{"id":18478,"date":"2023-09-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-26T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=18478"},"modified":"2022-03-29T21:14:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T01:14:46","slug":"uts-annual-96","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/09\/26\/uts-annual-96\/","title":{"rendered":"UTS Annual ’96"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If yer gonna do a retro comic like this, Mike Allred is pretty natural choice of artist. His whole thing is a kind of kitchy, 60s-influenced style that he\u2019s used to great effect in several things over the years. Why not bring in him on this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s an interesting thing, because you can see that classic comic influence, but you\u2019d never mistake his art for being from that period. It\u2019s wearing its influences on its sleeve, but it\u2019s very much his own thing. No easy feat. And here, he\u2019s being inked by the legend, Joe Sinnott, who inked Fantastic Four through much of Kirby\u2019s time and many of his successors, so this is gonna look far more at home mixed in with the ASMs than the usual. Kurt Busiek still writes, Steve Mattson still colors. We skip ahead to evening, where Reed Richards his being pretty rude to Sue because he\u2019s doing science, which, while pretty authentic to the period, is something Kurt could\u2019ve updated. She storms out of his lab to find Johnny and Ben engaged in their typical hijinks. They try to cheer her up, but then Spider-Man appears at the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now that\u2019s an unusual hook! As always, I don\u2019t remember this at all. In fact, I was so sure I didn\u2019t own this issue that I bought one off the internet, only to find I already had one. Oops. Anyway, the boys can\u2019t believe Sue would really go out with Spider-Man, and she reminds them of the wacky story in ASM 8<\/a>, when he left her a valentine. She thinks maybe he\u2019ll be more attentive than SOME people. The next day, Peter Parker can\u2019t focus on school at all, because he\u2019s got a date with The Invisible Girl. He gets home in time to catch Aunt May answering the phone for Betty. She\u2019s decided to give Peter another chance tonight, but of course, he can\u2019t go, so she hangs up mad. The usual.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is both pretty amusing and totally the kind of goofy story they might\u2019ve done in the 60s. This is the most on-brand Untold Tales has been in awhile. Meanwhile, at the pizza place, instead of kindling their own romance, Sue & Spidey are complaining about the problems in their real relationships when one of Sue\u2019s problems comes smashing through the window. He \u201crescues\u201d Sue by picking her up out of their booth, and when Spidey objects, he gets punched right through a wall. So it\u2019s time for a real goofy Two Heroes Fight Over A Misunderstanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sue shoots the FF\u2019s \u201c4\u201d signal into the air, and while she waits for her team to show up, the battle continues raging across the city. As Spider-Man does his best to avoid Namor\u2019s wrath, he keeps trying to find out why they\u2019re fighting, to no avail. He begins think someone else is behind this\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The stars in Spidey\u2019s eyes are a nice touch. Namor\u2019s so furious he doesn\u2019t see the big hunk of wall he threw is headed for, you guessed it, Betty & JJJ. Spider-Man\u2019s pretty wrecked, but he drops all his defenses to web the rubble and save them. Namor finally sees that he\u2019s been deceived, but now Spider-Man\u2019s so angry about Betty almost getting hurt, he\u2019s ready to start the fight all over again, until an invisible force field separates them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A pretty fun romp! You really can\u2019t get away with this kind of thing by the 90s and beyond (Tho some guys try, and it sucks!), but doing this throwback thing gives you an out. Why not indulge? Next up for the annual, they do \u201cA gallery of Spider-Man\u2019s most famous foes!\u201d like they have tended to do over the years, only this one\u2019s totally made up of characters created for this series (And Busiek\u2019s Amazing Fantasy 16-18). So you get folks like Sal Buscema and Jim Mooney drawing The Undertaker and Joey Pulaski from AF 16 & 17, Gil Kane himself drawing Supercharger from #18\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pat Olliffe inked by the great Klaus Janson doing Scorcher, a Mike Weiringo & Cam Smith Batwing, Mark Bagley & Mark Farmer\u2019s take on The Spacemen, and then this odd final one\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026which kinda blows up the whole thing. The Wizard wasn\u2019t created for this series. Kind of confusing. Torch recreating a bit from the 60s Spider-Man cartoon back there is funny, tho. The next feature is another throwback bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kurt & Pat follow In the tradition of the wild, obviously fake strips Stan, Jack & Steve used to do showing how they made the comics. They do a short, but pretty good one. Then, the regular team (With Pam Eklund back on inks in place of Al Williamson) present\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spider-Man takes you through the book\u2019s cast and locations, while Kurt casually adds photographer Phil Sheldon from his legendary Marvels series with Alex Ross to The Bugle staff despite him not appearing in ASM or UTS, for that matter. But he technically is supposed to have been there, so that\u2019s fun. The book ends on this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pretty funny. A very enjoyable issue overall. Maybe not quite good enough to accidentally buy twice, but still, pretty fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If yer gonna do a retro comic like this, Mike Allred is pretty natural choice of artist. His whole thing is a kind of kitchy, 60s-influenced style that he\u2019s used to great…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[35,11,288,72,1038,13,228,1003,1624,240,247,2,1288,663,1287],"class_list":["post-18478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-aunt-may","tag-betty-brant","tag-fantastic-four","tag-human-torch","tag-invisible-woman","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-joe-sinnott","tag-kurt-busiek","tag-mike-allred","tag-namor","tag-reed-richards","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-mattson","tag-the-thing","tag-untold-tales-of-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18478","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=18478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18496,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18478\/revisions\/18496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}