ASM 500! The original numbering restored. This happened with most anniversary issues around this time. The reboots of the late 90s served their purpose, and now a big fancy number would serve its own. By the time the smoke cleared, the only longrunning Marvel titles of note to escape a reboot in the 90s were the X-books, and them, presumably, only because they were the company’s sales juggernauts (no pun intended). But, as ASM, FF, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Daredevil and so on all hit what would’ve been their next hundredth issue, they all reverted to original numbering. As the century wears on, Marvel will start rebooting their books at the drop of a hat, over and over, yet still marking these big number issues. We’ll eventually reach a point where they revert to big numbers for a while, but completely screw that up by including annuals and one-shots and doing some incredibly fuzzy math, like counting all 82 issues of Journey Into Mystery before Thor was introduced as part of his history, and doing the same for Iron Man and Tales of Suspense, but NOT for Captain America and Tales of Suspense, even though they shared that book, among other completely inexplicable choices that rendered all the numbers meaningless. Then they just gave up and started arbitrarily calling comics “the 900th issue of Amazing Spider-Man” when they absolutely were not. It really vexes me, as you may have noticed. The old numbers mean nothing if they’re wrong. But, anyway, it’s 2003 and none of that has happened yet. It’s always interesting who gets on these kinds of covers Hydro-Man and Jackal are surprises among the others for me. And look at those credits! Both Romitas on hand for the occasion! Why am I wasting time with all this preamble with that to look forward to!? We open on a page more less like the end of last issue, Spider-Man trapped in the past and future at once.
Anytime a writer does “the future,” you know it’s probably never coming. DC has been surprisingly ok with letting Mark Waid’s “Kingdom Come” future look more and more likely over the years, but generally speaking, whatever future you’re seeing never comes. But JMS putting his pet supporting cast cop Lamont in this one, when we all know we’ll never see that guy again once Straczynski moves on, is pretty funny. We will, in fact, only see him 3 more times (And 2 of those curiously aren’t JMS comics). Well, anyway, Spider-Man watches as Future Spider-Man dives into the cops, with what appears to be Future Spider-Man’s monologue continuing in captions, saying everyone falls sometimes, and what matters is you go down fighting, as he is shot and killed. I like that suit. It came to be called the “Last Stand” suit, and was the Spider-Man PS5 game and also in Across the Spider-Verse. It’s a cool take on the classic. Then, Spidey fades into the past. He once again considers stopping the spider, saving Uncle Ben, but he thinks about all the people who would die because Spider-Man didn’t exist, and he can’t do it, obviously.
It’s an anniversary issue, after all, and those tend to play the hits. So Spidey wakes up in the middle of his fight with Sandman in ASM 4. He takes a hit and realizes he’s really reliving this, that he can be hurt or die. He lunges for the vacuum, but then Strange’s voice rings in his ears, and suddenly it’s ASM 7, and he’s in mid-air fighting the Vulture. But, as he gets knocked into the water tower, he’s suddenly fighting the Lizard in ASM 6. Whoops!
He’s losing that fight when he gets zapped into ASM 9 and his first fight with Electro. He’s running out of gas, but keeps fighting, and is suddenly watching Betty Brant discover Bennet Brant is dead in ASM 11. She slaps him for being part of it, and then it’s ASM 13…
I can’t believe he had to Re-Lift The Heavy Thing. After all the remakes, it’s a LITERAL remake. JR himself has done riffs on this at least twice before, and now he’s doing the original. Next, it’s ASM 121, and the whiplash hits. You know, having Johnny, Scott Hanna and Dan Kemp revisit all these early issues is fun, but you can’t hit too many, and going SO heavy on the first 14 issues means big, big gaps are coming. Spidey relives, like, 3 months of his life, then he’s suddenly like 4 years older. Re-failing to save Gwen is too much for him.
If this wasn’t a poster, they were really foolish. Again, interesting to see who makes the cut. Beetle is in there. Mendel Stromm. Ringmaster a valid but unusual choice. The rather self-indulgent inclusion of Morlun, Shathra and Digger. All the Elder Romita’s guys are in there, Kingpin, Rhino, Prowler, Shocker. Romita, Jr’s ever-evolving take on Shocker kinda fascinates me. And he gets to reference his own legacy with Juggernaut and Hobgoblin. Pretty solid collection!
So, this time, Strange appears, and is able to close the vortex and save everyone, all because Spider-Man just re-fought his entire life, and because the bigger heroes trust him. That’s pretty good! A story where Spider-Man is utterly crucial to saving the world or the universe, but in an indirect way always works for me. Marvel Two-In-One Annual 2, ASM 274, like that. Good stuff. Strange doesn’t remember any of what happened the first time, and Spider-Man has to explain. Spidey wonders if the Strange trapped in the future still exists. This Strange doesn’t know, but says he found a curious gift for Spider-Man in his pocket, a little bird house-looking version of Strange’s house, and Spidey remembers what day it is. Strange tells him to go.
To be concluded in the miniseries that never comes out! They just kept seeding this thing that never happened. SO weird. Then, on the next page…
The master is back. And inked by Scott Hanna, he looks a lot better than he did in Spider-Man Super Special. Bendis said Romita, Sr. came out of retirement for that book, and here he is again. And it’s worth it, because…
It’s bittersweet seeing this stuff so close to Romita, Sr.’s death, even tho this won’t post until years later. But there you have it. We’ve seen all the big hundos to this point. ASM 100, 200, 300, 400. 100, kind of underwhelming. A similar “re-fight all your villains” idea, but with so much less going for it. 200, pretty good despite some weird build up to get there. 300, actually unusually forward-looking rather than backward. 400, a beloved comic by many that I regard as a huge mistake that has since been rectified. 500 is pretty definitively the best hundredth issue spectacular in the history of ASM. And… it’s gonna stay that way, at least, as of this writing, through 900. So chalk up another win for this creative team. They really did a great job. And to think that Romita, Jr. cranked out this oversized spectacular without even skipping the ones before or after it. A machine, that guy.