{"id":11129,"date":"2021-11-04T00:00:42","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T04:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=11129"},"modified":"2020-09-29T20:58:15","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T00:58:15","slug":"asm-annual-05","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2021\/11\/04\/asm-annual-05\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM Annual 05"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pretty unusual cover for this historic issue. For a 2nd year in a row, this annual is drawn by Stan\u2019s brother, Larry Leiber, and inked by Mike Esposito. John Romita is credited as a \u201cconsultant,\u201d and with the way credit\u2019s been working here lately, who knows what that means? I think it means he did some of the inks based on the pages. This one opens with Spider-Man in Algeria, being attacked by goons! What? Yeah, they\u2019re just dropping us into this\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Panel 2 up there, for example, feels like the hand of Romita was involved in some capacity. Spidey spends several pages in a running battle with these goons until those who are still conscious flee. He chases them to try to get one to tell him who sent them, but\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As the goons walk away, pleased to have killed Spider-Man, our man hauls himself up out of the water and collapses on the ground, passing out so he can flashback and tell us why he\u2019s there in the first place\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There\u2019s no way Romita didn\u2019t either draw or ink most of those faces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The idea that Aunt May looked exactly the same almost 20 years prior is so funny. She was just born 90 years old. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rough day for Peter Parker. He wanders back to his place in a daze, unable to get his parents off his mind. He gets in his Spidey suit to swing around looking for trouble, anything to distract himself. He\u2019s so crazed he almost attacks a guy leaving his job at a jewelry store, assuming he\u2019s robbed it because it\u2019s late at night. Narration tells us he moves through the next several days \u201clike a sleepwalker,\u201d unable to think about anything but his parents and their traitorous deeds. Finally, he decides he has to go to Algeria for the truth, and Spider-Man swings to The Baxter Building to ask Reed Richards for a ride. As it happens, Reed is testing a \u201cTwo-Man gyro-cruiser\u201d for Tony Stark, and says they can use that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How\u2019s he gonna get home? So, it turns out he\u2019s at the right restaurant, and the terrified owner tells him he did, in fact, ID the Parkers after the crash, as they had been guests in his place many times. He says everyone knew they worked for some spymaster in town. HE says he can\u2019t give a name, but does give Spidey an address, so he\u2019s off. And as soon as he is, the guy says \u201cthe master\u201d must be warned, and that leads to the battle that opened the issue. All caught up, Spidey wakes up from his shooting & fall. Once he\u2019s got his wits about him, he realizes he must be on the right track to get so much resistance, and continues on the address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Too late now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Egads! Spider-Man\u2019s parents: Nazis??? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey notes that Red Skull is as ruthless as he\u2019s heard, ready to kill him without even bothering to learn why he\u2019s here as Red Skulls snaps his fingers and a giant goon appears. Spidey\u2019s too fast for him, but the goon can withstand a punch from him, so he\u2019s got his work cut out for him. The big guy punches Spider-Man right through a wall, and he webs up the hole behind him, letting his foe try to tear through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As Spider-Man dejectedly walks away, The Red Skull sends for The Finisher. Handed a piece of Spider-Man\u2019s torn costume, The Finisher says that\u2019s all he needs to find and kill his target. Red Skull says The Finisher has never failed him, and he\u2019s off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some gadget! Spidey webs the rocket and sends it down into the same water he fell in earlier, but The Finisher & Co. just fire another one. So, since it\u2019s following him, our man just goes and lands on the car it came out of until the last second, and the missile hits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There ya go. Peter\u2019s parents were heroes. Some people seem to have a problem with this idea, that \u201cordinary guy Peter Parker\u2019s\u201d parents were super spies, but\u2026 why not? They\u2019re far from the only people in his life who turn out to have some crazy thing going on. Anyway, Spidey makes it back to Red Skull\u2019s lair, and they get into it immediately. Spidey dodges his way through laser guns and goons until The Skull comes at him, pointing out he\u2019s fought Captain America to a standstill as he scores some quick hits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If I had a dollar for every futile peccadillo\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, ok. But, like, if the government knew his folks were counterspies, why\u2019d they let everyone think they were traitors? And how does this card prove anything? And, again, how is Spider-Man gonna get home? All these questions and more will not be answered any time soon\u2026 but some of them might be eventually. I knew about this stuff since I was a kid, but never read the actual story before. Crucial Spidey lore. There\u2019s a few more pages to fill here. First, a pin-up showing the staff of The Daily Bugle, which is rather hilariously just JJJ, Robbie, Betty & Ned at this point. A whole newspaper! Then 2 pages of Peter Parker daydreaming about using his powers to be various kinds of star athlete. An extremely unhelpful map of NY allegedly showing you were various important locations are\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I  mean, how does that help? Then there\u2019s these 2 weird pages, which I\u2019ve seen pop up online a lot (Especially the mouse drawing)…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The final 3 pages are one of the somewhat common gag strips showing how Marvel comics are made. An earlier annual showed an absurd take on how Stan Lee & Steve Ditko did Spider-Man. There was also one about how Lee & Kirby did the FF (Which I believe is the only thing Stan ever allowed Jack to get credit for writing & drawing). This one\u2019s new to me, tho. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019d bet a dollar this was by Marie Severin. Pretty wacky stuff. Part of Stan\u2019s genius was hyping up the Marvel personalities as well as the characters. When the Marvel age began, even running credits in comics was pretty unusual. Portraying the Bullpen as a bunch of goofy people having fun together helped readers want to be part of the family, and gave Marvel a different dynamic (Even if the vision put forth in stuff like this was always pretty far from the truth).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pretty unusual cover for this historic issue. For a 2nd year in a row, this annual is drawn by Stan\u2019s brother, Larry Leiber, and inked by Mike Esposito. John Romita is credited…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[9,225,35,17,726,52,698,247,2,6],"class_list":["post-11129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1960s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-annual","tag-aunt-may","tag-john-romita","tag-larry-leiber","tag-mike-esposito","tag-red-skull","tag-reed-richards","tag-spider-man","tag-stan-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11129","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=11129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11130,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11129\/revisions\/11130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}