This month, what is more or less the stable cover treatment for Marvel Comics for the foreseeable future is in place. The little red rectangle with (Pretty arbitrary) content rating, issue number, legacy issue number, and credits. Taking up as little real estate as possible. Steve Ditko invented the corner box on ASM, an innovation that helped when books were on top of each other, fighting for newsstand space, but it’s a different world in 2002, and they’re not strictly necessary anymore, so they’re more or less over. Sometimes there will be a more complex trade dress, and once in awhile, someone will try to bring the corner box back, but it’s basically dead at Marvel. DC will continue to have them, then drop them, then sort of bring them back sometimes. Image still has them, at least in some cases, but it’s just the transparent “i” logo. End of an era. This is also the last issue of this 3-issue stint of Romita doing his own covers. He’ll still get a few in before he leaves the book, but most of the time, it’s someone else. We pick things up with a reporter outside the collapsed hotel, saying there’s no word yet on whether Spider-Man got out. He did not, and he’s scrambling to escape while trying not to black out.
Looks bad! Meanwhile, MJ and Lobster-Man are up for their screentests, with JMS doing a lot of inside baseball about the movie industry (And writers’ place in it) and once angina making it clear MJ is just a piece of meat here. Which is a bit awkward after reading JMS’s silent issue scripts about how sexy and barely clothed she had to be. Perhaps those in glass houses shouldn’t throw et ceteras. The writer bursts in and says the studio doesn’t like Lobster-Man’s origin. MJ asks what it is.
A little too meta there, J. Michael! Back in the wreckage, Spider-Man weighs his options. He can’t stay where he is or he’ll be crushed, and he can’t leave because he has no idea how to get out. But then he remembers Carlyle was going to the studio for hostages, and it’s time for the JMS version of Spider-Man Must Lift A Heavy Thing. At the studio, May has found her way to the set to pointedly tell MJ that Peter had to go, and then a security guard is thrown through the door.
Back at the wreckage…
“Hey, Johnny, you did Spider-Man Must Lift A Heavy Thing in SM 87, and you did it again in SM 98, and you mighta done it once more for good measure since, I don’t even remember, but you wanna take at least a 3rd run at it in the last 4 years?” “Sure.”
He did it. At the studio, Carlyle is ranting that he wants a guaranteed car out of here and no pursuit, but the authorities won’t take him seriously unless someone dies. And you’ll never guess, but he selects Aunt May to be the unlucky victim. And then someone smashes the wall open shouting “Leave that woman alone!”
EVERY time Ock and May’s history together comes up, I am delighted. Every time. An intense 2-page battle of the multi-armed crazy people ensues, and Carlyle is slowly getting the upper, uh, tentacle thanks to his extra modifications when Ock gets a claw right in his foe’s power pack.
Taking Doc’s hint, Spidey leaps onto Carlyle’s back and starts ripping the power pack open. As tentacles snake around Spidey’s head and he’s about to pass out, he gets in.
MJ assures Aunt May Peter is ok. Ock has disappeared in the chaos. And everyone looks pretty shaken up as Spider-Man realizes he shouldn’t have come here. I’m not so sure about that. He can’t blame himself his way out of the 2 Ocks fighting either way. But that’s Spider-Man. Then we jump ahead.
Really astute critique of MJ’s place in the books from the mid-90s til she “died.”
Great ending! I just love May being in on it, I really do. Been a long time since either book had a letter page. That’s weird. But more common as things progress. And that’s where we leave it this block. Next post, we return to the world of Ultimate Spider-Man. Ya know, when I did the first USM block, it was a thrill and a relief from the drudgery of the main titles, but now I kinda don’t want to switch. What a difference 16 or so issues of ASM can make…