{"id":14531,"date":"2022-09-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-15T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=14531"},"modified":"2021-06-06T12:09:20","modified_gmt":"2021-06-06T16:09:20","slug":"ssm-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/09\/15\/ssm-20\/","title":{"rendered":"SSM 20"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our new friend Akasha looks remarkably like Nico from 2000s Marvel sleeper hit Runaways on this cover. Nico even has a big magic staff.  Spidey and Akasha quickly catch us up in the page 1 splash, then Spider-Man throws sand in her face and flees while she\u2019s momentarily distracted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Do not agree with Spider-Man calling her a \u201cchick.\u201d The quotes in that one balloon seem like a mistake.Spider-Man comes blasting out the side of the museum to the shock and dismay of MJ and Akasha\u2019s dad on the ground outside. She comes out after him, and as he falls to the ground prepares for the kill\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Akasha teleports to another part of town, now hearing The Pharaoh\u2019s voice in her head but not controlled by it, trying decide what to do. She gets a look at herself in a window and realizes why people are staring at her. Soon she\u2019s in a clothing store, buying the outfit on the cover, which she says is \u201cso phat,\u201d because Todd DeZago doesn\u2019t want me to enjoy life. She mind controls the clerk and leaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Weird page. Meanwhile, Akasha is dancing in a nightclub like she wouldn\u2019t want to go see her dad when The Living Pharaoh has had quite enough, and forces me to see this with my own good eyes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Todd DeZago must be stopped. I mean, that rap thing & Beck reference may have scarred me. Oh man. The next day, Akasha\u2019s dad has gone to The Daily Bugle instead of the police about his missing daughter, when he runs into Peter, who weirdly tells him she\u2019s not gonna be too hard to find and then just leaves by himself. Some help you are, buddy. He heads down to The East Village because her dad mentioned she loves it there, and uses his Spider Sense to try to find evil thoughts in the crowd. After 20 minutes, we\u2019re told, he gets her. And she notices him noticing her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Switching to Spider-Man, the element of surprise lets him drop down in front of her and leap away with her staff, assuming it\u2019s the source of her powers. But it is not, and she lets out a blast of energy in all directions just as her dad arrives on the scene to see it. Spidey sees this didn\u2019t work, but also that she really wants her stick back, so he plans to just keep it away from her. But as his webbing disintegrates in her energy field and she shrugs off a punch in the face from him, it looks like he\u2019s going to have a hard time with that. Spidey swings the staff at her and feels it hum much more powerfully, and realizes it\u2019s sort of a power battery for her. He decides that if he breaks it, it might free her. Which makes no sense, but the idea upsets her, so he goes for it, snapping the staff over his knee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Uh, ok. I wonder if DeZago gets a chance to bring her back before the end of this series. No idea. Hey, whaddaya know, this issue has a letter from a familiar name in the form of soon-to-be-pro comics writer B. Clay Moore. He\u2019s enjoying Sensational and expresses solidarity with a guy who wrote into SSM 16 saying he appreciated them not treating MJ like an object as she so often had been in recent years (Worth noting editorial made fun of that guy for it, but thankfully, they don\u2019t repeat that here). Moore\u2019s big breakthrough will be a crime noir in 2002 called Hawaiian Dick. He & I frequented the same comic book forum for awhile around that time, tho I\u2019m certain he wouldn\u2019t remember me. That\u2019s a fun name to find in the letters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our new friend Akasha looks remarkably like Nico from 2000s Marvel sleeper hit Runaways on this cover. Nico even has a big magic staff.  Spidey and Akasha quickly catch us up in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[275,21,626,473,2,1276],"class_list":["post-14531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-gregory-wright","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-richard-case","tag-sensational-spider-man","tag-spider-man","tag-the-living-pharaoh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14531","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=14531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14542,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14531\/revisions\/14542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}