This is the debut of a new feature that is a bit tricky. I was originally going to do this as a left unresolved, but then I thought, "It's really not unresolved. It's resolved. It just wasn't explained." So then I thought, "You know, there are a number of just inexplicable comic book plots out there," so that's what this feature will be - spotlights on unexplained comic book plot points (unexplained in the comics themselves, of course, as quite often there are outside explanations, like "the artist made a mistake," etc.).

The first one is how Spider-Man skipped out on the final battle during the Onslaught crossover.

Onslaught was the manifestation of Professor Xavier's psychic abilities tainted by having Magneto's personality mixed with the Professor's (after Xavier wiped Magneto's mind out during the Fatal Attractions crossover). Magneto's personality amped up all the worst parts of Xavier's personality and the end result was a psychic being with its own personality - the malevolent being known as Onslaught. It encased itself in a special armor so it could hold physical form and then it started kicking some ass.

The final battle took place in Central Park, where the X-Men are getting destroyed by Onslaught when suddenly, the other prominent superheroes of the Marvel Universe show up to help out...

That, by the way, is in and of itself a mistake, as the mutated version of Wasp didn't shrink.

So in a big fight, the Hulk is able to crack Onslaught's armor and now his psychic energy is leaking out there, which was dangerous, as now there was no way of physically harming him. However, they discovered that if humans entered the psychic energy, they could absorb some of his power (mutants couldn't do it because he would just take over their bodies as a host, which is what he was planning to do with the kidnapped X-Man), so the heroes all sacrificed themselves to suck away his power, even though it seemingly killed them doing so...

Heroic and all, but where, exactly, was Spider-Man during this dramatic battle in the middle of New York City? Surely he must have had a good reason to miss out on it, right? Right?

Go to the next page to see where he was - it really doesn't make any sense...

This crossover took place during the time that Peter Parker and his clone, Ben Reilly, thought that Peter was the clone and that Ben was the original Peter Parker. Ben had taken over as Spider-Man, as Peter and Mary Jane had left town. Peter and Mary Jane had recently returned to New York City and during Spider-Man #72 (by Howard Mackie, John Romita Jr. and the late, great Al Williamson), Peter (whose powers had been coming and going at odd times), teams up with Ben to take down a Sentinel (Onslaught had taken control of Sentinels as part of his attack on New York City).

And that's it. They just never get there.

The next issue of Spider-Man to address Onslaught, Amazing Spider-Man #416 (by Tom DeFalco, Ron Garney and Al Williamson), Spider-Man breaks up a couple of kids fighting over whether the X-Men should be blamed for what happened to the heroes and he honors his lost friends with them...

He never says anything about the final battle at all or why he was unable to get to the final fight. Obviously, Spider-Man wasn't part of the Heroes Reborn deal, so he couldn't sacrifice himself to Onslaught, but if they didn't want him there, they shouldn't have had him on the way to the battle. And they definitely shouldn't have said to follow the story to the issue where Spider-Man isn't even in.

Another inexplicable bit is that Black Widow is shown to be at the final battle as well and she, also, didn't sacrifice herself for no reason (besides her also not being part of the heroes used in Heroes Reborn).

Okay, that's it for this first installment! Feel free to make suggestion for future installments by e-mailing me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com! And feel free to be contrarians and try to explain why this somehow made sense!