{"id":12819,"date":"2022-04-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=12819"},"modified":"2021-03-15T20:36:37","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T00:36:37","slug":"asm-274","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/04\/26\/asm-274\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 274"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You know it\u2019s serious when they give the ad pages to the story. You also know it\u2019s serious because the inside front & back cover are a poster of the front cover. Rip it off and hang it on the wall! I bet a lot of people did. This one had a big impact on me as a lad. I don’t recall how I came to own it, actually. But it’s a very unusual and memorable Spidey comic. My childhood copy was so battered that I got a new one during The Great Ebay Hysteria of 2018, so that\u2019s the one we\u2019ll be seeing here. This issue has a ton of credits. Priest has mentioned that this run was always in danger of being late, so I guess this is an example. Therefore, it\u2019s a story by DeFalco, layouts by Frenz, finished pencils by Tom Morgan & James Fry, finishes by Joe Rubinstein, additional<\/em> finishes by John Romita, Sr., a Jack Fury is credited with \u201cart assist,\u201d and George Roussos & Co. are credited with colors. It was all hands on deck to get this one out on time. Not that I could\u2019ve told you any of that as a kid. I\u2019m looking forward to seeing how obvious all these hands are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI always knew you couldn\u2019t beat The Beyonder. That\u2019s why we trained you and generations before you to fight him.\u201d Sure. As for The Beyonder, he\u2019s hovering in a galaxy far, far away (Not that one) trying to decide what to do with this universe. And his goofy jumpsuit is now the famous white it has become known as. Suddenly, we\u2019re told an armada of ships \u201cfrom over 30,000 advanced galactic civilizations\u201d comes after him. That is\u2026 a lot of civilizations. The idea of people being able to coordinate on that level is absurd to me. I know it\u2019s, like, basic science fiction, but that\u2019s so many people. Anyway, they fire a beam at him they say will destroy \u201ca thousand inhabited worlds\u201d in its aftershock, so serious are they about killing The Beyonder, but the beam just makes him take a step back. Then he wipes out the whole armada. And then their homeworlds. And then decides to aim even higher, targeting the higher powers of this universe, starting with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nice recap, Mephisto! His ploy winds up being to make a wager with The Beyonder for the life of the universe. The Beyonder only offers him another 24 hours, but Mephisto accepts. So they\u2019re going to pit champions against each other. Mephisto asks who he gets, and The Beyonder tells him\u2026 Spider-Man. The most human of heroes, because after all, this is a contest to see if mortal life is worthy of existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Zarathos is the demon that was bound to Johnny Blaze when he became Ghost Rider. Turns out that was all Mephisto, too. Don\u2019t worry about it. So: Big demon vs. Spider-Man! The terms are, because Spider-Man is so driven by responsibility, Zarathos must find a way to get him to renounce responsibility \u201cin some concrete form.\u201d Beyonder creates a giant TV monitor for them to watch the proceedings on. Mephisto is disgusted that his fate hangs on some mortal as the monitor focuses in on a hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey swings off on his way (With a caption telling childhood me for the first time that it takes a double-tap on his webshooter to launch the web, so he can\u2019t do it by accident) to a old warehouse. Inside, is a ring of car thieves, and The Bugle got a tip the cops are about to raid them. He\u2019s here to document it. But while he waits for the cops to show, he hears them saying some of them are going to kill The Kingpin tonight, at his 6pm reservation for The Century Club. The cops then bust in, and Spidey snaps his pictures and leaves. He thinks about how Kingpin is evil, but how could he let even someone that bad die? Back in Hell, Beyonder says this is the perfect test of his sense of responsibility. Soon, Zarathos appears to Spider-Man as a gigantic flaming skull, telling him Kingpin deserves to die. Maybe not the best way to persuade someone like Spider-Man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ok, guess who finished the next bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No mistaking that one. I can recall that one panel up there becoming the quintessential Green Goblin in my young mind. That’s how he’s supposed to look. Osborn begins yelling about how Peter should have found a way to save him, and why should he care about Kingpin when he didn\u2019t care about Osborn, as he flies them right at a skyscraper. Spidey leaps away, and then Goblin vanishes. He begins to wonder if a villain is doing this to him, or if he\u2019s going crazy, right as \u201cthe grandaddy of all migraines\u201d begins to take hold of him. Mephisto sees this and thinks Spidey is already losing, and prepares to cheat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hey, fake Peter\u2019s parents, he finished undergrad. Come on. They turn into flaming demons and pelt him with fire as he wakes up screaming. Then he stumbles into the bathroom and finds his face covered in boils! He\u2019s really falling apart, and resolves to go see a doctor, but he\u2019s become so weak. Mephisto continues to scheme, but we pull back to see one of his demons planning to betray him. Better to let The Beyonder wipe out existence than be tormented forever. And the Kingpin has his car brought around, ready for dinner. Meanwhile, Peter\u2019s made it down to the street, but he\u2019s so weak he can\u2019t go on. Until a friendly cop helps him into his car to \u201ctake him where he belongs.\u201d And that cop is George Stacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dang, take that, MJ and Black Cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Romita keeps tagging in for all the shots of classic dead people, it\u2019s kinda funny. Back in Hell, The Beyonder is starting to feel bad about all this, watching Peter suffer. Mephisto thinks he\u2019s secretly been gathering his power to channel into Peter at the right moment, which will help him defeat Zarathos, but also kill him, when, back on Earth, Peter is confronted by a hooded monster who clearly knows he\u2019s Spider-Man and begins shooting fire at him. As he dodges, he throws away his regular clothes, getting into his fightin\u2019 gear. The demon asks why he keeps trying when no one cares about him, and he\u2019s getting to our hero, but not enough to keep him from fighting back. And meanwhile, The Kingpin heads down to his car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I mean, that\u2019s pretty good stuff. Spider-Man appears in the nick of time and kicks the gunman down as he fires his shot wild. Everyone on the street below leaps into action, all secretly part of his security. Arranger asks him why he insists on keeping this dinner meeting, and he says if people are going to try to kill him, he prefers to schedule it, which is\u2026 pretty funny considering none of his security actually helped. Spider-Man has no time to consider the issue, as cops burst onto the roof. They stake out Kingpin\u2019s little dinner date and heard the shot. Spider-Man swings away, wondering if he\u2019ll ever understand what happened tonight, and thinking he needs to reassess his values. But first, he\u2019s gotta go drop off his film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And there you have it. Spider-Man’s moral character and strength of will literally save all of reality, and no one, including him, will even know it. That was some heavy stuff to lay on my elementary school brain, and really cemented Spider-Man’s nobility in my head. He’s the best. As for The Beyonder, I don\u2019t actually know what happened to him. I\u2019ve not actually read Secret Wars II. Maybe I should someday, despite its bad reputation. While the DeFalco\/Frenz run started extremely strong, after ASM 261, things really started to go downhill, a trend that will continue. But this issue is excellent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know it\u2019s serious when they give the ad pages to the story. You also know it\u2019s serious because the inside front & back cover are a poster of the front cover….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[9,36,35,1065,370,20,40,16,1066,412,278,17,100,21,672,164,39,364,321,2,124,487,587,1067],"class_list":["post-12819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-anna","tag-aunt-may","tag-beyonder","tag-george-roussos","tag-george-stacy","tag-green-goblin","tag-gwen-stacy","tag-jack-fury","tag-james-fry","tag-joe-rubenstein","tag-john-romita","tag-kingpin","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mephisto","tag-nathan-lubensky","tag-norman-osborn","tag-puma","tag-ron-frenz","tag-spider-man","tag-tom-defalco","tag-tom-morgan","tag-uncle-ben","tag-zarathos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12819","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=12819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12820,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12819\/revisions\/12820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}