{"id":19385,"date":"2023-12-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=19385"},"modified":"2022-06-13T17:21:46","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T21:21:46","slug":"sm-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/12\/18\/sm-88\/","title":{"rendered":"SM 88"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Now here\u2019s a cover I really really remember. Excellent concept & execution. So good they didn\u2019t even plaster some stupid copy over it and ruin it. I don\u2019t much recall what\u2019s inside, tho. In fact, I realized I for some reason associate this cover with a story I know is coming up later. I dunno. Let\u2019s see. Rare for a Goblin story to happen outside TAC. We start with some cops on a snowy night, having found a guy webbed to a light post, joking about making a detective come cut him down. Oh, hey, I remember this one now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Everyone\u2019s having fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No one\u2019s having fun anymore. Certainly not MJ, who answers the middle-of-the-night phone calls from The Bugle to get Peter to come cover this story. So, soon, JJJ is driving himself, Ben Urich and Peter to the scene, elated, and his mood only improves when he sees they\u2019re the only reporters there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I know this will be a shocking thing for me to say, but Romita is crushing this issue. The mood is palpable. It has that portentous vibe from things like ASM 238<\/a>. Pretty sure I briefly confused Joey Z and Jimmy 6 the first time I read this. I mean, could you blame me, really? Feel like Norman risks a lot by showing up to a random crime scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As unhappy as I was and am with Norman coming back, hard to deny the power of a gag like this, especially with Romita giving him that killer deadpan. Peter is walking home, worrying, obviously, when he sees a light on a nearby rooftop, and that light is being held by The Green Goblin. Peter furiously smashes the doors off the building to get up to its roof, saying this ends tonight, becoming Spider-Man on his way up the stairs, but when he gets there, there\u2019s just a pumpkin bomb waiting for him. Norman playing the kind of games Harry did near the end. Spider-Man throws the bomb to explode in the air so it won\u2019t hurt anyone, and as he rages at his absent foe, cops burst in through the stairwell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I have always said with complete confidence that this was the best of the Spider-Man titles in this period, and an issue like this feels like perfect evidence. For all the (largely deserved) hate Howard Mackie will leave these books with in a few years, he was hands down the best writer in the line at this point. How things went so, so wrong is hard to fathom, but that\u2019s for later. Anyway, the next morning, Pete & MJ are having coffee at The Daily Grind, Peter referencing Spider-Man\/Kingpin<\/a>, saying he was able to beat that frame, but a 2nd one so soon seems impossible. At the counter, Devon is telling Buzz there\u2019s no way Spider-Man did it, but Shirley isn\u2019t too sure. MJ suggests Peter get help form Arthur Stacy of all people, since he\u2019s a detective, but Peter obviously isn\u2019t into that. As Peter & MJ keep talking, The Goblin appears outside with a bright light again. Peter runs out, but of course, he disappears again. He tells MJ, and says there\u2019s only one way to deal with this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Naturally, Spider-Man yoinks Norman out of the elevator and runs him up onto the roof. Norman tells him he\u2019s so predictable he\u2019s almost taken the fun out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After taunting Spidey for awhile, Norman says he was never a worthy opponent, and life isn\u2019t worth living without one, and jumps off the roof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The plot thickens! I\u2019d bet $1 that \u201cSpider-Man is forced to swing off into the storm\u201d is a panel description that accidentally got turned into dialogue. It happens sometimes. Infamously, in an issue of the Spawn spin-off Sam & Twitch, Brian Michael Bendis accidentally invented a new bit of slang for indigestion when the description \u201cshot of Barbara\u201d got added to a word balloon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And so, more than a year after Arthur\u2019s awkward reintroduction into the books, they finally meet. A+ issue. I wish they could all be this good.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they can\u2019t, and also, due to something happening soon, this stinger ending kind of loses its momentum for a bit. But I guess that\u2019s what publishing way too many books about one character does. But, I know I’m a broken record, but look at this. Here’s a tense, dark, “grown up” Spider-Man story without all the wallowing in misery that ruins so many DeMatteis projects. It’s totally doable!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now here\u2019s a cover I really really remember. Excellent concept & execution. So good they didn\u2019t even plaster some stupid copy over it and ruin it. I don\u2019t much recall what\u2019s inside,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[113,480,478,40,275,415,13,118,21,39,417,477,2],"class_list":["post-19385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-ben-urich","tag-buzz","tag-devon-lewis","tag-green-goblin","tag-gregory-wright","tag-howard-mackie","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-john-romita-jr","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-norman-osborn","tag-scott-hanna","tag-shirley-washington","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19385","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=19385"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19398,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19385\/revisions\/19398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}