{"id":19635,"date":"2024-01-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=19635"},"modified":"2022-07-27T23:14:52","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T03:14:52","slug":"uts-annual-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/01\/05\/uts-annual-97\/","title":{"rendered":"UTS Annual ’97"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Untold Tales is racing toward cancellation, but it\u2019s not done yet, and here we have an interesting gimmick. Behind this Tom Lyle cover is a story that got a direct sequel in this year\u2019s ASM Annual, pretty firmly tying in Untold into the regular books in a way it never had before. I\u2019ve been saving that annual for the next late 90s block for this reason. So let\u2019s see what happened in the 60s so we\u2019ll be ready for the 90s. It\u2019s Kurt Busiek, Tom Lyle, Robert Jones & Steve Mattson on deck. Page one introduces us to Dr. David Patrick Lowell, a botanist who\u2019s really excited to talk to a girl in his building about plants until he has to go to work. On the very next page, Spider-Man is minding his own when a supervillain bursts out of a building and flies by ranting. It\u2019s Dr. Lowell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Not a very 1960s costume, but you could do worse. The red thing feels most out of place. Spidey tries webbing his new friend\u2019s eyes, but he rips the webbing right off his glasses and then blasts some kind of storage tank behind Spider-Man, forcing him to leap out of the way. But he still gets doused in some kind of green fluid, which he identifies as chemical waste. Now his villain\u2019s escaped, he smells terrible, and he may be getting poisoned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lowell is, indeed, sort of fighting Daredevil, but mostly just ranting incoherently and shooting beams in his general direction. This gets the attention of Giant-Map & The Wasp signing autographs for fans on the street below. Soon, Hank is super tall and has grabbed Lowell. He tells him to simmer down, but as he shrieks about \u201cthat\u2019s how they control you,\u201d he becomes stronger and bigger, and the sky begins to go dark as he breaks loose, like he\u2019s absorbing the ambient light. And as the covered promises, the cameos are just getting started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Blake\u2019s short walk is actually becoming Thor. Then Dr. Strange sends his astral form to investigate, and The X-Men are approaching by helicopter, either to help the guy if he\u2019s a mutant or stop him to make mutants look good if he\u2019s not. I guess Kurt figured, if ASM Annual 1<\/a> had everyone in it \u201crecently,\u201d Untold should, too. In Forest Hills, Peter Parker hears about a battle between basically all superheroes and an unknown guy from Flash, who doesn\u2019t understand why Spider-Man hasn\u2019t joined in yet. We get a splash of all the heroes attacking the new guy, and then Peter runs home to allow Spider-Man to join the battle. But he hasn\u2019t washed his costume yet, so it still smells awful as he takes off (And, I guess, could be making sure he gets cancer). Spider-Man decides that, if the assembled Marvel Universe is being fought to a standstill, he probably can\u2019t add much help, but maybe he can learn who this guy is and what his deal is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alrighty! Back at the fight, the heroes are calling Lowell \u201cSundown\u201d now, and he\u2019s just blasted Human Torch unconscious. We get quick cameos for Hulk and Sub-Mariner since they won\u2019t be joining the battle, and I think that covers the whole of Marvel\u2019s publishing line from late \u201865.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No respect. Spidey bounces over to tell Reed Richards that Sundown is powered by the sun, but Reed\u2019s already figured it out, and gives Thor the idea to summon a storm to blot out the sun. But that just gets Thor zapped by the ever-growing baddie. Spidey decides the best thing he can do is try to reason with him, leaping over and yelling his full name, telling him his wife is concerned and his job wants to help. Lowell knows that\u2019s a lie, and is ready to start raging again when\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And there\u2019s the setup. When we get back to the late 90s, we\u2019ll see what happens. It\u2019s a fun gag. Obviously, you don\u2019t want to overdo it\u2026 don\u2019t want a constant stream of new foes Spider-Man fought as a teen and never saw again til he was in grad school\u2026Bue one is a good idea. Next up, another gallery of bad guys from Untold, then a Fred Hembeck \u201cPetey\u201d strip where young Peter meets a young Matt Murdock with various gags. Then, the \u201cUntold Tales You\u2019ll Never See!\u201d segment, which I find most interesting. They got a bunch of artists famous for drawing for other companies to do gag Spider-Man covers. You get an Archie-style one from the guy who created the most well-known Archie style, Dan DeCarlo himself\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026a duck-themed one from legendary Uncle Scrooge artist Don Rosa\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026and a bit of a cheat in that he\u2019s also done plenty of Spider-Man, Jim Mooney doing a riff on Superman\u2019s Pal, Jimmy Olsen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Really fun stuff! Next post, back to ASM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Untold Tales is racing toward cancellation, but it\u2019s not done yet, and here we have an interesting gimmick. Behind this Tom Lyle cover is a story that got a direct sequel in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[35,11,60,1711,58,49,1712,288,12,20,1618,61,72,64,13,350,1298,18,1003,172,39,247,2,1288,1710,1768,663,65,1300,1287,62],"class_list":["post-19635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-aunt-may","tag-betty-brant","tag-captain-america","tag-dan-decarlo","tag-daredevil","tag-doctor-strange","tag-don-rosa","tag-fantastic-four","tag-flash-thompson","tag-george-stacy","tag-giant-man-2","tag-hank-pym","tag-human-torch","tag-iron-man","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-jarvis","tag-jason-ionello","tag-jim-mooney","tag-kurt-busiek","tag-liz-allen","tag-norman-osborn","tag-reed-richards","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-mattson","tag-sue-storm","tag-sundown","tag-the-thing","tag-thor","tag-tiny-mckeever","tag-untold-tales-of-spider-man","tag-wasp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19635","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=19635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19651,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19635\/revisions\/19651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}