{"id":1640,"date":"2019-09-10T00:00:20","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T04:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=1640"},"modified":"2019-05-19T21:17:50","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T01:17:50","slug":"asm-256","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/09\/10\/asm-256\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 256"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s the possibly thrilling debut of The Puma. Puma is\u2026 complicated. He was a pretty major player when I came on the scene as a kid, but\u2026 We\u2019ll just get into it. Spideys busting up some dudes receiving stolen goods in a warehouse, as Black Cat, making a surprisingly rare appearance in ASM, takes pictures of him doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here\u2019s the thing: Black Cat pretty clearly already had \u201cbad luck power\u201d in her first appearances. I realize we\u2019ve not covered that on the blog yet, but trust me on this. In ASM 194-195 and ASM 204-205, Marv Wolfman had bad luck happening to anyone who got in her way (As she endlessly told people it\u2019s bad luck to let a black cat cross your path. I mean, nonstop). They never SAID she had powers, but they went out of their way to show that she did. Then new writers got involved, suddenly she didn\u2019t. Now she does! That\u2019s a weird journey. It\u2019s also weird that most of her story is unfolding in Spectacular. ASM has always been considered the \u201creal\u201d Spider-Man book, and yet as you\u2019ve seen, she\u2019s not been much of a going concern here in spite of being, as a previous caption in this issue said, his \u201ctrue love.\u201d ANYWAY. Spidey keeps whupping on the various goons, until it looks like he might be in trouble, so even though she knows he can handle it, Felicia takes the excuse to jump in herself. Not that he minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is exactly the kind of thing that happened to people in her early days. Anyway, a guy tries to shoot her and his gun blows up in his hand an she knocks him out, so that\u2019s it for these guys. Spidey webs them all up and they take off, Spidey still fretting that this is too dangerous for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back home, Peter complains that he\u2019s always tired these days while developing his film, then complains that Felicia is clearly a better photographer than he is (Is he, like, factoring in that his \u201cwork\u201d is usually done by a camera stuck in a corner by itself? \u201cI can\u2019t believe a person can frame a shot better than a camera webbed in a dark corner!\u201d). Then he accidentally knocks some stuff off a shelf in his closet and finds his old spare costume, sending him on a brief nostalgia trip before bed (Mostly so Ron Frenz could draw the old suit, seems like). Once again, as Peter goes to bed, his costume slithers across the floor towards him. This seems bad! Especially since, later in the evening we see a couple of bickering homeless guys get scared but what appears to be Spider-Man swinging by. Hmmmmm. The next day, we check in with The Rose\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Suddenly we\u2019re in Heartsdale, New Mexico, home of Fireheart Enterprises, whose mysterious leader Thomas Fireheart is ditching a meeting with the mayor and a Congressman. His assistant, Jenna, sees a call on his private line. It\u2019s The Rose. She doesn\u2019t know who that is, so she transfers it to\u2026 a helicopter 60 miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Puma apparently kills his prey in 6 minutes, then returns to the helicopter to find Jenna\u2019s message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, right? He\u2019s like a Native American Batman, only he\u2019s a were-cat, and apparently hangs out with bad guys like The Rose. On the other side of the country, Peter brings Felicia\u2019s photos to Robbie, who says his technique is improving (That\u2019s gotta hurt), but people have seen plenty of pictures of Spidey wailing on goons, and he\u2019s only buying these for the novelty of the new suit. Robbie\u2019s a lot harder to please than JJJ was. Which is almost funny considering how often he bent the rules and even made up fake assignments to help Peter in the past. A visibly exhausted Peter goes to Betty Brant for his check, and talks for a sec about how things are still sour between him & Aunt May, when a surprise visitor appears:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We haven\u2019t seen Marvelous Mary Jane for awhile around here. She invites Peter to join her & Betty for dinner, but he declines and takes off. Betty says she has some theories about what\u2019s troubling him, and MJ says she\u2019d love to hear them. Meanwhile, Thomas Fireheart\u2019s private jet lands in New York, and soon he\u2019s meeting with The Rose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Rose\u2019s top goons, Varley & Johnston, wait outside the room for Fireheart to change, and when he never comes out, they go in and find he\u2019s gone out the window, even though \u201cthe nearest rooftop\u2019s gotta be forty feet away!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Puma soon picks up Spidey\u2019s scent and heads out after him, and while Spider-Man contemplates how to make things right with Aunt May, Puma decides he doesn\u2019t look like much and tests him by tossing a pipe at him super fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey\u2019s pretty sure he\u2019s dislocated his shoulder, and is in immense pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that doesn\u2019t look good for our man. Will he survive? I mean, probably! The Puma\u2026 it will become apparent in later appearances that Tom Defalco made up his own Native American tribe with zero research, and it\u2019s all very awkward. Right now it\u2019s just somewhat awkward, but it\u2019s gonna ramp up. And like I said, this guy is gonna be a recurring figure for a long while. I dunno.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the letter column, we\u2019re still on ASM 250. I\u2019m eager to get to reactions about the suit. But people are already pretty excited about trying to guess who The Hobgoblin is. By now, ASM has had them guessing for almost 20 issues. Little do they know what they\u2019re getting into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the possibly thrilling debut of The Puma. Puma is\u2026 complicated. He was a pretty major player when I came on the scene as a kid, but\u2026 We\u2019ll just get into it….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[9,11,156,253,26,278,21,327,326,364,321,2,325,124],"class_list":["post-1640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-betty-brant","tag-black-cat","tag-bob-sharen","tag-joe-robertson","tag-joe-rubenstein","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mr-johnston","tag-mr-varley","tag-puma","tag-ron-frenz","tag-spider-man","tag-the-rose","tag-tom-defalco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640","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=1640"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4419,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions\/4419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}