In the previous comic, Doctor Conners is having nightmares about what he could possibly do to his family as the Lizard and desperately wants a cure. Meanwhile, Spider-Man is fighting a bad guy and gets hurt and turns to Doctor Conners to stitch him up. Doctor Conners looks at Spider-Man's blood under the microscope and sees possibilities there. So does his assistant. This could possibly fix his arm and cure him of being the Lizard. But first, he asks Peter for permission to use his blood to do tests and experiments. At first Peter is apprehensive, but in the end, he agrees. Then one night the creature they have been growing in the lab based off of Peter's blood escapes and kills the school's night guard. It has Peter's memories and is searching for Peter when it sees someone from Peter's circle of friends and family and it kills Gwen Stacey. It kills them by puncturing a hole in their skin and draining the life out of them. Peter is devastated and he wants to destroy what killed the person who was close to him and he does. He severs all ties to Doctor Conner who turns himself into the police.

This comic opens up with Peter Parker having somehow swapped bodies with Wolverine. He gets to a phone and calls home to convince Wolverine to go to school because he can't miss another day of school or he'll fail. Wolverine, of course, doesn't want to go to school but is persuaded to go there. He tells him to get marked as there then ask to go to the bathroom. When Wolverine does this he is told he can't go.

Meanwhile, while waiting for Wolverine to come out of the school, Peter sees a driveby shooting and attempts to stop it but winds up getting arrested. He uses his call to call the X-Men but they don't believe him. It's up to Wolverine to break him out of prison. Now how will they separate their bodies?

In the second half of the comic Johnny Storm has to go back to high school to finish and get his degree. He winds up going to the same school as Peter Parker. He falls for a girl named Liz who also falls for him. Then one night at a campfire on the beach he gets to close and he sets himself on fire and suddenly his secret is out and Liz is no longer interested in him. Both Johnny and Spider-Man go to work together to stop some bad guys and try to heal his broken heart.

Peter is still mourning the loss of Gwen and how he wasn't there for her and he wonders if she ever forgave him for her father's death that he had nothing to do with. M.J. tells him that right before she dies they had a heart-to-heart conversation where Gwen said that she no longer blamed Peter for her father's death and that she wanted M.J. to know that she had no feelings whatsoever for Peter and to not worry about that just because they lived in the same house. It could have been the beginning of a wonderful friendship rather than the coda to two people who barely knew each other. This book, on the other hand, is kinda funny with Wolverine and Peter switching places and Johnny Storm coming to high school with Peter and having an adventure with him. This was a great book and I give it five out of five stars. ( )

This was an interesting volume full of one or two-shot stories. We open with a body switch between Wolverine and Peter which was confusing only because it seemed to come out of nowhere and wasn't explained until the end. I remember seeing this happen during an episode of the Spider-man tv show and enjoyed it then; this didn't have the same magic, though there were definitely some fun moments as they had to deal with being in each other's bodies. Then, my favorite storyline, Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four spends a couple days at Peter's school. That was awesome, even if it didn't end particularly well for poor Johnny's love life or normal life for that matter. I looooooved that Reed built a watch that monitored Johnny's use of his powers. Of course he would. And then Dr. Strange... who is stil a bit of a mystery to me in general, but especially to Peter who has no memory of encountering him before. Peter's dream world was sad and disturbing. Poor sweet kid, just wants to use his powers for good. He doesn't deserve all this.

I suspect that's not the last time I'll think that during this series read. ( )

There are three separate story arcs in this trade. The first is a funny two-part story about Wolverine and Spider-Man, somehow, waking up one morning and finding that their bodies have been switched. Of course, this leads to trouble and hilarity. I thought that this was probably the best arc in the trade.

The second is about Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four. His sister and father have decided that he needs to finish high school, and since Johnny has been cooped up in the Baxter Building recently, he decides that he wants to go to a real school. Coincidentally, he decides to go to the school where Peter Parker also attends. Things don't go so well for Johnny, but he and Peter team-up for a light adventure.

And finally, the more "serious" arc, involves Peter meeting the second Doctor Strange (the first having disappeared twenty years ago). This was probably my least favorite arc in the trade, mainly because it doesn't add anything new to the heaping plate of angst that is being served to Peter on a regular basis.

This trade felt a little disjointed, especially after having just read the eleventh trade in the series. At the end of that trade, Peter, in a fit of anger over Gwen's death, decides that he doesn't want to be Spider-Man any longer because he can't trust anyone not to use him and the people around him only end up dying because of his secret identity. But now, in this trade, Peter's back into Spider-Man mode without any explanation or exposition. Only Mary-Jane makes a vague comment that she likes the fact that Peter has resolved to not be Spider-Man as much, and yet Peter spends just as much time in costume as he did in previous trades. ( )