Synopsis
Dark Reign: The List - Amazing Spider-Man #1 synopsis by
Rob Johnson
Rating:
Spider-Man swings through town wondering how on Earth Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, got into power. And as usual he blames himself - he didn't do enough to stop him.
He goes to work as Peter Parker at Front Line where he has a conference with Ben Urich, Robbie Robertson and Norah Winters about tackling Osborn. There are angles that Norman has successfully blocked off. He's officially psychologically cured of being the Goblin. His control of law enforcement means that he can hide evidence of most of his criminal activities. He was experimenting with Prometheus X-90 on immigrants but the evidence for that got buried in a collapsed building in Amazing SM #573, the illegal immigrants won't testify and anyway Norman blamed his son Harry. Norah nearly got the dirt on Norman turning son Harry Osborn into the American Son (a dark Captain America to complement his Iron Patriot) but Osborn foiled her. (Actually she got frightened off in ASM#599.)
Norah tells them that Osborn has surveillance cameras everywhere - he's probably got videos of all that dodgy stuff. Robbie thinks his ego will make him think he's safe to keep them. Peter suspects the security in Avengers Tower will be even tighter since the recent break-ins. (I guess he's referring to Ronin in Dark Reign: The List - Avengers and Nick Fury in DRL - Secret Warriors.) But Norah managed to smuggle out secret blueprints of OsCorp HQ which show rooms not on the official copies.
Later NO (in the Iron Patriot armour) is taking his right-hand woman Victoria Hand to 1 of these secret rooms, which he says contains his latest anti-Spider-Man projects. (Spidey is #8 on his List, saving the best to last.) But when they enter they find SM finishing downloading video of Norman personally injecting a subject with a mixture of the Goblin formula and Cap's super-soldier serum - and performing an autopsy on the resulting corpse. (And probably other stuff too.)
Spider-Man exits through a window with the USB stick, and Iron Patriot follows. His repulsor blasts don't care what they hit. But even after Spidey saves some bystanders from falling masonry they still cheer Osborn. IP then fires his chest uni-beam in tracking mode, so it hits its target full-on. SM falls and gets beaten up by an angry mob. Until Osborn steps in to order them off so he can 'arrest' the vigilante.
As the fight resumes it's being televised. We see various reactions:- The Front Line staff abandoning journalistic impartiality to cheer Spidey on. People in a cyber-café supporting Patriot. Disowned Harry Osborn, probably in the storeroom of the Coffee Bean where he's working, rooting for SM. Ms Hand wondering how she can hush *this* up.
Osborn gloats as he holds up a beaten Spider-Man. He warns him that he's going to fry his brain with a magnetic burst from the uni-beam. But Peter noticed earlier that Iron Patriot's uni-beam isn't as strong as Iron Man's used to be. He noted that Norman has replaced Tony Stark's circle or polygon design with a star-shaped version to fit his patriotic look. Now he aims a kick at the device, cracking it slightly. He figures that the obscuring indents of the star have been causing a heat build-up. And now when IP fires it his armour starts to smoulder internally.
Spidey takes the chance to escape. But then Patriot finds he's ditched his costume. And he can't tell who he is in the crowd. He deduces that his foe will want to upload the video as soon as possible, so he enters a nearby cyber-café (which looks like the 1 we saw 2 paragraphs ago). Norman also considers the possibility that SM passed the USB to 1 of his pals - and spots Peter Parker at a terminal.
Parker delays IP by pointing him out to all his fans in the room. Who mob him for pictures and autographs. And Peter sends the email to his complete contacts list, and all the terminals in the café.
Patriot zaps the screens and then prepares to shoot Parker, claiming that he faked the footage. But Peter points out that he's *not* a costumed vigilante, he's a law-abiding American citizen. If the video was fake then he can take him to a civil court. Or maybe Osborn will shoot him, or send him to the Negative Zone prison. But is he going to do that to all the people here?
Norman says he's added Peter Parker to his List. And he leaves, contacting Hand to tell her to suppress that video. And this time the crowd cheer Peter.
On the way out Peter gets a call from Robbie to say the Front Line is putting the video up on its website. And in the background there's a scream from Norah who's found that Betty Brant beat them to it at the Daily Bugle.
This issue includes a reprint of Pulse #5 where Norman Osborn was exposed as Green Goblin by Spider-Man, Luke Cage and the Daily Bugle.