{"id":14774,"date":"2022-10-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=14774"},"modified":"2021-06-25T00:23:23","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T04:23:23","slug":"af-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/10\/05\/af-16\/","title":{"rendered":"AF 16"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Writer Kurt Busiek already had some years in the game by now, but he rocketed to stardom with artist Alex Ross on a miniseries called Marvels. It was a trip through Marvel history from the 40s to the 70s through the eyes of an ordinary news photographer. The fully painted, photorealistic art of Alex Ross made it like nothing else on the stands, and the story was compelling, both very personal and grand in scope.  It also kind of cemented Busiek as a sort of Marvel history expert, so a project taking place in the past was an obvious thing to give him. Not long after that led to him getting Untold Tales of Spider-Man, a comic I keep being forced to talk about before showing, they did this, the first of 3 new issues of \u201cAmazing Fantasy\u201d that would follow Peter Parker in the immediate aftermath of Uncle Ben\u2019s death. And, presumably because Marvels was such a big deal due to its painted art, they decided this should be painted, too. Ask me, I think it shoulda been done as retro as possible, to actually look like Amazing Fantasy 16, but no one asked me. Let Ron Frenz really indulge his Ditko impression or get Mike Allred to do his famously retro thing or something, flat color, etc. Instead, we get painted art by Paul Lee. The other kinda controversial thing about these newly inserted old stories is, the cover suggest, Spider-Man is rendered in the contemporary style. I just keep coming back to the idea that if this stuff is meant to squeeze between existing comics, it should look like it belongs. Like somebody had a cell phone in one of those Flashback issues, and I know, I know, but it just feels weird. But, no sense arguing with decisions made 25 years ago by people who don\u2019t know I exist, so let\u2019s get to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Alrighty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Spider-Man\u2019s briefly-employed agent gets a name. Meanwhile, in Queens, Peter & Aunt May are watching a news item about The Fantastic Four\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Peter takes a couple pages to recap his origin, thinking how strange it is that superpeople seem to be popping up everywhere and he\u2019s one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

This almost certainly isn\u2019t the first time someone\u2019s depicted Ben\u2019s funeral, but it\u2019s probably the first time it was happening \u201cnow.\u201d A couple more pages to establish things\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

So, Liz isn\u2019t as mean as the other kids and Flash sucks. We cut over to Maxie\u2019s office, where a swarm of people in superhero costumes show up claiming to be Spider-Man or that they could be better. Maxie says the first one to climb a wall gets the job, and they all scuttle off. He\u2019s desperate to find his golden goose. But his star is sullenly walking home from school, wondering if he should become a cop or government agent, when he finds a salesman with May. It turns out, Ben ordered a new set of furniture as a surprise gift for May, but he only paid a down payment, and they want their money. Seeing the situation, the salesman offers to just cancel the contract, but May insists they\u2019ll find the money somehow. After the salesman leaves, she confides that Ben\u2019s funeral cost a lot, and she even had to dip into Peter\u2019s surprisingly high savings from his old paper route. He notes that was his TV money, but she doesn\u2019t need to know that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Peter\u2019s first time using Spider-Man to escape from his troubles for awhile. It\u2019s curious to me that even this didn\u2019t take the chance to show him learning to swing around. Playing with his web on TV and using it for transportation are pretty different things. But here he is, a natural already. His swinging takes him down to Flatbush Avenue, where he sees the same salesman giving the same speech to a widower, offering to tear up the contract for his wife\u2019s last gift to him, but of course, he won\u2019t have it. Smelling a rat, he follow\u2019d the guy\u2019s car to an old warehouse\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

An increasingly furious Spider-Man finds the leader of the operation, who goes by The Undertaker, as he takes a phone call to schedule an assassination, in addition to his various other schemes, and can\u2019t take anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Undertaker doesn\u2019t like that, and calls in his boys, who open fire on our young hero, and he flips out of the way, freaking out and feeling a buzz in his head for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Spidey takes down that guy, but 2 others see him. He manages to dodge their bullets and subdue them, too, feeling like his body just knows where to go to avoid getting hit, and wondering if his powers include \u201csome kind of Spider Sense.\u201d But, realizing he\u2019s just taken out 2 guys shooting at him with ease, his confidence grows, and he leaps into a group of several of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Spidey thinks with all the evidence around and the goons webbed up, it should be enough to get them arrested, and soon sees he\u2019s right. But, rather improbably, Maxie heard Spider-Man was here on the police band, and arrives just in time to see him swinging away. Swinging away feeling great for the first time in awhile, excited about how well he did back there. Then he spots and quickly stops his first mugging, leaving a young couple wondering if that was the guy from TV, and thinking maybe this is how he can honor Uncle Ben\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

And, we\u2019re off. Despite my various concerns about the anachronisms (Tho this is trying a lot harder to fit into the period than the Flashbacks were), the painted art, and the 1st person narration, which also feels out of place, this is all very well done. It doesn\u2019t truly feel like it just slips into place behind AF 15 due to all the above, but it\u2019s nonetheless nice to read. I wonder if this is even considered \u201ccanon\u201d anymore. People always seem to want to jam stuff into Spider-Man\u2019s early days…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writer Kurt Busiek already had some years in the game by now, but he rocketed to stardom with artist Alex Ross on a miniseries called Marvels. It was a trip through Marvel…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[1291,35,12,1003,172,1293,1292,2],"class_list":["post-14774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-amazing-fantasy","tag-aunt-may","tag-flash-thompson","tag-kurt-busiek","tag-liz-allen","tag-maxie-shiffman","tag-paul-lee","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14774","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=14774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14792,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14774\/revisions\/14792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}