While this is running directly after the last post, as I type this, I’m coming back from the longest break I’ve taken since I started this. It’s been over a month since I read one of these. But now I’m back, refreshed and ready for more mediocrity, as we trudge onward into the future. The good news is, I know ASM gets better with #30, and PPSM sometime before that. It’s not too terribly long. I just gotta hang in there through it getting way, way worse first. But not quite yet. For this issue, it’s just kind of the usual for relaunch ASM, including a random villain. Spider-Man hasn’t faced the Blob since the frankly uncomfortable TAC 91. How’s it go this time? I do not recall. Byrne is suddenly inking himself this month, presumably because Chapter One wrapped the month before, but if you think not having to draw 2 Spider-Man comics a month is gonna make him inking his own pencils stop looking scratchy and unfinished, well, you don’t know that he seems to like it that way. Also the first issue of X-Men: The Hidden Years is out only a month after this, so he presumably rolled right into that bit of revisionist X-Men history as soon as the ink was dry on Chapter One. What a time to be alive. “Hey John, you’ve just done a critically and commercially unsuccessful book set in Spider-Man’s past, what next?” “How ‘bout one for the X-Men?” Hidden Years, at least, didn’t have such a hard time justifying its existence. It was meant to show what the X-Men were up to during the years their series was all reprints. Did it include them rehabbing Morbius after MTU 4? Seems like a 50/50 shot. That series’ 22 issue run was inked by Tom Palmer, so I guess Byrne felt he could take over inks here. Unfortunately. Joe Rosas colors.
ROUGH. The 2-page spread that follow says they love each other deeply and they want to be together tonight. It’s been a month for me, but I have not forgotten all the abandoned cliffhangers of PPSM 10. So how did Pete & MJ end up not even seeing each other when she got back, among other instantly, improbably dropped plots?
“‘Scuse me while I get totally nude out of nowhere, Jill.” What a mess. What a messy looking book. Meanwhile, Spider-Man swings to the Bugle, doing some additional recapping, only to be greeted by a way-too-friendly JJJ who shoves a cigar in his mouth and ushers him into meet with Robbie and a Larice Bernhard, fashion & living editor. She wants an exclusive with MJ, and JJJ is trying to butter Pete up, but he’s fine as long as he gets to take the photos. However..
… maybe not a good time! Soon the place turns into a crime scene, and lowly Peter Parker can’t convince the cops MJ is his wife to even get in and find out what’s going on. He sees MJ & Jill being escorted out as sirens approach. And then our man’s danger sense goes off, and he feels like something’s coming right at them. So he leaps past the various cops milling around to tackle MJ to the ground. The cops all put guns in his face and are obviously very upset, but he tells them they should get out of there.
Such a bizarre character. What exactly does touching the ground do to make him immovable? Is his mutant power just having sticky feet? As cops ineffectually shoot at the Blob and he awkwardly exposits why he’s robbing an armored car instead of doing the various things he’s apparently up to in the X-Books, Peter slips away to change clothes. While he’s gone some cops decide to ram Blob with their car, despite “every law enforcement department” having records about how he’s immovable and whatnot, and then Spider-Man webs Blob’s face and comes in with a swinging kick.
Oooooohkaay. Spidey rolls up a newspaper and jams it in Blob’s mouth so he can breathe as he’s enveloped in webbing, then swings away with some witty patter at the cops.
If Jill is assuming Spider-Man is the bad guy in that last moment, that makes a lot of sense. Well, to be continued in PPSM 11, right? Probably ought to just… pop on over to that issue next post, right? Well…