Something I think is fascinating about so many artists is they come up with these crazy, exaggerated figures, but everything else in their art is more or less normal. Here we find a badly mutated Spider-Man being ogled by a pack of orcs and goblins while using a totally normal pay phone on a totally normal street corner. I just think it’s weird. Anime kind of does that, they push the characters to cartoony lengths, but do these often hyper-real backgrounds. Even in my own art, when I adopt a particularly cartoony style for my journal comics, I think “how do I abstract a couch?” and end up just drawing a regular couch. It feels like a symptom of the human condition rather than a failing of the artist. Why is it easier to stylize people than objects? A “Machael O’Hare” is on deck to pencil this month, and the internet seems to think the book has typoed “Michael” in the credits. Oops!
Not my preferred art style (And rapidly falling out of fashion), but after the last few issues, I love it. It’s Machael O’Hare on the recap page and Michael O’Hare on a splash as 2 kids square up to fight on the playground. Mr. Parker breaks them up. But he’s got a blackeye from Spider-Manning, so he has a hard time telling the kids fighting isn’t the answer. Then some school admin is suspicious of how often he gets injured, and he has to make up a lame excuse. Peter never got this beat up this often working at the Bugle, where it didn’t matter, you know? Feels a bit forced. We get a page of a guy on a talk show arguing superheroes are just as bad as criminals and then a guy watching that talkshow takes a meeting.
Nice to see Boomy back in his old suit. It’s not the best costume ever, but that weird mesh facemask didn’t make any sense at all. Man, after months of both ASM and PPSM largely eschewing classic villains in favor of new ones or weirder things, Wells is really rolling them out. Elsewhere, Peter is dealing with his fighting boys in detention, not getting anywhere. Then we cut to…
Not to be rude, but this is some pretty amateur hour stuff. And yet, it’s so much more appealing than the Ramos-brand style. Well, anyway, Boomerang attacks on behalf of these guys trying to turn superheroes into a TV show while Zeb Wells does two bad jokes about Fosters in as many pages. Spidey is confused when Boomerang seems to get the upper hand and then flies away, abandoning it.
“floppin’?”
Oh, are they betting on the outcome? First of all, who on Earth would bet on Boomerang!??! Second of all, this idea will be recycled later. Much later. During this time, Marvel movies were coming out surprisingly often. Blade, X-Men, Spider-Man, X-Men 2, Blade 2, Spider-Man 2, Daredevil, Hulk. As one of these movies would come out, Marvel comics would sport strange, vague ads for some tangentially related-sounding DVD, like this one:
DC had the market cornered on animated fare, starting with the excellent Batman and Superman animated series, then Batman Beyond, Static Shock & Justice League. I’m sure you were supposed to think this was some new animated feature. But, apparently, all these DVDs were just random old episodes of various cartoons. This one would’ve been episodes of the 90s Spider-Man guest-starring Daredevil. It all felt very sketchy and underhanded. What a time.