{"id":12522,"date":"2022-03-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=12522"},"modified":"2021-02-14T21:24:14","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T01:24:14","slug":"tac-085","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/03\/30\/tac-085\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC 085"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So, at some point in the 21st Century, having completed my quest for the Stern\/Romita ASM run and feeling good about it, I saw Roger Stern\u2019s bibliography on Wikipedia, and found out about this issue. Hobgoblin had, up to this point, strictly appeared in ASM, being Stern\u2019s baby, so him appearing in another book meant they wanted Roger\u2019s input. This issue is Mantlo scripting, with Al Milgrom back on pencils, Jim Mooney on finishes and on colors, and a big thanks to Roger \u201cfor his gracious plot assist.\u201d And it would be really weird if he wasn\u2019t involved, because right on page one, the mysterious man behind The Hobgoblin lets us know he\u2019s about to try to recreate The Green Goblin\u2019s strength formula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hobby goes on to recap how, once he was satisfied, he killed Lefty, and now he\u2019s had time to refine the formula. He mixes up the final batch and it\u2019s go time. As he enters a big tube that douses him in chemicals, we focus on the open journal of Norman Osborn, which notes that prolonged exposure to the chemical could lead to madness (Which it did for him, of course).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It seems pretty bizarre to have this take place outside of ASM. Meanwhile, Peter Parker is headed to Tavern-On-The-Green because Harry & Liz have called all their friends to lunch there for a big announcement. Flash, Sha Shan, Betty & Ned are all already there, and once everyone\u2019s settled\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Weird to do this sort of thing so out of order, but there it is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that\u2019s not good. Oh, but wait, there\u2019s more regular people stuff:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Al Milgrom is drawing a lot of tiny hands in close-ups this month. A nice Pete & MJ moment. Our man becomes Spider-Man, thinking about how Spider-Man has been the problem in all his past relationships, but now it\u2019s Spider-Man who\u2019s in one with The Black Cat. Which, you know, is pretty weird, all things considered. He swings by her place and finds her mother is still there, doting on her in a very Aunt May fashion. He hangs outside the window until Felicia can talk her Mom into taking the night off. When she lets Spidey in, she reminds him that he almost showed her his real face when she was in the hospital (In TAC 78<\/a>), and wonder if he\u2019d unmask now, but he hesitates. The disappointed Felicia proceeds with dinner, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They swing off into the night, each thinking privately about how much they care for each other, and then something I\u2019ve been wondering about is actually addressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The fact that Felicia clearly did have powers in her early appearances has been bugging me for a long time. The explanation is kind of terrible, but at least someone bothered to try. The danger is The Hobgoblin, of course, and that quickly becomes apparent as a rain of pumpkin bombs descends on our heroes. Spidey wants Felica to stay out of it, but she feels this is the perfect chance to prove she has what it takes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t appear to be moving all that lazily. That really went well. Spidey catches the ghost in a web and flings it back in Hobby\u2019s face. Hobgoblin thinks his real aim here is to test his new strength, so he rips the corner off a nearby roof and chucks it at Spider-Man & Black Cat, to Spidey\u2019s great surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our man just standing there narrating as a big hunk of concrete comes flying at him is pretty funny. Cat\u2019s gambit works remarkably well, even forcing Hobgoblin to fly down toward her upside down so she can punch him in the nose. But that barely means anything anymore, and he grabs her, intent on crushing the life out of her, until Spider-Man frees himself and comes smashing back into the fight, almost knocking Hobby off his glider. Hobgoblin realizes that relying on his strength alone is pretty dumb when he\u2019s got a whole bag of tricks, and tries to blind Spidey with his sparkly fingers. Spidey\u2019s ok, but lands on the rood and pretends to be blinded to lure his foe in, not considering that Felicia will also think he\u2019s about to get killed and rush in to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The writing\u2019s on the wall, but as we\u2019ve seen, it\u2019s gonna take another 15 issues for this duo to break up. And Spider-Man\u2019s still no closer to beating Hobgoblin. While having him power up in this issue was weird, the battle wasn\u2019t particularly important. More about Spider-Man and Black Cat than Spider-Man and Hobgoblin. I guess it\u2019s not so weird this was allowed to happen outside ASM. Tune in next time for MTU\u2019s Assistant Editor\u2019s Month gag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, at some point in the 21st Century, having completed my quest for the Stern\/Romita ASM run and feeling good about it, I saw Roger Stern\u2019s bibliography on Wikipedia, and found out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[153,11,107,156,253,12,22,163,18,172,21,55,348,121,2],"class_list":["post-12522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-al-milgrom","tag-betty-brant","tag-bill-mantlo","tag-black-cat","tag-bob-sharen","tag-flash-thompson","tag-harry-osborn","tag-hobgoblin","tag-jim-mooney","tag-liz-allen","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-ned-leeds","tag-sha-shan-nguyen","tag-spectacular-spider-man","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12522","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=12522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12534,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12522\/revisions\/12534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}