We’ve made it to the last of the anniversary books. Technically, 2nd-to-last, though for its content, it should not have been, and also, it’s ASM, you’d expect it to be first or last rather than 3rd out of 4. But what it may lack in correct release placement, it makes up for in size, 80 pages as opposed to the other 3’s 48, and for only 45 cents more. This is clearly the one to get. I don’t recall anything like this for the 40th or 50th anniversaries. They were marked, of course, but not in a series of 4 oversized and overpriced tomes. This one’s hologram and poster are appropriately by Bags…
And now we can get on with the show. The usual gang is here to celebrate the milestone, and they begin with a page of The Lizard jumping around NY on a mysterious mission, no longer in thrall to Calypso. Then we cut to Billy Connors’ birthday party, where Peter & MJ are the only adults around other than Martha, which seems… odd.
I mean, despite Spider-Man’s long friendship with this family, Peter Parker barely has anything to do with them. No one seems to be considering this.
Lizard cuts Billy’s cheek with his claw, saying it will do nicely, and then Spider-Man bursts in and kicks him in the face. Martha tries to tell Spidey that it’s Curt, but it’s not anymore, not after that kick, so they begin tearing up the apartment ad MJ shuffles all the other kids out of it. Where are their parents? Why are these 2 acquaintances the only other adults invited? I didn’t know enough to find this weird as a kid. Spidey and The Lizard battle around for a few pages before Billy breaks his skateboard over his dad’s head, jolting him out of his killing rage.
But Billy grabs a rather comically large knife and skateboards off after Spider-Man, knowing he’ll find his dad. Spidey tracks The Lizard to a manhole and dives in, not seeing Billy arrive right behind him, as we cut to those mysterious people from the last couple issues, getting in a taxi and saying May Parker will be in for the shock of her life. Gosh, who could they be? Then it’s back to the sewer.
In a rare continuity glitch for Bags, that knife got way smaller and more kitchen-knife-looking between pages. We remember Doc Ock’s goofy plan from TAC 175. The machinery is hitting Spider-Man’s danger sense, and he realizes it’s been trapped. If it’s brought to full power, it will explode. So, naturally, The Lizard appears, with Connors in charge, saying Calypso’s magic “altered his metabolism,” making him switch from warm to cold blood at random. That he accidentally smashed his way into this lab in a fit of rage, and now hopes to replicate that metabolic change, but “reverse the dominance factor” so The Lizard’s personality can never take over again. He needed a sample of “untainted DNA from his direct lineage,” and that’s why he cut Billy. Unfortunately, Spider-Man telling him the machines will blow up if he tries to use them doesn’t sit well. One wonders why machines designed to destroy The Daily Bugle would slot into super genetics experiments, but I guess Doc Ock was a multitasker. Anyway, it’s fightin’ time.
They battle around the sewer for a few pages, Spider-Man unable to bring himself to really lay into his friend, until a tail swipe in the wrong location brings down the house.
Well, well, well. Spider-Man finds himself trapped beneath A Really Heavy Thing for a 2nd time in this block. Hang on a sec:
Ok, got that done. So, now we recreate Spider-Man Must Lift A Really Heavy Thing almost verbatim from ASM 33, and now Spider-Man is free. I mean, seriously. Even the splash page of him getting loose is a direct homage. Get some new material, guys. Spidey almost killed himself lifting the heavy thing, but still gets back to the lab. The Lizard’s already in the thingie, and he finds the self-destruct is gonna go in one minute. He worries trying to smash the gear would only make it happen sooner.
The Lizard is generally a one-trick pony like Mysterio and Kraven. His story is almost always the same, almost always ends the same way. But at least it has some heart. The battle for his soul and the future of his family is more compelling than the other 2, and Spider-Man being his friend when he’s not scaly helps, too. Anyway, our man swings home, and finds MJ agitated, telling him May called very upset and wouldn’t explain why over the phone. So they grab a cab out to Queens and…
Well, there ya go. Prepare for the comics of this era to focus in on “The Mystery of Peter Parker’s Parents,” starting with next post. It’s a weird one. Here, they wanna tease you about it.
Next up, a text piece by Stan Lee called “The Saga of Spidey’s Parents.” Which is basically just him describing what happened in ASM Annual 5, except in the context of listing its plot points as ideas they came up with. What’s most shocking about this is the repeated use of phrases like “we had an idea” and “we thought of…” and the credit to his brother, Larry Leiber, for helping develop the story. With the way Stan talked about the history of Marvel characters by ‘92, I’m surprised he even mentioned Larry, let alone gave him so much credit. I mean, this is well past him making the decision to start taking credit for creating Dr. Strange even though he wrote to people in the 60s saying Strange was all Ditko’s idea and that he didn’t even really like it, Stan was shameless at this point (And we all bought it, not knowing any better). Anyway, that didn’t tell anyone who’s read ASM Annual 5 much, and now it’s on to the next thing:
It’s Michelinie, Aaron Lopresti and Kevin Tinsley giving these specials a perfect 4/4 pointless retellings of Spider-Man’s origin, this time with JJJ making assumptions about who he was and why he became Spider-Man running over the panels, and of course, making it about himself.
Marla’s gone blonde! Next up, one of the book’s biggest draws, the reunion of Stan Lee & John Romita, Sr. And it’s yet another place I’m gonna be negative about Stan. Sorry. But the big thing here is…
…a plot by Tom DeFalco. See, I’ve read a lot about the history of Marvel. Too much, maybe. And it becomes apparent if you spend too much time looking at this stuff that Stan Lee, when he called himself “the writer” of the old comics, fully meant “the scripter.” There are dozens of instances on record, in print, of him expressing this to someone. That his idea of writing in “The Marvel Method” was letting the artist come up with a story with little or no input from Stan, draw it, and then put some dialogue over it. Which is hardly writing a story, but he didn’t seem to see it that way. And any time Marvel wanted to bring him in to do a new comic, he always has a plot by someone else. Often Tom DeFalco, as seen in ASM Annual 18 and this. Stan wrote plenty of things in the first 20 years of his career, and it can be debated how much of a role he had in creating the various heroes, but I sincerely doubt he wrote an actual story after like 1963. And it’s just gross that he’s gonna have this “creator of the Marvel Universe” title for all of history when he did so little to create the stories that built it. But, anyway, MJ remembers Gwen, in a splash that really pulls from ol’ Jazzy Johnny’s many years doing romance comics.
These pages are, obviously, gorgeous. Romita was 62 drawing this. I mean, incredible. All praise to the master. MJ’s thoughts turn to how George died, and it’s funny, because in my mind, Romita recreates the events of ASM 90 panel-for-panel, but I looked it up, and he doesn’t do that all. I just saw this years before I ever saw ASM 90, so this is my oldest memory of those events, and this is what they look like. MJ continues flashing back to events she didn’t witness, like Gwen swearing to hate Spider-Man forever after her dad’s funeral.
Man, John Romita. A true god in the field. This could really just be a Romita & Son fanblog. Next up, a 2nd story that’s little more than an intro to an upcoming Prowler miniseries after TAC Annual 12’s. Really trying to sell it. Then comics historian Peter Sanderson has a text piece explaining the first 30 years of Spider-Man, but, like, this blog is doing that just fine for our purposes, if I do say so myself. Then the promised 5-page preview of Spider-Man 2099, and we’re out. We’re gonna close this block out looking into Richard & Mary’s reappearance.