WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Amazing Spider-Man #40, by Nick Spencer, Iban Coello, Zé Carlos, Brian Reber, Pete Pantazis and VC's Joe Caramagna, on sale now.
He's a gambling-obsessed, mustachioed fellow with a goofy helmet. His name is Chance, and he's not exactly one of Marvel's most high-profile villains, or even a particularly memorable one. In the Amazing Spider-Man storyline he's currently appearing in, it seems he's an unwitting cog in a large, sinister scheme. And yet, in issue #40 he seemingly gets the better of the wall-crawler -- and even more surprisingly, Spider-Man seems OK with that.
Chance first appeared in a Web of Spider-Man story in the 1980s as a criminal with a gimmick: he bets his fellow scofflaws that he can successfully commit certain crimes. This distinguishes him as a character who pursues villainy for fun and profit and to satisfy his own gambling addiction. He's mostly tangled with street-level superheroes like Daredevil and Hawkeye, with a handful of additional run-ins with Spider-Man over the years.
A few issues ago, Chance introduced his old frenemy, the assassin called the Foreigner, to Chance's new undetectable flying casino: the Palace. The Palace includes standard games like roulette, but also features Sportsbook, a special gambling system that allows players to place bets on the outcome of various super-powered battles. Foreigner seemed upset when he lost a bet on a Spider-Man fight against Maggia hitmen, but he turned the tables by pressuring Chance into a new wager. Foreigner declared that if Chance could steal one of Spider-Man's web-shooters, Foreigner would pay off all the debts incurred at the casino that night.
Chance put on the old jetpack and interrupted a podcast interview Spidey was doing with J. Jonah Jameson, but as the ensuing fight went on it appeared Chance's heart wasn't in it. When Foreigner's team of Jack O'Lanterns (a team of mercenaries modeled after the pumpkin-headed villain) showed up, they surprised both Spider-Man and Chance -- and they did manage to get a web-shooter into Chance’s hands, although Chance seemed none too happy about the possible repercussions. Having accomplished their goal, the whole group flew away.
There's obviously something fishy going on with Chance and the Foreigner that’s not quite clear yet, so we’ll have to wait a while before we can understand why Chance was so upset. But you know who should have been more upset? Spider-Man. He could have easily pursued his opponents and tried to reclaim the web-shooter, but after a brief internal debate, he opted to resume the podcast interview in the interest of good PR rather than chasing after a group of deadly supervillains who just stole one of his most important accessories.
As a scientist and an experienced superhero, Spider-Man should be more protective of his proprietary tech than to sit idly by as it flies away in the hands of known villains. For all he knows, they could be planning to use the web-shooter to reverse-engineer his webbing for nefarious purposes, or even to impersonate him while committing crimes. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But even beyond the web-shooter issue, the whole scenario is even more egregious because an essential part of Spider-Man’s origin story involves his decision to let a criminal get away, and the horrible consequences of that decision. His failure to stop the burglar who went on to kill his Uncle Ben is the whole reason he’s constantly talking about power and responsibility. In Amazing Spider-Man #40, he almost goes after them, telling Jonah “Innocent people are in danger!” But it doesn’t take long before he brushes it off as a “scavenger hunt” and forgets about it. This, despite the fact that he has no information about why Chance and the Jack O’Lanterns are attacking him in the first place. Spidey knows Chance well enough to know that he has committed murder before, and he can tell the Jack O’Lanterns aren’t playing around. Who knows how many other people’s Uncle Bens they might go on to kill?
By the end of the issue, it does become clear that the podcast is good for Spider-Man’s public image. But at what cost? As this storyline continues to play out, the web-slinger may come to regret his failure to act, even against a minor supervillain.