, Peter and Mary Jane dated for an extended period of time before breaking up instead.
Spider-Man recognizes Mojo because they met previously in Longshot #4-5.
When Spider-Man first got his powers and before Uncle Ben got shot in the bo-bo, he got into professional wrestling in Amazing Fantasy #15. For more of Spidey’s wrestling antics see Spider-Man: With Great Power… #1-5.