The Amazing Spider-Man #1000 promised the most recent attempt by Marvel Comics to destroy Peter Parker’s life. The previous issue had Spider-Man trying to save Ghost-Spider from his own allies in the Department of Damage Control (DODC). This put a strain on his relationship with DODC and Agent Griffyn, who Spider-Man had been working with for a few issues. While that put Spider-Man in a tough situation and possibly on the wrong side of the law, something worse happened at the end of that issue. He got a phone call from Ricardo Villanueva, telling him that Aunt May had a stroke and was in the hospital. The issue ended with Spider-Man racing to the hospital to be by her side. That led to the anniversary issue where Peter Parker lost the one thing that meant the most in his life.
In the first story in the issue by Joe Kelly and Pepe Larraz, “Ravaged,” Peter gets to the hospital and finds his cousin Cormac Crane sitting by the bed. Cormac is May and Ben’s son, but she believed he died at birth until he showed up in her life in Amazing Spider-Man #29. This is when Aunt May wakes up. She looks at Cormac and knows him as her son, but when she looks at Peter, she has no idea who he is. When he says he is her nephew, she mentions Richard and Mary’s son and asks why he is there. May says she has no idea who he is.
Peter Parker was distraught, and when he took a walk with Cormac, he was trying to figure out what was happening and how long May might have this memory loss. What he found out next was that this wasn’t a stroke-induced memory loss. When Peter was struggling with this, Cormac didn’t hide the truth. He had a costume suddenly appear on him, and he attacked Peter in the hospital. Whatever powers Cormac has have allowed him to reach into Peter’s mind and start to mess with his memories. This is when the comic showed that Cormac did this to May, stripping all the memories of Peter out of her mind so she would be his mother, and only his mother.
When Peter asked who Cormac was, Cormac repeated that he was Peter’s cousin and May’s son, and while he didn’t want to hurt Peter, he would if he had to. Cormac announced that he was Ravage, and he planned to take every memory of Peter’s childhood with May and Ben and take it for himself, while leaving Peter with whatever was left over. Ravage said that he fixed Aunt May by exhuming Peter from her life. What he wants, he takes, and with this, Spider-Man attacked Ravage with all the hatred in his heart.
Peter Parker lost a lot in his life. He blamed himself for Uncle Ben’s death, and when Ravage touched on those memories, it caused him to hate Peter more than ever before, blaming Peter for Cormac’s dad dying. Losing Aunt May is pushing Spider-Man into a place he had not been in years. Peter and Mary Jane Watson gave up their marriage to save Aunt May’s life, and that alone says everything anyone needs to know about May’s importance in his life. For someone to come in and strip all the memories of Peter from May’s mind and then try to steal Peter’s memories of May was arguably the worst thing that any villain ever tried to do to Spider-Man.
Ravage has a weapon that he used to hold onto May’s memories of Peter, although this issue showed that he can see those memories with his hands, making him some sort of psychic as well. Ravage, in his mind, believes Peter never deserved to have May because he, not Peter, should have been raised by May and Ben instead. Cormac was raised by a wealthy family, and he has resources beyond what Peter ever had, but he has the blind jealousy of meeting someone who had a childhood with May that he never had a chance to experience. His goal is to steal it.
If Spider-Man were willing to make a deal with Mephisto to save Aunt May’s life, what would he be willing to do to stop Ravage and return May to normal? The fight ended when Cormac almost killed an entire cable car full of innocent people in a blind rage when he learned about Ben’s death, and Spider-Man had to save all those people while Ravage escaped. The issue ended with Spider-Man trying to figure out what to do next, and if the past is any indication, Ravage doesn’t know what is coming to him.
