One of the first batch of superhero comics I got my hands on in the original US release (and not a translated Swedish edition) was this series, which is a very strange animal even today, looking back.
It is in every regard a direct sequel to the 1991 mini Deadly Foes of Spider-Man which was also written by Danny Fingeroth but had a different art team mostly carried by Al Milgrom. Both series are in essence kind of about the Sinister Syndicate, the sorta-kinda Sinister Six
Something I like is when a comic very clearly distinguishes its time period by stylistic choices and in Lethal you can see that we are not in a post-McFarlane world but also in an Erik Larsen Spider-Man era with Scott McDaniel drawing a very Larsen-esque Vulture even on the cover
McDaniel unfortunately only pencils the first two issues but his Otto Octavius is also VERY influenced by Larsen's. If you don't believe me check out that bottom panel, that's straight out of the Return of the Sinister Six era.
What makes Lethal a much weirder read than Deadly is while Deadly focused mostly on the interactions between the Sinister Syndicate, the machinations of Leila Davis and the desperate actions of the Shocker and the Beetle...
...Lethal opts to just throw crazy shit at the wall to make Spidey's day worse. Doc Ock is on the loose, the Syndicate are kinda back, and a random energy blast randomly hits Vincent Stegron in the park and he turns back to Stegron the Dinosaur Man!
In issue 3 a canister gets broken during one of the brawls between Spidey and the villains and the nazi bee-man Swarm is released to make everyone's life even worse! This series has absolutely no chill.
This random-ass four-issue Spider-Man villain miniseries even explains the return of long-dead obscure villain the Answer by referencing the explosive events of Alan Davis' Excalibur #50 which utterly blows my mind. Like, great continuity but wow.
For some inexplicable reason this comic also squeezes in the return from the dead of Scourge victim and perennial Z-lister the Ringer (whose death was one of the cruxes of Deadly) as a 90s-ass cyborg. Young me thought this was rad, but he never appeared again*
This comic is absolute lunacy, squeezing in stuff from Deadly Foes, the Vulture dying of cancer subplot, brings back like five different obscure villains and even then manages to be Doc Ock-centric. It's MADNESS in only four issues.
Ringer's widow Leila gets an armored battlesuit in this as well and she's pretty cool here. I honestly wanted her to stick around because Spidey has woefully few female villains but alas. Love that red and black armor though. Alas she... well.
Some 20 years later both of these minis got a spiritual sequel in the form of Superior Foes of Spider-Man, a 17-issue run by (mostly) Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber which continued with mostly the cast from Deadly Foes with some new faces. Great read, highly recommended.
I'd never claim that Lethal Foes was some kind of lost masterpiece but goddamn it is unabashedly crazy comics stuff. Just fun stuff about villains getting mad at each other and Spidey having a horrible day.
The perfect jump-on comic, naturally*
*It's not but I didn't care.
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