{"id":18262,"date":"2023-09-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=18262"},"modified":"2022-03-10T23:06:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T03:06:40","slug":"uts-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/09\/06\/uts-16\/","title":{"rendered":"UTS 16"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Madonna reference on this cover was pretty dated when it was new, let alone now. Comic book characters are, of course, not real, and will be interpreted by every one who draws them, and even the most \u201con model\u201d characters will look different from artist to artist and era to era, but all that being said\u2026 this doesn\u2019t look like Mary Jane Watson to me. I mean, these days, 95% of artists can\u2019t even be bothered to remember she has dimples and a cleft chin, literally the only defining characteristics she had in a sea of same-y looking perfect comic book women, so at least they got that, but\u2026 It just doesn\u2019t look like MJ to me. The glasses probably aren\u2019t helping. Inked by the legend George Perez out of nowhere. Inside, we have guest inks by the legend Dick Giordano. A very unusual issue and it hasn\u2019t started yet! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yeah, it\u2019s gonna be like that. We\u2019re gonna really dig in to Conway\u2019s revelation that MJ has known Peter is Spider-Man literally the whole time, the retcon I\u2019ve had a lot of fun with in the eras it affected. It\u2019s a bit odd to be done with them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Inside, Mary Jane looks like Mary Jane. That cover was probably a tough ask, really. With dialogue right out of Parallel Lives<\/a>, even. On the next page, MJ very briefly recaps her bad homelife as a child and her sister\u2019s doomed marriage as she tells us that if there\u2019s anything that scares you or worries you, just laugh it away.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Busiek is threading a really delicate needle here, writing the modern conception of MJ as a complex person pretending to be all surface IN the all surface voice Stan Lee created for her, and he\u2019s pulling it off. But we can\u2019t spend too much time with MJ since she literally can\u2019t interact with anyone in the cast without creating a continuity error, so we check in on Peter Parker, in gym class, where Tiny wants to including Jason and Flash is being weird about it, and so Jason storms off as he has been. Liz confers with Peter about the situation, again voicing the idea that everyone knows even tho Jason was driving without a license and ran a red light, Sally MUST have been pushing him to do it, so it can\u2019t be his fault. Which is\u2026 insane. Insane. I mean, we, the readers know that\u2019s true, but everyone letting Jason off the hook just doesn\u2019t fly. But, at any rate, Liz things Peter must have an idea of how to get Jason back into the group, because he\u2019s smart and she knows he\u2019s not afraid of Flash. And Peter thinks he just might have an idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Radioactive Man is, hands down, THE villain who should been left in the 60s. An uncomfortable-at-best Chinese Communist caricature AND his whole power is being radioactive. Just should let this one go. But this is comics, so they didn\u2019t, and not only is he still appearing in contemporary stuff, but here he is giving everyone in the museum cancer, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Radio Man\u2019s thrown whatever blocks the door, trapping all the regular folks in there with the superfolks, and then Spidey makes the mistake of knocking RM into a display of some unfortunately placed radioactive ore samples. Now he tells us his radiation is out of control, and all he can do is reach critical mass and explode, killing everyone in the city. I mean, could he know that for sure, immediately? He burns a whole in the floor and leaves, saying his only solace is knowing Spider-Man can\u2019t get far away enough to survive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good stuff! Back home, MJ and Anna debate whether there\u2019s any real danger, Anna telling us there\u2019s traffic jams as people try to flee NY. MJ just grabs her coat and goes for a walk, trying to find a distraction, and instead sees a Tv in a window showing footage of Spider-Man having tracked Radioactive Man to The Brooklyn Bridge. MJ hails a taxi in that direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Radio Man says he can feel that he\u2019ll explode in seconds, which, again, seems hyper aware on his part, but Spider-Man leaps onto the hood of the car he\u2019s standing on, launching his foe into the air and\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that wraps up the super plot, but we have Peter Parker business to attend to, as MJ wonders what\u2019s going on at his place after all this. The answer is a surprise \u201cWelcome Back Tiny And Jason\u201d party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jason\u2019s turn on Peter\u2026 in his own house\u2026 is kinda horrible. But I guess kids can be mean, especially vulnerable ones. It was a nice study of who MJ is mixed in with the usual Spider-Stuff. Next post, we\u2019ve already seen one of my absolute least favorite villains debut, and now it\u2019s time for the other one\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Madonna reference on this cover was pretty dated when it was new, let alone now. Comic book characters are, of course, not real, and will be interpreted by every one who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[36,35,11,111,12,20,13,1298,1003,172,21,1303,1621,2,1288,1300,1287],"class_list":["post-18262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-aunt-anna","tag-aunt-may","tag-betty-brant","tag-dick-giordano","tag-flash-thompson","tag-george-stacy","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-jason-ionello","tag-kurt-busiek","tag-liz-allen","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-pat-olliffe","tag-radioactive-man","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-mattson","tag-tiny-mckeever","tag-untold-tales-of-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18262","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=18262"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18284,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18262\/revisions\/18284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}