The Evolution Saga
Return to Sender is the 10th and penultimate chapter in the Evolutionary War, Marvel's crossover of 1988 in which the High Evolutionary attempts to kick-start the next step in human evolution. This issue is written by Gerry Conway with art by Mark Bagley and, unlike a lot of the rest of the Evolutionary War issues, the plot of this one began several issues earlier in The Spectacular Spider-Man.
The story concerns the Gwen Stacy clone from the 70s and the High Evolutionary's quest to capture and study her. Spider-Man arrives and is once again faced with unresolved feelings for Gwen. And then there's an entirely random Young Gods plot going on in the background. Altogether, it's not a brilliant story, but it's not awful either. The character work with Peter facing his feelings for Gwen despite his recent marriage to Mary Jane is a definitive highlight. On the other hand, the stuff with the High Evolutionary feels like an afterthought and the Young Gods stuff is entirely irrelevant.
The problem is, this late in the crossover, other than random appearances by the High Evolutionary and vague references to his masterplan, there's not all that much linking the stories together. At first, I felt that perhaps the Young Gods stuff should've been a sub-plot throughout various of the Evolutionary War issues rather than confined to one issue, but their contribution to the storyline was ultimately that of nothing. Despite the Gwen stuff being one of the elements that was a lead-in to the event, it also turned out to be a bunch of nothing and gave us a retcon that it's not even a clone of Gwen Stacy and is some actor which in itself is retconned several years later so that she is again a clone.
Bagley, who also drew one of the earlier issues of Evolutionary War, adds a nice bit of consistency between these rather tenuous Spider-Man crossover issues. As I said last time, I believe this stuff is potentially Bagley's first Spider-Man work which, considering he later went on to become one of the most popular Spider-Man artists, is of course interesting to see.
Overall, this issue isn't anything special unfortunately. Other than Peter's reactions to the return of Gwen, the rest is almost entirely superfluous and needless towards the Evolutionary War. The fact that the Gwen Stacy angle of the Evolutionary War was actually teased for several issues beforehand, to see that it didn't really come to anything is just disappointing. Topped with a confused and nonsensical retcon and a random go-nowhere sub-plot featuring the Young Gods, I'd say this issue is generally a bit of a letdown.