{"id":19415,"date":"2023-12-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=19415"},"modified":"2022-08-25T23:22:16","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T03:22:16","slug":"smu-19-avengers-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/12\/21\/smu-19-avengers-1\/","title":{"rendered":"SMU 19 & Avengers 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here\u2019s a book that screams \u201cinessential.\u201d But that doesn\u2019t mean unenjoyable, so let\u2019s see. Former Spider-Man assistant editor Mark Bernardo writes, the ubiquitous Joe Bennett pencils, Joe Pimentel inks and John Kalish colors. Is it not Kalisz? Don\u2019t do that man like that! Joe Bennett is a machine in this period. Look at him go! This issue opens with Bennett being asked to draw some pretty wild stuff, with a splash showing some kind of explorer being eaten by a giant alligator as Curt Connors settles in to talk us about the lizard brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I mean, jeez. Where\u2019s the comics code when you need them, that last panel especially is in really poor taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In attendance at Curt\u2019s lecture are his wife, Martha, and Mary Jane. When it ends, the ladies come say hello, and MJ notes she and Peter are in town on business. So I guess we\u2019re in Florida. But Peter\u2019s conspicuously not there. Instead of cutting to him, we jump forward in time to\u2026 some teenagers scoring lizard drugs off The Lizard in the swamp. They apparently turn the kids into raging lunatics, and The Lizard says he\u2019s doing this to show humanity that the difference between humans and reptiles\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bennett takes the prize for perhaps the scariest Lizard anyone\u2019s ever drawn here, wow. Certainly the scariest anyone had drawn up to this point. Apparently in the 2000s they allowed a story to be published where he eats his family, so one assumes he was pretty scary in that, but I didn\u2019t read it, thankfully. Well, anyway, Spider-Man is swingin\u2019 around. He & Ben Urich are apparently in FL to do a story on a rise in criminal activity, which seems pretty shaky, but Ben doesn\u2019t need him right now, so he\u2019s off to spend time with MJ. Or hopes to, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CD-ROMS! \u201cThe last screen on Final Fantasy IV!\u201d There was no FF4 in the US at this time, for the record, and \u201clast screen\u201d is some 80s arcade lingo. Hilarious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, then. An unusual kind of trouble for the Connors family. Meanwhile, Ben Urich has arrived at some kinda seedy bar for a meeting, which turns out to be with the rather unfortunate mob boss character The Slug, last seen on the ol\u2019 blog in Web Annual 4, and I am told here his real name is Ulysses S. Lugman, which is mindboggling. He has a goatee now. Just a weird attempt to make an even fatter Kingpin, Ben wants to talk to him about his crime story. Off the record, Slug tells him there\u2019s a new drug on the streets that\u2019s bad for business and causing all the chaos, and he wants it stopped. So he\u2019ll help Ben uncover what\u2019s happening in the background. Alrighty. Elsewhere, Peter\u2019s finally made it to the spot MJ\u2019s at with Martha, a Coyote Ugly lookin\u2019 situation (Now it\u2019s me with the stale references!) that reminds MJ of what she missed while living in FL (And reminds us she used to live in FL). Martha\u2019s not having fun, tho, too busy worrying about her husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like that panel 5 dialogue. That\u2019s pretty natural banter between them. Well, we skip to the next day, with our young couple having fun at the beach. It\u2019s shockingly rare for the books to devote even a panel to them having a fun time together, it\u2019s insane, but here they get a whole page before Ben shows up to get the plot back on track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is one young looking Ben Urich. So, Peter goes to see his old friend, who thinks it\u2019s pretty crazy that those guys gave into their base instincts after his lecture about humans\u2019 base instincts. He offers Peter a glass of water, but it sets off his danger sense, so he declines. Curt drinks it himself, and then rapidly becomes more and more angry. Peter tries to bring up what happened with Billy, but a furious Connors tells him it\u2019s not his place to tell him how to raise a child\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rough stuff. I think the team of Bernardo & Bennett is seeming pretty strong compared to most of their contemporaries. Bennett\u2019s stuff is still very of its time, but for its time, it\u2019s very sharp, and this story is pretty well constructed and executed. Like I said, inessential doesn\u2019t mean unenjoyable. I\u2019ll take a good comic over an \u201cimportant\u201d comic any day. Well, anyway, we hop to the zoo, where Ben\u2019s waiting for Peter when he hears a noise in the reptile house. He goes in to investigate, and The Lizard siccs his crazed teens on him. Meanwhile, Spider-Man is arriving late as usual, and worried The Slug has sent goons to further confuse things when he hears a scuffle in the reptile house. The Lizard sees him coming through a skylight and flees, leaving he & Ben to deal with the kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then Spider-Man\u2019s worry about The Slug proves true, as some guys roll in trying to machine gun the kids. Spider-Man destroys their truck and webs them up. Ben Urich, the man who figured out Daredevil\u2019s secret identity and has often been hinted at having figured out Spider-Man\u2019s, too, sure doesn\u2019t press the issue of Spider-Man showing up in Florida much at all. Spidey says he got Peter out of there when he saw trouble starting and that\u2019s that. Meanwhile or tomorrow or something, it\u2019s unclear, MJ is visiting Martha at home, and Martha\u2019s worried that Billy hasn\u2019t come home when she\u2019s not ruminating on how bad her & Curt\u2019s lives have gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We hop top the hospital, where we\u2019re told no one can find Curt, but Peter arrives just in time to hear Billy has the same drug in his system as the kids from the zoo. But Billy says he\u2019s never taken drugs, he just helped dad with a secret experiment. Peter says he\u2019s going to go find Curt right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The usual!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We\u2019ve seen Curt stand trial for his Lizardly ways (In ASM Annual 27<\/a>), so I\u2019m not so sure he could \u201creveal\u201d his dual identity, but ok. The lizard men descend on Spidey, who refuses to give in, hoping to hop around and let his advanced metabolism burn through this serum. He webs everyone up, but that empties his shooters just as Lizard prepares to dump his big scifi canister of goo into the water supply. Hopping our hero up on angry drugs before doing this was perhaps a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then, rather improbably, MJ & Martha pull up. They quickly mention Urich got a tip about the drug people meeting here, but still, what are they hoping to accomplish? Well, they find their husbands in pitched battle underwater, and The Lizard has the upper hand. But Spider-Man gets really crazed thanks to the serum, and as he turns the tide, he starts trying to choke the life out of his foe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Spidey in panel 2 feels like a swipe, but I can\u2019t place it. Kinda got an Erik Larsen feel to it. Sadly, it does not end when he\u2019s killed his family, but that\u2019s jumping decades ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Just the slightest hint of the insane transformations Bennett will render during his instant-classic run on Immortal Hulk, but that\u2019s also jumping decades ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Speaking of Curt\u2019s trial, it had almost exactly the same ending, having to \u201cgo away for awhile,\u201d but happy that the future looked bright. Too bad about that! But that\u2019s not all for this post! I said we\u2019d see every appearance of Spider-Man this month, and that means looking at the brand-new Avengers, Vol. 3 #1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 The beginning of a titanic team-up between Kurt Busiek and the late, great George Perez (joined by inker Al Vey and colorist Tom Smith) that didn\u2019t restore The Avengers to greatness so much as put them there for the first time. Despite a parade of excellent creators (And, you know, other ones) working on the title all these years, and some classic stories, The Avengers never really compared to The Justice League at DC, and spent most of their existence overshadowed by The X-Men at Marvel. We saw how the Amalgam universe all-but ignored them when mashing up teams, and I think that\u2019s fine shorthand for how little people regarded them. But this is the run that turned all that around and finally established them as a major team and an important title, paving the way for them to become the centerpiece of the Marvel U in the 2000s and even kind of paving the way for the movies, to a degree, by proving the property could be much more critically and commercially successful than it ever had before. Anyway, Busiek famously asked George Perez which Avengers he\u2019d like to draw, and he said, \u201cAll of them.\u201d So this issue begins with literally every living character who\u2019d ever been an Avenger gathered together, including a certain former reserve Avenger & webslinger. Magical weirdness is happening all over the world, and we see various heroes combating it. The original Avengers (Minus Hulk) meet to try to discuss what to do now that they\u2019re back on Earth. And they call the meeting of everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Where most comic book artists would pass out if asked to draw a spread like this, Perez was not only great at it, but seemed to love doing it. Look at all those familiar faces. It\u2019s crazy, but I think almost everyone in this room has been in a Spider-Man comic. Maybe not Stingray? The originals are still contacting people, getting a polite \u201cno\u201d from the 3 members of the FF who have been Avengers and a very angry \u201cno\u201d from The Hulk. That about wraps it up, so they begin the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No one wanting to sit next to D-Man is legit funny. But here comes the reason for this comic being covered\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A very funny gag, and our man\u2019s out of there. All the magical trouble turned out to be ancient sorceress Morgan Le Fay, who tried to turn the modern world into the medieval world she preferred, but across a wild 3-part adventure that featured almost everyone in this first meeting and saw Wonder Man returned from the dead (again!), The Avengers defeated her. It\u2019s a shame they didn\u2019t have Spider-Man hang around, but it\u2019s a good bit! And that takes care of all seven February cover dated books Spider-Man appeared in. Whew! And it’s nice to showcase some prime work from George Perez. He and Spidey didn’t intersect too much, but he was one of the true greats, and it’s nice to get his art on the blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a book that screams \u201cinessential.\u201d But that doesn\u2019t mean unenjoyable, so let\u2019s see. Former Spider-Man assistant editor Mark Bernardo writes, the ubiquitous Joe Bennett pencils, Joe Pimentel inks and John Kalish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[638,57,113,69,704,621,950,442,1003,1254,68,21,2,439,43,566,706],"class_list":["post-19415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-al-vey","tag-avengers","tag-ben-urich","tag-billy-connors","tag-george-perez","tag-joe-bennett","tag-joe-pimentel","tag-john-kalisz","tag-kurt-busiek","tag-mark-bernardo","tag-martha-connors","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-spider-man","tag-spider-man-unlimited","tag-the-lizard","tag-the-slug","tag-tom-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19415","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=19415"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21110,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19415\/revisions\/21110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}