Back to pretty generic. And a bit odd looking, too. Maybe it’s Isanove, but it sort of looks like someone doing a Bagley impression more than Bags himself. This month beings at the Parker home, with Gwen getting more and more freaked out that her house seems to be under surveillance, only for the obvious Feds to drop everything, get in their unmarked vans and peel out, because of Spider-Man and Doc Ock fighting downtown. Which they are doing right now. Spidey is berating Ock for making him save the production of a movie he doesn’t want made when he gets clocked in the jaw by a tentacle. Nearby, some guys try to get Otto’s ex-wife to vacate the premises.
Well, it SURE IS LUCKY they didn’t hear him! Sometimes the whole secret identity thing gets a little thin in this title.
Spider-Man is batted to the ground right in front of Avi Arad, Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire and barely gets up before getting dragged off by the arms. Ock gets him good and wrapped up and electrocutes him a little. As the guy playing Mysterio runs away screaming, Ock says “they” are delighted Spider-Man showed up.
Shades of things to come!
The thing that sticks out to me, reading this stuff sometimes, is these fight scenes are so long. You know, a fight being ⅔ of your book was pretty common until the turn of the century. Then, in this period, you may go several issues without one, but when it finally happens (Well, depending on the writer) it’s a big, thrilling battle. These days, comics barely have any fighting in them. Oh, there’s plenty of heroes vs. villains and whatnot. But almost no comic has a fight that lasts this long anymore. More than a page or two, even. I don’t think today’s comic artists know how to choreograph a fight. They don’t need to. In the rare instance a writer calls on new artists to do a big, long fight, it’s usually just a bunch of largely unrelated pictures of punching and kicking with no flow to it. More like a montage. I mean it’s what comics used to be ABOUT and now people don’t even know how to do it. A lot can change in 90 years, I guess. Hey, how long since my last random tangent? I think it’s been awhile. While Spider-Man’s having a rough day, MJ arrives at the Parker home, really excited to announce to Gwen that she is no longer grounded, because her Mom kicked her Dad out of the house. Very cool for her. She is less excited to learn Peter’s not home.
Hey, does Gwen know something now? Hm! Back at the fight, Spider-Man manages to kick Ock so hard his glasses come off, and now they’re in a tunnel, and he gets smashed into the wall for it. Ock has a nice one-way chat with his arms while Spidey is distracted, then they get back to pummeling him. Then our hero notices a cabbie has gotten out of his car to film this, and realizes that guy’s about to get himself killed, which is unfortunately quite a distraction.
Well, that doesn’t happen in just any Spider-Man story! Where are they going? Are they going to a temple somewhere, where a man called Ezekiel will reveal a lot about Spider-Man’s powers and stuff? Probably not!