{"id":15727,"date":"2023-01-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=15727"},"modified":"2022-01-09T19:25:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T23:25:00","slug":"spider-man-mayhem-in-manhattan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/01\/04\/spider-man-mayhem-in-manhattan\/","title":{"rendered":"Spider-Man: Mayhem In Manhattan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sorta half way through this set comes this oddity. As the remit of this blog is obviously comic books, one would think a novel outside my purview. And beyond that, one would assume a novel would almost certainly be out of continuity. And, sure, I\u2019ve posted a lot of comics obviously out of continuity, but a novel with no bearing on the metastory would be especially frivolous. But, when that novel is written by the current and soon-to-be writers of Amazing Spider-Man, well, they can do what they want. While this book doesn\u2019t have any kinda earth-shaking impact on the line, it is referenced, and when I found that out (By reading a comic that referenced it, ASM 186<\/a>), I decided I should track it down. And it\u2019s\u2026 pretty terrible, actually. Wein didn\u2019t exactly turn in an all-timer run here, and while Wolfman\u2019s is unquestionably more interesting, I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d call it much better. And a big problem for both is Peter and Spidey himself, written as a mean, self-absorbed, constantly whining jerk rather than the lovable everyman trope he\u2019s alleged to fill. Conway\u2019s Peter was pretty terrible in the 70s, too, but not on their level. So you have 2 authors I would humbly submit don\u2019t really \u201cget\u201d the title character writing in a medium outside their usual, and the results are not too hot. But I read it, so here follows some thoughts and a summary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One has to assume it was Stan Lee who made sure his name appeared twice on the cover of a product he had almost nothing to do with. In his very short introduction, he happily takes credit for creating Spider-Man and the entire Marvel Universe by himself and also says one of the key reasons Len & Marv are the guys to write Spider-Man\u2019s first novel is they get the character\u2019s sense of humor, which he rightly identifies as crucial to the character. I wouldn\u2019t have ever assumed Stan actually read this book anyway, but that confirms it. If you\u2019re trying to sell a car with 3 wheels, pointing out how important it is that a car have 4 wheels seems like an unforced error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story opens on one Allen Huddleston, a big deal in the oil industry, in mortal terror as he tries to barricade himself into his apartment. The authors work as hard as possible to make him seem an odious and awful character until the source of his terror appears on his balcony: a figure who is clearly Doctor Octopus and also supposed to be a mystery. This, right off the bat, is a bizarre choice. The entire book will focus on Spider-Man trying to solve the mystery of who the villain is, when an excerpt on the very first page makes it clear, and then the first chapter confirms that it is, of course, Doc Ock. But he\u2019s still played as a mysterious tormentor, whose \u201carm\u201d comes out from under his opera cloak to tear apart Allen\u2019s barricade in \u201ca steel grip,\u201d among other things, as he tells Allen he knew he\u2019d be sorry for refusing to cooperate and then chucks him off the balcony. Shrouding this villain in secrecy while describing his bowl cut and glasses and so on so anyone with even passing familiarity with Spider-Man will know who it is is completely baffling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of, Chapter 2 features Spider-Man whining non-stop, and I mean non-stop, about how the world is out to get him and why me? And my life sucks and I hate it as he happens upon Allen\u2019s corpse, is happened upon by some joggers, and is soon being chased by 2 beat cops for murder. But he\u2019s already whining even before he finds the body, and whining when he finally escapes, too. He is rendered completely unlikable instantly. For some reason. He is also portrayed as barely able to fight, escape, or outwit a couple of flatfoots, one of them your typical nervous rookie, who almost take him down, like, 3 times in the space of a few minutes. This is just the beginning of a book that portrays Spider-Man as remarkably weaker, less confident, less experienced and less capable than he is in the comics. By comics writers. Who decided to make it canon. The bafflement continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next day, we meet The Daily Bugle cast as Peter & MJ go down there to let readers meet JJJ, Robbie, Glory & even Randy Robertson. Any time a black character is introduced, be it Randy inexplicably working as a copy boy, Robbie, or Glory Grant, they make certain to tell you they\u2019re black, while no white people\u2019s race is ever mentioned, which is very classy. They went to The Bugle because MJ heard Peter was working with a girl photographer there and they were \u201cgetting it on.\u201d Turns out, JJJ wants Peter to mentor his niece, Peter doesn\u2019t want to do it, MJ finally believes he\u2019s not cheating on her, and he is fired for refusing. MJ hearing about this before Peter is yet another completely improbable bit of business in this very short book. We\u2019re talking 176 pages, small paperback, large print, including title pages and copyright info and Stan\u2019s introduction, which starts on page 7, and one of 3 widely distributed Romita Spider-Mans taking up \u00be of the first page of each chapter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we follow JJJ & Robbie trying and failing to be let into a secretive meeting of big time oil execs, and Spider-Man just happening to be on the scene on a roof across the street to see them turned away, and deciding to see what\u2019s going on in that building out of nothing but pure nosiness. Crawling through air ducts, he eventually finds himself able to eavesdrop as guys from all the biggest American oil companies are blackmailed by a distorted figure and voice on a video screen, who is obviously Doc Ock to us, but not to Spider-Man. Ock\u2019s scheme is to make all of America’s biggest oil companies buy oil from him for a year, because he has *irradiated their oil supplies with toxic waste,” a process he claims he can undo in a year. The oil companies will keep this a secret the whole time or be forced to admit the truth, which would be a PR nightmare. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where did Ock get enough oil to supply every major company for a year? Don’t worry about it. How did he irradiate all these oil fields\/reserves\/what have you? Don’t worry about it. Why didn\u2019t he just sell this oil himself? Don\u2019t worry about it. Apparently! This plot is childish even by the standards of the time, more in line with a Saturday morning cartoon than the comics. And it is working, somehow. Spider-Man then bumbles into being caught by security and spends a truly incredible amount of time trying to escape the building, managing to travel to several floors, his every destination positively swarming with security, once again barely able to fight or dodge or anything, and at one point almost killed by an oncoming elevator while hiding in an elevator shaft because he didn\u2019t think to just\u2026 hop onto the roof. But our beleaguered and bumbling hero does eventually flee the building, having taken a couple snaps of the meeting and off to try to figure out who the mystery villain is. He has at least tied this to the murder of Huddleston, by this point, so even though he seems kinda dumb in this book, he\u2019s not that dumb. And he declares to himself that he\u2019s had enough of being Spider-Man, and when he clears himself of Allen\u2019s murder, he\u2019s done. That old chestnut. So he goes to Huddleston\u2019s place as Peter Parker to scope out the trashed apartment, and then again as Spider-Man, and finds some evidence revealing the names of 2 of the \u201cmystery villain\u2019s\u201d accomplices within some of the oil companies. He shakes them down and gets an address for the big boss, who one goon tells only goes by \u201cThe Master Planner.\u201d Spider-Man should certainly know who THAT is, but doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, JJJ & Robbie can ponder what kind of conspiracy is going on with the oil companies and JJJ declares he & Robbie will cover this story themselves. Robbie gets some info out of a stoolie in a bar, but we\u2019ll have to wait to see what they came up with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spidey goes to Coney Island based on his tip, flashing back to his origin for some reason along the way. All dialogue from it is printed verbatim. It is, of course, a trap. He finds out Doc Ock is the villain in an abandoned fun house, which Ock has filled with traps. Our man fights some funhouse mirrors and various other business before falling for an exploding dummy of Doc Ock that brings the whole place down on top of him. And because it\u2019s on the beach, it\u2019s flooding, too. And then Spider-Man Must Lift A Heavy Thing, and it\u2019s pretty much the exact scene of the original version of this gimmick. He does, of course. Hooray! I thought he was gonna die!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short order, JJJ & Robbie are kidnapped for snooping too close, and Spider-Man breaks into The Bugle to look up an old piece of info he thinks will help him. He figures out where Ock is, and is racing off to stop him when he swings over \u201can honest-to-Starsky-&-Hutch car chase,\u201d which is the only quip in the book I liked. He thinks he doesn\u2019t have time for it, but then feels bad and goes back to help just in time to save a blind man from being hit by a stolen taxi. It was stolen by a hood on the run from the cops. Spidey stops him, thinking he owes it to Uncle Ben and such, and then continues on to the book\u2019s climax after this awkward detour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That climax takes place on an experimental oil drilling platform that, guess what, Otto Octavius worked on before becoming Doc Ock. Drilling for more oil is frequently presented as the answer to mankind\u2019s prayers instead of the means of our demise in this book, which is\u2026 hilarious. On the oil rig, he finds Ock meeting with the assembled oil men, and eventually, JJJ & Robbie held prisoner. Spidey frees the newsmen, disrupts the meeting, and begins the final battle. As the oil guys flee and JJJ roots for Doc Ock, Robbie does his best to help Spidey before they flee themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is much fighting, far less exciting in prose than in comics, and eventually, Ock falls into the water below. Except, as the oil men are being evacuated, it turns out the one from Roxxon, in a wheelchair, is Doc Ock in disguise, and that was a decoy, and then there\u2019s still more fighting. Then Doc Ock is blown to bits by the oil rig\u2019s drill bursting open, which he caused on purpose trying to catch Spider-Man in it, instead. Good job. And he\u2019s dead, forever! He\u2019s always going up in huge explosions, that guy. Then Spider-Man swims home, having decided not to stop being Spider-Man, and certain JJJ will rehire him. Status quo restored, or implied to be. The end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book should not have been in continuity. That would free it up to be what it kind of is, a primer on Spider-Man. It doesn\u2019t do the best job, but it spells out his deal as both Spider-Man and Peter Parker and gives him a battle with his best villain. But it also plays the hits in some ways, like \u201cI want to quit being Spider-Man,\u201d \u201cI must lift a heavy thing,\u201d invoking The Master Planner, and so on. All things that would be fine for a product aimed at the uninitiated, but when you then go on to make it canon in ASM 186, that makes so much of it feel weirder. It\u2019s a passing reference. DA Tower tells Spider-Man he\u2019s cleared of the death of Captain Stacy, that they discovered evidence implicating Doc Ock, who \u201cdied last month off the New York coast,\u201d which is hilarious. It says to see the novel, but it\u2019s just spoiled the entire thing in half a sentence. Go check it out! Messy. I appreciate the idea, of course. Tie it all together. It\u2019s the Marvel ethos. Not a great idea here, tho.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorta half way through this set comes this oddity. As the remit of this blog is obviously comic books, one would think a novel outside my purview. And beyond that, one would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,13,26,1498,132,21,1442,2],"class_list":["post-15727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-doctor-octopus","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-joe-robertson","tag-lein-wein","tag-marv-wolfman","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mayhem-in-manhattan","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15727","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=15727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15739,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15727\/revisions\/15739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}