Feels to me like Byrne’s lightly referencing John Romita, Jr.’s favorite DD running pose here. Jr. really made DD his own during his glorious run with Ann Nocenti. I, personally, always think of the Romita, Jr. run when I picture DD. I may be biased (See any post with his art in it on this blog), but maybe not if Byrne’s doing it, too. This month, Byrne & Al Milgrom are credited as “artists,” which usually, but not necessarily, indicates the first name just did breakdowns. Also Mark Bernardo helps Mark McNabb with colors. And Byrne’s just lost his mind. We open on page 10 of ASM 16. We are at the Circus of Crime and everyone’s been hypnotized.
Famous redhead Matt Murdock is suddenly a brunette. The retcons in this!
Notice how crisp and refined everything suddenly is. Ditching the scratchy, loose, unfinished nature of Byrne’s inks would be obvious even if there weren’t credits. Byrne had no problem giving such luminaries as Doctor Octopus and Electro radically different costumes, but the Ringmaster is sacrosanct, apparently. As with the original, DD quickly realizes he can’t outfight Spider-Man, and so steals Ringy’s hat instead.
This comic has a dumb advertisement mini-comic bound in AND another 3-card ad for trading cards, making it even harder to read. Thanks, marketing department! I sure am looking forward to dealing with this again in as many as 5 future issues when I get back to regular programming. Maybe more, even, I don’t know. Byrne avoiding the very Ditko-y weirdness of Spider-Man being like “I don’t need YOUR help, Daredevil!” is a positive, but having Matt just leave without a goodbye or anything is strange. And, as you can tell by Spider-Man’s exposition in the dream thing there, we are not flashing back to the rest of ASM 16. Good business with May, JJJ & Betty, a more reasonable introduction to Daredevil and his cast? No THANK you, apparently. Another half an issue never happened. Well, anyway, Spider-Man beats everyone up and de-hypnotizes the crowd, as before. However, you may have noticed we skipped ASM 15 entirely. That’s because a gorilla gets loose, and…
Woof. Just shy of half the issue was ASM 16, and the rest is going to condense all of 15. This is really, really nuts to me. And, in context historically, so very much the wrong choice. Comics are rapidly heading toward a trend people called “decompression.” Stories are soon going to take much longer to tell. Something that would’ve been a single issue in the 60s will be 3, 5, 6 issues long. It will be a massive success due to how it allows MORE room for character development as opposed to less, and will transform Marvel from the scrappy, desperate company emerging from bankruptcy into the slick media machine that will soon start work on the MCU. And here’s Byrne, turning 40 pages of 60s comics into 22 pages of 90s comics. Could not have his finger further from the pulse. Well, smash cut to JJJ demanding Peter get pictures of Kraven capturing Spider-Man, then to Chameleon reminding Kraven he’s here to get revenge for him. I will say all this compression does help Chameleon get his revenger closer to the incident that made him want revenge. They got that going for them, whatever it’s worth. So, soon, Spider-Man sees some suspicious looking guys running across a roof, and this time without seeing any tied up guards or evidence of wrongdoing, but still assaults them just in case. Then he has his first bout with Kraven, and almost to my surprise, gets his arm turned numb as in the original.
The next day, we get 3 whole panels of Peter Parker actually in school so he can break some beakers as in the original. It gives Flash a chance to make fun of him! Remember Flash?? And then, as he’s at home researching Kraven, another character gets to speak…
…for 3 whole panels. May trying to play matchmaker for Peter and the elusive Mary Jane Watson is from the original and all, but why waste time on that in a series where she’ll never appear? Especially after junking half of 2 comics, you waste time on setting up nothing? Well, anyway, Spidey goes to the fight…
Despite my distaste for Kraven, Ditko made this so thrilling in the original. But this, once again, just feels like greatest hits. Impressions of the fight rather than the real thing. Byrne’s managing to junk half of so many famous issues and still be in a rush is just sad. Spidey catches Kraven, it’s actually Chameleon, we know how it goes.
No drama, no chance for Spider-Man to seem like he might lose, and we’re out. And no MJ, either.