It’s Fred Van Lente, Barry Kitson and Jeromy Cox back to tell us about Mysterio this time.
I guess a guy like Mysterio believing the moon landing was faked makes a kind of sense. A charlatan always looking for charlatans.
“Ray Bradhaus.” Subtle!
Mysterio’s internal narration talks about about he almost killed a leading man with an explosive charge (And how he blames the other guy, of course), and is thus blacklisted from Hollywood. Now he’s decided to be Mysterio, but for it to work, he thinks, he needs Ray’s wall gag. To get it, he descends into the ludicrous underground dungeon hidden beneath Ray’s home, complete with giant, 1960s Batman traps. But Mysty notes the 2nd one, a spike wall, isn’t real.
One of Ray’s giant crossbows goes off, stabbing the demon in the back, and then it disappears. Mysterio thinks he “beat the illusion,” despite that making zero sense in context, then smashes out a window, despite my impression that he was underground, yelling that he doesn’t need Ray anymore and disappearing into the night.
Hey, this was pretty bad. It doesn’t hold up to much thought. So I shant expend anymore on it. As always, we skip an installment of Spider-Girl… which I feel kinda bad about since, it’s Sal Buscema inking, but he’s inking Ron Frenz’s lame and aging impression of him, it’s like a great singer doing their song at karaoke, I don’t wanna. And that brings us to a Hammerhead story by Frank Tieri & Eric Canete, the latter of whom we saw awhile back in ASM 611. And in that short time, I think his art’s already evolving. Frank Tieri was one of Marvel’s “we have pages to fill” writers. Never a big name, or even a medium name, but a name you saw pretty often on D-list one-shot product and backups. He also seemed like kind of a jerk, so I don’t feel so bad in my harsh assessment. Anyway, it’s Hammerhead. He’s at a meet and commenting on how he didn’t get much of a welcome, saying the Italians would’ve given him coffee and snacks.
Canete’s pushing the anatomy so far, but staying consistent. It will be his trademark. We flashback to 2 days ago, with Mr. Negative explaining to Hammy (While sparring with him in a boxing ring) that “The General,” a former KGB agent turned Russian mob boss, is collecting old Russian expatriates who owe him favors to strengthen his mob, and Hammy is to deal with this. I thought “The General” was an obscure Kirby/Lee villain, but I was thinking of someone else. This guy was a one-off villain created by, believe it or not, Frank Tieri and artist Sean Chen in the pages of Wolverine in 2001.
How delightfully irrelevant. Who could possibly care about any of this, and that’s before we get into Hammerhead’s convoluted backstory. Which I shall not! The General will go on to appear in… nothing. Well, presumably. The Marvel wiki doesn’t even list this appearance on his page, so little does anyone care. Ok, back to ASM next time.