Suddenly, a guest appearance! What, you thought 3 monthly solo issues, an issue of New Avengers and appearing in the Secret Invasion event were enough for one month? Behold this hideous Greg Horn cover. It’s so dark I thought it might be a bad scan, but apparently it was just like this. Horn’s claim to fame was aggressively synthetic-looking digital painted “realism” that managed to look remarkably unrealistic given the apparent goal. Also suggestive images of women, of course, it was the 2000s. Behind it lurks something… I don’t want to say “even worse,” because it doesn’t get much worse than Greg Horn for me, but… something also not good. It’s time for yet another Humberto Ramos impersonator to make the blog in the form of one Mark A. Robinson. These guys were legion. A veritable army of dudes aping a style that wasn’t good in the first place. Truly one of the head scratchers of all time. He’s inked by Mark Irwin and colored by Studio F. The book is written by regular Ms. Marvel scribe Brian Reed. And it features our guy, of course, so let’s see how it goes. As is strangely common in Spider-Man guest spots, our guy is the focus from page one:
That’s a pretty good Peter Parker pratfall.
On the next page, Robinson refuses to draw the webs on Spider-Man’s costume in 3 more panels as he swings above some guys arguing about a traffic incident until one of them exposits that a guy called Stuart Cavenger, “Head of Cavenger Motors,” has just put a weird cube on the hood of his car. The cube turns to goo in his hands when the guy picks it up. Stu here looks like a zombie. I’m sure it’s not important. Spider-Man doesn’t see any of this, swinging along thinking he needs to get his paid by JJJ like we’re not 5 months into Dexter Bennett owning the DB! (And only having webs on his suit about half the time) when he seems to be accosted by Ms. Marvel, but she isn’t clearly shown.
Spectacularly bad splash page. I mean, I don’t mean to be rude. but the big empty space, the terrible posing, the nonsense perspective… woof. “Spider-Man, as the person who keeps letting the unregistered Avengers get away because this situation is untenable and none of you can go to jail because you star in various comics, I’m here to deliver some empty threats.” They start mixing it up, and Robinson keeps drawing Spider-Man with just webs on his head, hands and feet, like it’s the 60s cartoon, when he thinks he can get away with it. He’s not getting away with it. This isn’t just ugly, it’s lazy. Spider-Man says a lot of mean things, then gives her a big wallop.
Good grief. The writing is really on par with the art here.
Ok, the construction joke was good. They argue about which of them is on the real Avengers team until Spider-Man webs Carol up. And as he does so, he hears an explosion, so he goes to help, telling her to get back to attacking unregistered heroes. Carol tears loose just as another, bigger explosion hits, and Spider-Man comes right back, saying he could use her help before leading her to the scene.
Seems bad. Robison gives you another largely empty splash of Ms. Marvel carrying Spider-Man into battle after this. At least he drew all the webs, I guess.
Some appropriately Bugs Bunny-esque Spider-Man, if nothing else. They have now managed to beat all the… robots or whatever into submission, but before they can catch their breath, the things begin reforming. Carol wants to charge back into action, but Spider-Man stops her, pointing out that the things aren’t fighting back, they’re collecting parts from anything at hand to construct new robots. Spidey starts tearing into one and finds a car stereo set to 88.8. While Ms. Marvel argues with a cop about whether they’re helping or not, Spidey jumps on another robot and pulls out another car stereo, shutting it down and finding it also tuned to 88.8. He calls Ms. Marvel “Gloria Steineim,” the politics of which I do not want to get into, but which seems like a pretty bad joke from the writer of the Ms. Marvel series, to go punch some robots until she finds a car stereo.
Ready for this comic to be over, guys. the robots finally start outright attacking our heroes for getting too close to the truth, which is, what, this guy’s controlling robots through an FM Transmitter? He is using his iPod? Better hope no one drives by using the same frequency with their iPod!
The robots have combined into a big robot, unsurprisingly, and SHIELD gets back to Carol with the origin of the control signal. Kind of incredibly, She sends Spider-Man to deal with the villain while she stays behind and pointlessly punches the robot. I mean, this is a Spider-Man story guest starring Ms. Marvel in a very unflattering support role… in a Ms. Marvel comic that costs more than usual. These are not choices I would make. Spider-Man goes to the address and finds it full of Stuarts. One says they’re all androids “designed to hold one part of Stuart Cavenger’s personality while Stuart Prime is away.” Sure, man, whatever.
Ms. Marvel is a background element now! In her own comic!
Ms. Marvel crashes through the wall with some of the robot, and then Spider-Man pulls that one’s head off, handing it to one of the reasonable ones to deactivate. Ms. Marvel just watches. Very heroic in her own title. The big robot begins to collapse, so Carol says she’ll go handle that while Spider-Man rounds up all the stupid androids, once again flying out of the narrative of her own book. Spider-Man’s able to get the robots to say they will pay for all the damage before they all “upload to the internet.”
Well, that was a chore. My goodness. What a terrible comic, but more importantly, what a terrible Ms. Marvel comic. I read Brian Reed’s run, but not this issue. I don’t remember it being so bad. Maybe this was like a rush job or something. Well, we’re back to ASM next post. Who knows who will be writing and drawing it? I don’t. What a strange state of affairs…