Miguel awakens in a hospital room, and Peter informs him that he's been there for three days. Tempest's mother, Cecilia, walks into the room just at that moment and tells Miguel that Tempest is dead and that it's all his fault. After she leaves, Peter tells him that it actually had nothing to do with Miguel or, as he feared, Spider-Man: the attack was one of three seemingly random attacks that happened at the same time in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. (The New York one left 23 people dead.)
Before I get into more details, I'll say that I don't buy that Tempest is dead. David reminds us here that she wasn't particularly close to her mother, and Cecilia herself tells Miguel that she had plans for Tempest that Tempest abandoned when she met Miguel. It seems to me like she'd be perfectly happy to lie to Miguel and say that Tempest was dead if it meant that she'd get the control over her daughter that she seems to want. Plus, Miguel declines Lyla's suggestion that he visit Tempest's grave, implying that maybe he would've learned it didn't exist if he had visited it.
Before I get into more details, I'll say that I don't buy that Tempest is dead. David reminds us here that she wasn't particularly close to her mother, and Cecilia herself tells Miguel that she had plans for Tempest that Tempest abandoned when she met Miguel. It seems to me like she'd be perfectly happy to lie to Miguel and say that Tempest was dead if it meant that she'd get the control over her daughter that she seems to want. Plus, Miguel declines Lyla's suggestion that he visit Tempest's grave, implying that maybe he would've learned it didn't exist if he had visited it.
Anyway, Tempest is a story for another time. At this point, Miguel decides to go all avenging angel, and it's a pretty great sequence of events. He returns to the scene of the crime, where Lyla is able to reconstruct events like we're playing "Batman: Arkham Knight." Miguel learns that the car was driven by a robot, and he has Lyla download the schematics to his computer at Alchemax. As he's studying them there, his assistant Raul enters and recognizes them as the designs of Dr. Cronos. (Apparently, they're conveniently distinctive.) Raul exposits that Cronos taught Victor Von Doom until "Von Doom kind of blew himself up." He later experienced some health problems and subsequently disappeared from sight. Raul tracks down an address for him, and Miguel straps on the new suit that Peter designed for him to confront him. (The suit itself is a marvel. It helps accentuate all his powers and builds off his previous suit's attributes, like giving him boots with thrusters that help him launch into gliding easier.) Miguel breaks into the warehouse where Cronos lives and discovers that he's become a not-too-happy cyborg.
Everything flows pretty logically here, so I don't have too much to say. The only obvious question I have is why Cronos would just be sitting around an empty warehouse if robots that he designed were part of a coordinated terrorist attack. Even if he didn't do it, presumably the FBI would've taken him into custody to ask him a few questions. After all, the events of this issue take place only three days, and not three weeks, after the attacks. That said, David usually has explanations for these sorts of questions, so we'll see where we go. David's also stoking other fires here, like Captain America apparently existing as a separate consciousness inside Roberta and Mac Gargan and Tiberius Stone planning on using Alchemax research to create the perfect torturers for their new "Lock-Up" facility. It all feels suitably dark and epic for this title.
*** (three of five stars)
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