"Wake Me Up I Gotta Be Dreaming" as the second Annual of the Web of Spider-Man comic, published in 1986. It was written by Ann Nocenti, illustrated by Arthur Adams, and edited by Christopher J. Priest, at the time known as Jim Owsley.

This one takes some explaining, and not in a bad way.

The story opens with Warlock, of The New Mutants, watching a dozen different televisions at once. Warlock is imbibing Earth culture, as he understands it, and feels sympathy with Godzilla and Frankenstein's Monster. The New Mutants object to his loud noise and inability to tell reality from fantasy, and Warlock decides to go to Manhattan to understand humanity better. We are then introduced to Spider-Man, on patrol. He finds rabbits, the subjects of medical experiments, running loose in the streets, and finds that the Animal Liberation Front has sabotaged the lab. This leads to an interchange between Spider-Man and the activists that is brief, but by no means facile. We then switch back to Warlock, in Manhattan. The childlike but super-powered Warlock tries to engage with passersby, but only manages to scare them off. This is until a seemingly-kind couple bring him home, offering him hospitality with ulterior motives. It turns out that they are researchers, and they are interested in Warlock's techno-organic circuitry. When they meddle with Warlock's body, he begins to lose his personality and become physically larger, transforming into first Godzilla and then King Kong, in a rampage that brings Spider-Man's attention. Spider-Man can't do much, and Warlock, in an attempt to save others, transforms into a rocket and explodes in the sky---before coming back down and regenerating himself. Warlock learns that television isn't real, the scientists learn something about ethical restraint, and Spider-Man is left confused.

As is sometimes the case in the Spider-Man Annuals, despite being Marvel's flagship character, Spider-Man was a bystander and facilitator in this comic. None of the usual Spider-Man skill at combat or snappy wit are present. Of the 31 pages of the main story, Spider-Man appears on 20 of them, while Warlock appears on 26 of them. And to me, it shows the willingness of Marvel to take chances: to take a Spider-Man annual and turn it into a story about bioethics where Spider-Man is basically a supporting character shows that Christopher J. Priest and Jim Shooter were willing to take chances. The art is also extremely good, and not in the usual Spider-Man mold. Arthur Adams is a very skilled artist, and the art in this issue is in turns surreal, realistic, frightening, and humorous. Everything about the story showed that Marvel was willing to put in extra effort, and take extra chances, with their most popular hero. And it paid off.

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