ASM 575

Joe Kelly and Chris Bachalo are back to continue their Hammerhead story from ASM Extra, once again joined by Tim Townsend and Antonio Fabela. And Joe Kelly is… maybe of part of the “brain trust” now? He’s not credited as such yet, but I looked it up, and he’s got almost 20 credits between here and the end of Brand New Day, so… he’s in the rotation? I don’t know. This is all needlessly confusing. Too many cooks! At any rate, this issue starts as you’d expect:

What in the nine hells is this? Joe Kelly never did anything for me, man.

I mean this sucks. This is what you get for your $3 this week? No thank you. More hilarious jokes at the expense of this Greta woman abound as Spider-Man defeats that flying clown by way of Chris Bachalo’s increasingly signature completely incomprehensible panel-to-panel continuity. also, Spider-Man may have killed them all, it’s hard to tell, I think they all went up in an explosion. There are more hilarious bits about how this woman smells bad and is gross for another page, and then we finally go somewhere, anywhere else.

What’s that all about? Is Hammerhead a different person now that he’s had… his whole skeleton replaced or whatever insanity was going on in that Extra issue? I don’t know, doesn’t matter, time for the introduction of another new cast member:

Is it possible for Joe Kelly to get through one page without insulting the mentally challenged? I hate this guy already! What was the brief when hiring writers for the BND ASM era? “Only the worst?” It’s interesting to me that none of the big dogs got in here. As I rambled about elsewhere, in this period, Marvel’s biggest draws were Millar (Currently beginning a dreadful run on FF), Bendis (Doing USM and both Avengers), Vaughan (On Runaways and Ultimate X-Men), Brubaker (On Captain America, X-Men, DD and Iron Fist) and Fraction (On X-Men, Punisher and Iron Fist with Bru), with Hickman, Rick Remender and Jason Aaron on their way to that status (And Millar on his way to leaving Marvel after that FF run). No one thought getting one of the biggest names on the biggest character would be a good idea? We’re stuck with this crap and Bob Gale? Ugh. Well, Norah Winters will be sticking around awhile, so there she is. Cut to 2 pages of Hammerhead beating up some stereotypical black gang members (Joe Kelly on a roll, man) in the process of seemingly forcing them to join Mr. Negative’s mob, then to this:

I am starting to miss Bob Gale. Has Chris Bachalo never heard of a handshake? What on Earth is with Peter’s face in panel 6?

That guy’s necklace identifies him as a member of the gang Hammerhead was roughing up, this comic is threatening to actually go somewhere soon, unless it needs more pages for stereotypes and hate speech. Next, we find the above gentlemen, Harold, at his gang’s hideout, being given a gun and told to watch out, because “the Hammer’s coming.” HH is apparently just going around forcing this entire gang to work for Mr. Negative (Or something?), and he’s among the last holdouts. As he guards his family home and little brother, Spider-Man webs him out the window, leading to a couple pages of hilarious material wherein Spider-Man tries to do the “Scared Straight” thing and it doesn’t work. and while he’s doing that, Hammerhead is beating his way through the other gang members, and has made his way to the little boy, saying he wants to leave a message for his brother.