“Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” has a new catchphrase. “No one dies,” he vows but that doesn’t mean no one gets hurt.

In Amazing Spider-Man #685, he teams up with Silver Sable to stop Doctor Octopus from launching rockets that will supposedly fix the ozone (see: Spider-Man VS Al Gore). When Silver Sable blows up the factory, Spider-man chastises her but then proceeds to literally rip the Rhino a new one. “I said ‘no one dies’…” Spidey tells his teammate. “…didn’t say we couldn’t mess ’em up.”

Things get even darker when they interrogate Sandman for the next location. Silver Sable pours acid on Sandman but he’s sure Spidey is too much of a boy scout to let her kill him. “I think six billion lives are on the line! And if I have to waterboard you–” Spider-Man yells. “–or acidboard you to save them– I’ll do it! Don’t think I won’t!” Sandman doesn’t call his bluff, which it was (for now at least). “I have changed. But not that much,” Spider-Man thinks. “Not Yet.”

Spidey’s hunch turns out to be right. The rockets are really designed to destroy the ozone, but they get to the next base too late to stop the launch. The lesson seems to be torture works, you just have to use it more and faster to get fresh intel. Uncle Ben must be rolling over in his grave.