The story line proved controversial with fans, as it resurrected Peter Parker's elderly Aunt May, who had been killed off at the height of the "Clone Saga" three years earlier in The Amazing Spider-Man #400.

Tom DeFalco, who had left months earlier with his Spider-Man: Identity Crisis story line, originally had intended for Peter and Mary Jane's daughter, May Parker, to be returned to them by Kaine.

After surviving an attempt on his life by supervillain Nitro, Norman Osborn makes a phone call to someone, telling them it was time for "the gathering of five".

[1] Norman Osborn and Gregory Herd have a meeting with Hamilton Cromwell, a Neomancer of the Technomancers, to try to persuade him to join The Gathering of Five and bring his piece to the ceremony.

Herd convinces Osborn to allow him to take Cromwell's place in the ceremony, instead of paying, for stealing the piece so he may try to heal his wife.

Spider-Man believes the Green Goblin is holding his daughter alive there and that she did not die at the end of the Clone Saga because of what Mongrain told MJ.

Using a blood sample from one of Peter's science experiments as a child, Richards can confirm her identity, but there is a mysterious device implanted in her brain that will eventually kill her if not removed soon.

[10] At the very beginning of the issue, it is revealed that the Green Goblin received the curse of insanity rather than the gift of power from The Gathering of Five, and he only believes that he has killed Spider-Man.