{"id":14798,"date":"2022-10-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=14798"},"modified":"2022-10-16T12:07:52","modified_gmt":"2022-10-16T16:07:52","slug":"af-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/10\/06\/af-17\/","title":{"rendered":"AF 17"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Maybe I\u2019m just no fun, but I don\u2019t think Spider-Man should be retroactively made to encounter any actual supervillains before he really did. After, like, ASM 3, say, it\u2019s fine. But I just feel weird about his first superfights being \u201cuntold tales.\u201d No one asked me, tho, so here we go. No fewer than 4 more painters join Paul Lee in getting this issue out the door, that seems like a bad sign. We got Terese Nielsen, Alexi Taylor, Greg Loudon and Ken Meyer, Jr. on deck this month. We begin with some pretty interesting, heretofore unexplored backstory\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The idea that Peter knew all the kids except Flash, and that he turned them against him, is an interesting one. It seems a bit much, but it also kind of helps make sense of his fruitless attempts to interact with them in AF 15, makes them seem slightly less straight up evil and makes him thinking they wouldn\u2019t be slightly more believable. That\u2019s a lot of backstory for 2 panels in the original, tho. Spidey saves the guy and keeps a girder from falling on the people below, and we see the glowing dude on the cover flying by. The worker says he\u2019ll never forget this, and that it seemed like the crane must\u2019ve been tampered with, but who could have done that so high off the ground? The gathering crowd wants his autograph, but Spider-Man swings away, saying that\u2019s not why he\u2019s doing this. Then he\u2019s flagged down by Maxie. He says the public is going crazy for Spider-Man since he\u2019s started the hero gig, and he could name his price for talking to any magazine, paper or TV show, but he says he just wants to live up to his responsibilities and swings away. He ruminates on how chasing fame is how Uncle Ben died. However\u2026 one could make the point that making money for his frail, grieving, unemployed elderly aunt might be more important than his recently discovered principles, at least in the short term. anyway , as he swings off, he\u2019s seen by a semi-obscured and unnamed, but unmistakable Kingpin and his crony. We learn Kingpin arranged the \u201caccident\u201d at the construction site to try to muscle in on the management company, and he says he has an agent to take care of Spider-Man if it becomes necessary. Later, the TV in the Parker home is showing  a piece on those scary mutants, with footage of Cyclops saving some people described as an attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wow, Aunt May looks scary there! Wow! Her resilience in the face of loss is pretty impressive, demonic appearance notwithstanding. Watching the footage of Cyclops, struggling with how to deal with May thinking he still has friends, Peter thinks that while he may not have an angry mob chasing him, he thinks he knows how that guy on TV feels. I mean\u2026 the angry mob is a pretty big part of the story. But, anyway, he waits til May thinks he\u2019s asleep and Spider-Man is back out on the prowl, hoping to find a wrong to right, when\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh ho. Spider-Man relates his origin, leaving out his name, and she is shocked by the idea of a radioactive spider, saying, \u201cThat\u2019s so dumb!\u201d She says they should go do something, and we\u2019re told they race through the city, and for the first time since Ben died, Peter begins to feel like a kid again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meanwhile, at Maxie Shiffman\u2019s office, his secretary quits, saying he hasn\u2019t paid her in weeks and she\u2019s tired of hiding him from mob goons and bill collectors. He has no idea what he\u2019s gonna do when he gets a call from a guy at \u201cIt\u2019s Amazing,\u201d the show that\u2019s putting all these super people on TV. He says he\u2019s still gonna get them Spider-Man, it\u2019s just taking awhile, but then a knock at the door turns out to be a rather menacing looking guy with powers. Maxie says he might just have something for the show. In front of the ever-running Parker TV, Peter hears of another accident at the construction site, and thinks if he stakes it out, he could catch whoever\u2019s doing it. And, to his delight, he thinks he won\u2019t have to do it alone. He soon tells Joey his plan, and well\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That went great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Joey dressing like an early 90s kid in this late 90s comic where everything else looks like the 60s is pretty weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter\u2019s so lonely he sets out to try to convince himself maybe Joey\u2019s right, maybe he\u2019s too serious. He wonders if he\u2019s done enough, if the good he\u2019s done has been enough for Uncle Ben. He wonders if he loosened up, maybe she could meet him halfway and stop doing such dangerous things. He\u2019s got a lot on his mind as he wanders through his evening on autopilot, and the same into the next day. One of the kids throws a football at him, trying to hit in him the head, but Peter catches it without looking and throws it back a lot harder than they would\u2019ve expected. He\u2019s worried he did too much, but\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I think this is an interesting move. While Flash has certainly got a lot to answer for in turning all these kids into Peter\u2019s tormentors, in this moment, Peter chooses to be an outcast. It plays into that business where Flash told him he brought all the teasing on himself by refusing to be part of the group back in Web 11<\/a>. At any rate, Spider-Man swings to what we\u2019re told is a very dangerous part of town, looking for trouble, and happens to hear one guy advising his buddy to call in sick to the construction site tomorrow, because either their boss is going to play ball, or there isn\u2019t gonna be a boss anymore. They don\u2019t say what construction site, but our man doesn\u2019t have to be the world\u2019s greatest detective to put this one together. Thusly\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The ol\u2019 Parker luck. Little bit of built-in animosity from the Kingpin for their famous first meeting. It\u2019s weird no one ever brought back Joey Pulaski. You\u2019d think Kurt himself might\u2019ve had present day plans for her. Maybe he did, but they didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe I\u2019m just no fun, but I don\u2019t think Spider-Man should be retroactively made to encounter any actual supervillains before he really did. After, like, ASM 3, say, it\u2019s fine. But I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[1295,1291,35,12,1876,100,1003,172,1293,1292,1294],"class_list":["post-14798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-alexi-taylor","tag-amazing-fantasy","tag-aunt-may","tag-flash-thompson","tag-greg-loudon-jr","tag-kingpin","tag-kurt-busiek","tag-liz-allen","tag-maxie-shiffman","tag-paul-lee","tag-terese-nielsen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14798","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=14798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14821,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14798\/revisions\/14821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}