Guaranteed not to be fabulous! I have reached the end of my torment. Only one more issue to freedom. And look, Sandman’s finally shown up. Well, we begin with JJJ delighted by Spider-Man’s seeming cowardice, as in ASM 18.
I’m sorry, who is this? Who is this woman so skinny she could get work as a sign post? “Betty Brant,” you say? That name does sound familiar. All of a sudden, 12 issues in, someone other than Peter gets to have a life for a second. And I guess Betty is, indeed, not a teenager? SO creepy!!! She could at least be 18 or 19, teenagers of legal voting age can be secretaries! Ew. Byrne follows the original comic in having the superhero community react to Spider-Man’s supposed cowardice, even letting DD recap issue 10. This is crazy! Counting Betty back there, it’s four whole pages of exposition in the most rushed comic series ever made!
Anna Watson looked more or less as she does in the late 90s in the first issue of this series. This is a completely different woman in panel 2.
“Flash hasn’t been my boyfriend for a long time, Peter. Not that you’d know that, since this comic only cares about poorly recreating Ditko fights.” Spidey tries to cash in on his celebrity by going to the Marvel offices and trying to offer real life Spider-Man group editor Ralph Macchio the rights to make comics about him, but Ralph sticks a post it note to Spidey’s head that says “weak” and tells him they only deal with real heroes. Ouch, Ralph, jeez. I know he tried this in an earlier issue of the original series, but I don’t feel like looking it up. I’m really spent here. Then Spider-Man happens on crooks about to rob a jewelry store, as in the original, but instead of being too scared to go after them, he just goes in too soon, allowing them to claim they didn’t do anything wrong and yell for the police, making him flee.
Yes, because they both have that inexplicable hair, Byrne says they’re related. If you have curly hair, you are related to all others with curly hair! Byrne says so! Peter gets home to find Dr. Bromwell just stopping by to check on May. He gives Peter a new prescription, which sends him into a tailspin worrying about money. He tries to call Betty, to have a shoulder to lean on, but she doesn’t answer. I mean, this was never going to be as good as the original comics, but if every issue was an actual comic, like, this one, it would’ve been a LOT less painful. He tries to catch her on the street going to work the next day, but she says they’re done, even as she secretly feels bad for him and says she still feels for him. Then another bit of old business from an earlier story, Spider-Man trying to sell his webbing formula, but failing because it doesn’t last. And then… he just randomly sees Sandman climbing up the side of a building.
More or less the cover of ASM 4. They battle it out for awhile until Sandy smashes our hero through a plate glass window, which hilariously cuts the entire face off his mask without injuring him at all. With his face exposed, he has no choice but to run away, and be mocked for it all over again. I wonder why Byrne was so committed to not letting him avoid violence for Aunt May’s sake. He dropped that angle entirely. And it was such a unique place to put a superhero. Well, Spidey hides in an alley and changes into Peter so Sandman can ask him if he’s seen Spider-Man, as before. Then he goes home. May wants him to know Anna went to pick up her niece from the airport (Pointless), and then they see JJJ on TV crowing about Spider-Man, like at the beginning of ASM 18, now near the end of it. So Peter goes upstairs and throws away his costume, as before.
STILL with the blue spider! Flash gets beat up, as before, and it’s actually done pretty well for laughs. Peter tries to talk to him about it at school the next day, it doesn’t go well, we’ve seen this. And speaking of things we’ve seen…
Byrne has managed to make adult Ned dating teenage Betty into adult Ned getting adult Betty to stop dating teenage Peter. Sheesh. “Betty was the center of my life! That’s why our entire courtship wasn’t in this book, and why we barely saw her even after we allegedly started dating!” Ugh. He goes home, Aunt May gives him a truly shockingly bad new version of the speech that inspires him to become Spider-Man again. Like, it’s barely anything. Just a casual, “I’m not a quitter, don’t worry about me!” delivered with a smile. Baffling. But it still has the same effect.
Oh yes. They’ve been quite clear the whole time. ASM 1-18, quitting in the middle of a 3-part story. I’ve run out of ways to describe how unbelievable anything this series does is. But.. “We thought you might like it if this story ended instead of just stopping.” Bananas. So this issue is longer than normal. The Enforcers are cut out of their 3rd appearance as Spider-Man and Sandman battle, and the Torch doesn’t show up, either. And how does the fight end?
With the ending of ASM 4, of course. I’ve said “unbelievable” so many times it doesn’t mean anything anymore. What a crappy end to this series! Fitting, I guess. And that’s that, my punishment is over. By the time this debacle ended, the real comics were 10 issues deep. Byrne is the regular artist on ASM. He said in that magazine I referenced in the first issue that he felt like it would be weird for him to come in, change the old stories, and leave, so he felt like he should get involved with the stuff happening in the main books, too. I disagree! But I wasn’t asked. But, now, we can roll the clock back, not unlike an issue of Chapter One, to 10 months ago, and check out the 2nd ever Amazing Spider-Man #1. FINALLY.