{"id":19621,"date":"2024-01-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=19621"},"modified":"2022-07-04T20:44:03","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T00:44:03","slug":"asm-022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/01\/08\/asm-022\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NEW villains? Or just some of those losers from The Circus of Crime without The Ringmaster?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Asked & answered! The letterer gag is pretty good this month. Usually they\u2019re kinda mean. The Circus of Crime is dumb and will always be dumb, but Princess Python eventually got a new lease on life when The Serpent Society was created by bringing together as many snake-themed villains as Mark Gruenwald could get in Captain America. We open on the Circus dorks in a hotel room, fully outfitted, when Spider-Man shows up. He heard they got outta jail, and also somehow knew where they were, and came to tell them not to mess with him ever again, like they did in ASM 16<\/a>. In the process of threatening Ringmaster, he slips a tracer onto his hat so he can keep tabs on them, then leaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A trustworthy face, to be sure. Everyone in the circus takes turns beating up Ringmaster before he goes, which is hilarious, and then we go see Peter Parker, so wrapped up in a book about Henry Pym\u2019s work that he hasn\u2019t noticed school is over, much to Flash\u2019s annoyance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Van Der Twilliger! JJJ as a patron of the arts is a new one. The pop art thing is interesting. It\u2019s not too many months from now Stan, ever the promoter, starts slapping \u201cA Marvel Pop Art Production\u201d on the covers trying to cash in on the fad. Well, obviously, the circus folk want to rob this show. After using Cannonball as a battering ram to come in the back, Clown\u2019s genius plan is\u2026 he\u2019ll go do a clown act in the gallery to distract everyone while the rest of them steal all the money. What a great plan! And Peter recognizes him immediately, and JJJ hears some noise in the back while this clown he didn\u2019t hire is doing his thing, and the plan falls apart in 5 panels. Genius. Here\u2019s a thing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ron Frenz swiped panel 6 for the last page of ASM 259<\/a>. I\u2019ve read that issue so many times as a youth, but I\u2019m seeing this one for the first time tonight. Shameless. Betty talking like JJJ is dead is kinda weird. Spider-Man catches up to Ringmaster at a police precinct, where he was obviously brought in for questioning after tonight. But, he could honestly say he had nothing to do with it, so they let him go. He\u2019s in his goofy outfit the whole time, of course. Old comics are so funny. \u201cThis is my life!\u201d Spidey follows him home, and then uses his own stupid had to hypnotize him and get the location of The Circus\u2019 hideout. Man, how embarrassing. For some reason, Spidey then calls the hospital from Ringy\u2019s phone to see how JJJ\u2019s doing, then goes to bust up the baddies. Maybe shoulda done those things in reverse order. The Circus folk are celebrating their barely coherent plan and trying to come up with a new team name. They settle on the Masters of Menace just as a certain red spotlight shines in on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cHe hasn\u2019t a chance against ALL of us! I mean, he stomped us instantly last time, but that was different!\u201d Time for a bunch of that unmistakable Ditko acrobatics, making even the lamest villains at least visually interesting. And some kid has colored all the action lines red with a crayon! 60 year old vandalism!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Later, the idea will be that she can hold you in an unbreakable grip, like a python, and it seems like that\u2019s what Ditko\u2019s going for here, but Stan turned it into \u201cI can\u2019t hurt a lady.\u201d Interesting. We cut away to see Spidey\u2019s webbing dissolve on Ringmaster\u2019s hat, allowing him to regain control of himself, and then to Betty being told JJJ will be fine before getting back to the battle. All the guys pile on top of Spider-Man, PP saying if they can\u2019t beat him now, they might as well give up. And he proceeds to knock them all out one by one now that they\u2019re all smashed together and can\u2019t maneuver, with some extra for Cannonball, since he\u2019s the one who hospitalized JJJ. But Princess Python slips away while he\u2019s putting the beat down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Feel like this page might\u2019ve inspired the Commanda bit in Untold Tales 10<\/a>. Ringmaster decides to go get some revenge, a police detective sees him light out of his place (STILL in costume), and follows, and Princess Python is really trying to charm our hero. When it doesn\u2019t work, she tries to yoink his mask off and see his face, and when that doesn\u2019t work, she goes for an electric prod she says she uses on her snake. This somehow makes Spidey\u2019s webshooters quit working (Um), and he\u2019s backed into a dark room which contains\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You can see why she might want the prod. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first time he ever kept Aunt May up worrying! A long tradition.  A wacky one. At least Betty wasn\u2019t awful this month. Next post: the 2nd-to-last issue of Untold Tales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW villains? Or just some of those losers from The Circus of Crime without The Ringmaster? Asked & answered! The letterer gag is pretty good this month. Usually they\u2019re kinda mean. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[9,35,11,961,12,13,172,2,6,8],"class_list":["post-19621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1960s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-may","tag-betty-brant","tag-circus-of-crime","tag-flash-thompson","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-liz-allen","tag-spider-man","tag-stan-lee","tag-steve-ditko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19621","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=19621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19633,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19621\/revisions\/19633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}