{"id":15208,"date":"2022-11-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-11T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=15208"},"modified":"2021-09-28T15:36:48","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T19:36:48","slug":"sm-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/11\/11\/sm-16\/","title":{"rendered":"SM 16"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

All the pages of this entire issue, as well as the following issue of X-Force, are sideways. So they\u2019re not gonna be too legible here. Good thing no one actually reads this. It\u2019s weird how lumpy Todd\u2019s take on X-Force looks to my adult eyes. Todd & Rob were frequently compared to each other in this period, but I mean, look at this. They don\u2019t have much in common besides slathering everybody in 20 bazillion little lines. Also strange how this is part 1 of the crossover. If you haven\u2019t read X-Force 3 (As I hadn\u2019t initially when this issue came out), well, good luck. We get started right, with Todd acting like Spider-Man didn\u2019t see anything going on before the blast despite the last few pages of the previous issue AND having Spidey act somewhat inconvenienced by the bombing. But he chooses to go see what\u2019s up, anyway\u2026. On the ground, rather than where the bomb went off. Uh\u2026 good idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Cyan” is the name of Todd’s daughter, newly arrived at this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The smouldering tower there just can\u2019t be seen without remark these days, huh? Probably seemed as ridiculous as a guy swinging around on a web in 1991. McFarlane\u2019s having no problem keeping up the god-awful \u201cbanter\u201d from X-Force. As the 3 members of X-Force convene to talk about fighting Juggernaut while he obligingly just stands there, Spider-Man debates getting involved. Very heroic. But as the X-Force gan poses at Juggy, he thinks they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re getting into, and they\u2019re going to need help from someone who\u2019s fought Juggernaut in the past. Then Cannonball comes zooming out of the WTC and decides to try flying right into Juggernaut. All these new kids I can excuse, but Sam should really know better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve noted for the first time during this re-read that McFarlane\u2019s not too good at action, but that particular impact sure works. I\u2019m not sure I think Spider-Man would know who Cable is, especially at this point. Cable, Domino, Syrn, Gideon, and Sunspot, now mysteriously in uniform, are digging out of the rubble upstairs. Cable tells Dom & Syrn to go help with Juggernaut, to \u201ctake him out as soon as possible,\u201d while he goes after Black Tom. Has Cable just managed to not hear about Juggernaut, or\u2026? Speaking of, the X-Kids are flopping around him in vaguely action-y poses as some prose talks about how it\u2019s impressive none of them as died yet. Almost halfway through this issue, our man decides maybe he ought to, like, get involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good job, Spider-Man. We cut back upstairs so Gideon, Syrn and Cable can have a characteristically whiny McFarlane argument about whether or not Cable\u2019s helping the situation for 2 pages instead of, like, doing anything, and then it\u2019s back down to ground level, where, after some really terrible dialogue where neither Spider-Man nor Juggernaut acknowledge that Spider-Man actually stopped him once, Spidey webs his face and has Warpath push him over, thinking, \u201cSpidey, you\u2019re a GENIUS\u201d to himself. As Juggy peels the web off and begins another terrible speech, whatever advantage this may\u2019ve given the heroes is lost when Boom Boom hovers the ship down near the fight to complain about being left out, distracting everyone long enough for Juggernaut to start beating them up. Back upstairs, a 2-page pin-up of Cable stomping away form the others comes with still more grumpy old man complaining, and then\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The lore has it that Todd wanted panel 4 to be a graphic shot of Juggy getting stabbed in the eye, but editorial wouldn\u2019t let him (I mean\u2026 obviously). And that this was the last straw. That this guy who\u2019d been allowed to crap out 14 of the most poorly written, most unpleasant, most meandering and ultimately pointless Spider-Man comics ever made due to his stardom was nevertheless feeling more and more constrained by editorial telling him what to do every month, and losing this eyeball stab was just one step too far. It\u2019s hard to imagine editorial telling him to change much about his previous 14 issues. You\u2019d think if he were truly being edited, his stories might\u2019ve had some kind of structure, or purpose, or satisfying conclusion. But, allegedly, this page is it, and thus, in a way, this page is responsible for the existence of Image Comics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAlright, gang, I\u2019ve been saying Juggernaut can\u2019t be stopped for several pages despite having beaten him in at least two different fights prior to this, but now, we\u2019re going to stop him!\u201d This issue was just filler. I never really realized that as a kid. You could easily read X-Force 3 & 4 without it. Jeez. But, that\u2019s pretty par for the course with this series, anyway, and we\u2019re out. Todd has a paragraph on the letter page thanking his artistic collaborators and editor Jim Salicrup, saying he\u2019s leaving the book to spend time with his newborn daughter, and then listing the names of every person who\u2019s written to the book since he started it. Todd will begin rallying his fellow star artists to tell Marvel to shove it and go start their own company, and comics history will change. The early Image titles are pretty uniformly terrible, but the company itself has gone on to publish a wide variety of good stuff in the decades since, while also generally standing for creator freedom and ownership (Most of the time). Pretty cool, all told. Todd launched Spawn in 1992, and continues to make it to this day, somehow, despite it being absolute dreck. You might think writing hundreds of comics since these would\u2019ve given him a chance to grow and improve, but you\u2019d be surprised. My lil\u2019 idiot fanboy self was heartbroken to see him leaving this series I hadn\u2019t enjoyed a single issue of, and went on to by well over 100 issues of Spawn I didn\u2019t enjoy, either, all out of misplaced loyalty to my favorite artist, who only drew 20 of those issues. Almost 10 years\u2019 worth of comics I didn\u2019t even like!  It\u2019s a stupid hobby, comics, but it\u2019s far too late for regrets. But speaking of regrets, there\u2019s a whole 2nd issue of X-Force next post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All the pages of this entire issue, as well as the following issue of X-Force, are sideways. So they\u2019re not gonna be too legible here. Good thing no one actually reads this….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[307,275,306,2,274,1311],"class_list":["post-15208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-black-tom-cassidy","tag-gregory-wright","tag-juggernaut","tag-spider-man","tag-todd-mcfarlane","tag-x-force"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15208","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=15208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15649,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15208\/revisions\/15649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}