{"id":10667,"date":"2021-10-06T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T04:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=10667"},"modified":"2020-08-16T16:07:23","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T20:07:23","slug":"asm-345","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2021\/10\/06\/asm-345\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 345"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

$8.00!!! Surely not. Really? $8.00? That seems crazy high. Well, huh. Looks like a VF copy is more than that on mycomicshop.com. I do recall not getting this one when it came out. I missed comics a lot in this time. I don\u2019t think I had a pull list at a comic shop until later. I was relying on trips to pharmacies, grocery stores and gas stations, all places you can\u2019t actually get comics anymore, which is sad, I guess. Not like a kid could ever afford a comic book anymore, or would pay for one if they could. \u201cHey, kid, you wanna spend $5 on 20 pages of story?\u201d \u201cWhat? That sounds stupid.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re right! But some of us are completely brainwashed by a lifetime of buying these things, so even though the prices on them are literally insane now, we just keep buying them!\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s really sad!\u201d \u201cIt really is!\u201d \u201cOk, mister, see ya later!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I may have gotten off track. Behind this sort of off-model cover where Larsen has drawn Spidey looking a lot more buff than he usually does is a fill-in by none other than Mark Bagley. I believe this is his debut on the title, and not far from the beginning of his very long tenure as regular penciler. I haven\u2019t been pointing them out often, but Michelinie\u2019s pun titles have not slacked up at all, and some of them, like this issue\u2019s \u201cGun from the Heart,\u201d are a real stretch. The splash is Cardiac shooting his stick at us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He owns a whole hospital? That seems unusual. Are there a lot of hospitals with, like, a landlord? As Cardiac flees the scene, Spider-Man is swinging around looking for him and recapping last issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bagley\u2019s art bears more than a passing resemblance to Larsen\u2019s. As a kid, I thought Bags was clearly imitating him. But, while we\u2019ve seen earlier art that looked a lot different (In, say, TAC Annual 8<\/a>), he was already drawing more or less like this when launching New Warriors, which he\u2019s still drawing some 8 months later, at this point (And will continue to well into his ASM run. Got Romita, Jr.-level work ethic, he does). It may be an actual coincidence. But as far as I was concerned as a kid, it was a swipe. At any rate, Peter & MJ are headed to lunch at May\u2019s with Willie Lumpkin. May asks MJ to come serve with her so Peter can talk to Willie alone. Peter is obviously nervous, but Willie wants to make one thing clear: He\u2019s heard about Ben and Nathan, and\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No memory of what happens to Mr. Lumpkin. Justin Hammer prepares to call in a new goon, and I bet you can guess which one. Two days later, Peter is at school when he sees a poster of Silver Sable telling Spider-Man to contact her. He knows how tenacious she can be about this stuff, so he decides he better get it over with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey thinks that he doesn\u2019t trust that dude, but he\u2019s already after Cardiac, so he might as well get paid. Speaking of, Elias Wirtham is watching news about this company he\u2019s taken such an interest in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gosh, who could that be? We cut away to Ryker\u2019s Island, where Cletus Kasady has just decided to kill Eddie Brock when some black goo comes pouring through the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Funny how these characters can be a little off at first \u201cSweet mother of God!\u201d isn\u2019t a very Cletus Kasady thing to say, but who would know that at this point? Well, Spider-Man has stowed away on a big boat used to lure Cardiac out, and his Spider Sense tells him something\u2019s up, so they give the call to abandon ship. All the workers begin to do so except the one who is obviously Boomerang, who then reveals he is Boomerang. Cardiac is in the hold of the ship, about to blow it up when Spider-Man confronts him. It is, as always, fightin\u2019 time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As they do their thing, Boomerang thinks he was told to let them fight it out before making a move, but he wants to kill both of them, so he jumps in. Spidey dodges his boomerangs, as usual, but then\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boomerang taken down in a record 2 pages. And he got the cover to this issue! He\u2019s distracted Spidey long enough for Cardiac to blow a hole in the ship, tho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kinda feel like how the symbiote survived IS important, myself. But Michelinie never explained how it overcame turning to dust in Web #1, either. I dunno, man. Comics. Well, Venom\u2019s back, and next issue, so is Larsen, so get ready for all the giant tongues and drool you could possibly want. Unless the amount you\u2019re looking for is \u201cnone,\u201d like I was (And am).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

$8.00!!! Surely not. Really? $8.00? That seems crazy high. Well, huh. Looks like a VF copy is more than that on mycomicshop.com. I do recall not getting this one when it came…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[9,35,253,155,604,458,259,668,339,21,276,2,409,988],"class_list":["post-10667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-may","tag-bob-sharen","tag-boomerang","tag-cardiac","tag-carnage","tag-david-michelinie","tag-justin-hammer","tag-mark-bagley","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-silver-sable","tag-spider-man","tag-venom","tag-willie-lumpkin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10667","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=10667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10680,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10667\/revisions\/10680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}