Goodness, the big question! It’s 1987 now, and David Michelinie is taking the reigns of ASM. He comes off a run on Web of Spider-Man, and we’ve already seen him do some stuff on the blog. He was writing when I came on the scene as a regular reader, but it’s awhile before we get that far. For now, it’s kind of a clean slate for ASM. After letting it drag on FOR EVER, consuming ASM and sometimes the other books, too, The Hobgoblin mystery was put to rest just last issue. That crazy mess of a story had been a driving force in this book for such a long time. With that done, and a new writer onboard, it’s time for something different. And we’ve got the legend, John Romita, Jr. on hand to get it rolling, with inks by Vince Colleta and colors by Bob Sharen.
As you can see, Spidey’s in the black suit again. Not the alien, though. I think the very month after our last ASM (262), he went with the regular cloth one Felicia made. In fact, by this point, he’d not worn the red & blues in years, which seems odd from here. And he’s happy! Maybe he’s not that happy. He says that, in spite of recently coming to terms with his double life once and for all (again… as he seems to have to do once a decade or so), he feels hollow and incomplete. A security guard drawn by him punching that smokestack interrupts his thoughts, and he swings off. He finds something to do immediately, as a guy calling himself The Preserver has put a gun to the head of (A really good likeness of) Mayor Ed Koch at a public ceremony celebrating a building renovation, telling people buildings like this can’t be torn down because of the history they represent. But…
Though Colletta is putting an unusual spin on it, Romita, Jr. is firmly in phase 2 of his artistic development. His work looks much less like his dad’s, and his figures have the beginnings of the remarkably 3D look and feel his work will take on over time. Spidey swings home and takes a shower, and then unexpectedly takes stock of his life. He realizes he’s so busy he doesn’t know what’s on TV and hasn’t bought any new music in ages, and has never really thought about how empty and lifeless his apartment is. He decides he needs someone to talk to, and who better than good ol’ Mary Jane?
Yeah, Peter’s rocking a mullet. JRJR has always tried to keep current fashion trends in his work, and that can often backfire. On the other hand, someone having the guts to change Pete’s hair at all is pretty interesting considering it’s been the same since 1961. Even MJ’s hair’s a little different. Pete & MJ are in a weird place at this point, not dating, but… not not dating, either. Out in Forest Hills, Peter finds Aunt May has a bit of a cold. The house is empty because all her boarders went to a local church bazaar. Peter suddenly doesn’t want to burden her with his own problems, seeing her sick, and decides to go look at his old room. May can’t help bringing him a snack.
Uh-oh. I’ve had this comic since I was, like, 12, and I know it by heart. But I only last year read ASM 181, in which Peter leaves that microscope on Uncle Ben’s grave on the anniversary of his death, and then some guy comes by and picks it up. That microscope hasn’t been in this house since the 70s. But now… it has. Peter broods about how he’s let his love of science slip away recently as he walks over to the church bazaar to see if he can find his microscope. He passes all the various carnival stuff until…
I’m sure all this random exposition won’t come in handy later. Peter introduces himself, and Father Curtis cuts him off to say how incredibly generous Aunt May’s donation was, and that the microscope was added to their auction. Peter doesn’t have the heart to ask for it back, so he just says they’re happy to help and leaves. Meanwhile, we see that nice young man from the “Heaven’s Angels” has a gun in his waist. Looks like trouble to me. As Peter continues wandering the bazaar, MJ calls Aunt May’s house looking for him.
Whaaaaat? What could that mean? Back at the church, Peter’s found the auction, and decided to try to win back his microscope, but he’s only got $42 to work with. As the auction gets started, there’s a commotion outside as some kids rob some of the money collected by the rides. Peter worries that leaving might mean he’ll lost the microscope forever, but… he’s Spider-Man, man.
He follows the thieves as they run past the church, which sets off his Spider Sense. He abandons the thieves to find something far worse happening there. Max has drawn on the cops stationed inside and taken the sceptre. I know you’re shocked! He says he & his gang only joined Heaven’s Angels to line up a big score. His friends stealing the small change is just a distraction.
Obviously, Max is outclassed, but the cops start shooting at Spidey, like a couple of dumb dumbs. Father Curtis runs in and tells them to stop, and Max escapes in the confusion to a nearby constructions site, where 2 kids playing are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Max grabs one of them.
Maybe posting those two pages is overboard, but it’s such a well-rendered sequence. Spidey sees that the kid is reunited with his parents, and then instinctively sets up to get some pictures of Max being arrested before remembering with a start that he’s missing the auction. His microscope is jusssst about to sell for $40 as he runs in and yells “forty-two dollars!”
Get ready for more full pages, because this is it:
Peter proposes for a 2nd time! Surely it can’t go as badly this time? Can it go worse? No question that John Sr. hopped in to ink that last page, huh? But what will MJ say? And what’s got her so worked up? We’ll find out next issue.
Vince Colletta has a largely deserved reputation for being a lazy inker. He did a lot of classic jobs, most notably prime Jack Kirby Thor, where he infamously just erased backgrounds he didn’t feel like inking. Sacrilege. But I gotta say, this issue looks phenomenal to me. Even as he was defacing Kirby’s pencils, he was also applying a more scratchy, crosshatch-heavy style to The King back in the day, and it gave Kirby a very unique look & feel without ever leaving you in doubt as to who drew the pages.. His hatchy inks over this period of Romita, Jr. really, really works. This was my first exposure to Romita, Jr.’s art, and I don’t know if you picked this up, but I am SOMETHING of a fan, so I guess I could be biased in some ways, but I find myself wishing we’d gotten to see more of this pair together. Alas, JRJR switches to just layouts next issue and is gone the one after. Who knows what might have been?
Also, uh, spoilers, but Pete & MJ were already married when I got onboard about a year and change after this, so when I found this one at a flea market (I think), as a very young man, I had to have it. It’s like I’ve mentioned on other comics, it has a totemic quality to me. I’ve had it so long, read it so many times, it’s totally committed to my memory. Coming on as an elementary school kid during the Todd McFarlane hysteria, everything I saw that he DIDN’T draw seemed a million years old. I mean, look at Pete & MJ on that Al Milgrom cover. Everyone does their own thing, but that’s still more or less following the John Romita, Sr. style guide from the 60s. The interiors are certainly more modern for their time, but still not nearly as radical as what I was looking at month-to-month. Since I had a couple of 70s comics I’d been studying my whole life, and things like this looked more like them than what I was reading, it just had this strange feeling of being a relic of a bygone age, even though it was only a couple years old when I got it.