{"id":10300,"date":"2021-09-01T00:00:47","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T04:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=10300"},"modified":"2020-07-17T21:58:16","modified_gmt":"2020-07-18T01:58:16","slug":"sm-05","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2021\/09\/01\/sm-05\/","title":{"rendered":"SM 05"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One more time for The Arachknight. Gregory Wright tags in on colors this month, so things look professional again. Page one is cops being alerted to a huge explosion and fire, letting us know it\u2019s 2:54am. The 2-page \u201c–rise above it all\u201d spread is Spider-Man in the battered rafters of the place, begging in his internal monologue as he often has for someone to tell him why all this has been happening. I dunno, man, if you\u2019re gonna do this vague and largely pointless torture story, maybe don\u2019t put a button on how what\u2019s happening and why hasn\u2019t been explained to either us or the hero. Spidey fills another page wondering what\u2019s going on, cut to MJ headed home for a 2nd time, cut to Spidey recapping last issue for some reason? I mean, that\u2019s standard procedure in comics of this vintage, but McFarlane hasn\u2019t bothered to do it until now. Strange choices. He thinks he has no idea who this woman is, and I guess that checks out. His interactions with her in previous appearances were minimal, at best, and a long time ago. He never would\u2019ve heard her name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lizard lookin\u2019 weird! MJ\u2019s taxi home almost gets hit by a cop speeding to the scene, Calypso stands around in her trance or whatever, it\u2019s basically the same scene she\u2019s been in every time we\u2019ve seen her for 5 issues, except now surrounded by fire. So little has actually happened in the last 5 issues! Spidey\u2019s dripping sweat gets The Lizard\u2019s attention for at least the 3rd time in 3 issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Lizard has pushed Spidey\u2019s head into debris just like that before, and we\u2019ve seen his gaping maw inches from Spidey\u2019s head like this like a dozen times. And after another pointless cut away to MJ in her cab, Calypso stops The Lizard from eating Spider-Man for the umpteenth time. It\u2019s just the same thing over and over and over for 5 issues! She says the poison should have killed him by now, and \u201cit is time to speed up the process.\u201d Why not just let your monster kill him, then, dumby??? What is even happening?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So did he \u201ckill\u201d The Lizard on purpose? Is that what we\u2019re supposed to think? Last issue, trying to decide how to get out of this, he thought he\u2019s already learned he can\u2019t kill The Lizard. Did he want to? Who knows? Todd doesn\u2019t care. Spidey is trying to figure out what to do with Calypso when the cops arrive. Deciding she can kill Spider-Man anytime (Via internal monologue! Perish the thought of having the villain speak to the hero during this, the end of their 5-issue battle!), Calypso magically causes the remaining structure to collapse in on her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bluh. As I said before, it\u2019s really not fair for this to be McFarlane\u2019s first writing gig, but even so, where oh where was Jim Salicrup? Instead of filling the letter pages with snarky asides, maybe he could\u2019ve coached Todd on basic storytelling. I mean, we don\u2019t even see Spidey and MJ reunited. Her entire \u201cstory,\u201d if you can call it that, during these 5-issues is wanting to see Peter and hoping he\u2019s safe. He finally comes home and we don\u2019t even see them together? What about Lizard sort of scrawling his name on the walls in the beginning? Was that Curt trying to fight the mind control? Shouldn\u2019t something have come of that? Could Salicrup not have kindly suggested that something actually happen during this story? That repeating the same 3 scenes over and over for 4 issues is not a story? That Calypso AT LEAST TELL THE HERO WHO SHE IS? I get it. The last page kind of explains what the story was supposed to be about (Not the last time I would see McFarlane end a story and then say, \u201cThis is what I was trying to say\u201d) It\u2019s about how sometimes a hero will be attacked seemingly at random, about how things don\u2019t always make sense. Sure, sure, super deep. But Todd McFarlane is no David Lynch. This is not how you do \u201cthings don\u2019t have to make sense.\u201d This is kind of the blueprint for Spawn. While I was stupid enough to keep buying it, every Spawn story was \u201cSpawn is minding his own business, doing nothing of interest, when a villain attacks him, beats him up, and gets defeated for little to no reason. Then Spawn goes back to doing nothing.\u201d That was the plot of Spawn for\u2026 and I am deeply embarrassed to admit I bought this many before wising up\u2026 over 100 issues! Regardless of quality, the rest of Todd\u2019s (10) issues of this book will at least have something of a plot. It does get\u2026 slightly better. Only slightly. And wait\u2019ll you see the nonsense he has brewing for The Hobgoblin. Whew. Still better than Tom Lyle\u2019s Spider-Man Unlimiteds, though, I must say. Next post, we\u2019ll get back to comics written by professionals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One more time for The Arachknight. Gregory Wright tags in on colors this month, so things look professional again. Page one is cops being alerted to a huge explosion and fire, letting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[220,275,21,2,43,274],"class_list":["post-10300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-calypso","tag-gregory-wright","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-spider-man","tag-the-lizard","tag-todd-mcfarlane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10311,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10300\/revisions\/10311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}