{"id":2081,"date":"2019-10-19T00:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T04:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2019-05-26T22:37:48","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T02:37:48","slug":"web-033","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/10\/19\/web-033\/","title":{"rendered":"WEB 033"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We finish a 6-issue crossover by a single creative team and\u2026 jump right into a 3-issue crossover by a single creative team. Pretty weird! Wonder what editorial was thinking when they decided to do this. This story can\u2019t have been a reaction to the success of Kraven\u2019s Last Hunt, it\u2019s too soon for the reactions to come in. Same cover treatment and everything. Maybe the abrupt editorial change a few months ago has left the Spider-Office in disarray, and this gives them time to get creative teams in place for the 3 titles? Looking it over, none of the books\u2019 new regular creative teams debut after this story. Maybe it really is just stalling. It would be funny if two such memorable Spider-Man stories would come together for that reason, but hey, that\u2019s comics.
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Please welcome Ann Nocenti to the blog! Not her first Spidey gig, but the first one I\u2019ve covered. I am a long-time fan of hers. Her criminally underrated Daredevil run was my first exposure to the character, and getting a few issues of it inspired a years-long search for the rest, much like the Stern\/Romita, Jr. ASM. And her primary artistic collaborator on DD? Why, John Romita, Jr.! That guy\u2019s done it all. Their DD was beautiful, strange, thought provoking comics. Nocenti is a writer who\u2019s always loved to delve into issues she\u2019s interested in through the lens of superhero comics. She\u2019s not shy about it. Her DD run dealt with pollution, schizophrenia, the essence of personhood, family relationships, the limits of faith and other topics, all in the context of superheroing. And this month, she\u2019s doing a 3-parter through all the Spidey titles called Life In The Mad Dog Ward. She\u2019s joined by penciler Cindy Martin (aka Cynthia Martin), inker Steve Leialoha, and colorist Janet Jackson (Not that Janet Jackson). An almost entirely female creative team on a character as big as Spider-Man is frankly unheard of, back then and still mostly today, so that seems pretty noteworthy right out of the gate. Plus, we got covers by the legend, Bill Sienkiewicz! Let\u2019s get started!
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Little bit of commentary on capitalism right outta the gate, there. Did that read like golf commentary? It sort of felt like it would as I was typing it. Here\u2019s a little bit of context for that opening splash:
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As the scene unfolds, it becomes apparent that this lady is taking her 2 children and moving out while their dad\u2019s away because \u201cthe shadow people\u201d told her to. Her son is remarkably calm about this, while her daughter is clearly conflicted between her two parents. They\u2019re met in the driveway by the husband. He sees they\u2019re leaving him and says, \u201cfine, go,\u201d as he walks in the house. The woman, Vicky, chases him back in. The kids stand in the driveway for a sec.
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That escalated quickly. Frank bursts in and prepares to exact revenge, but the daughter, Tanya, gets between them, and suddenly Frank remembers the phone.
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We cut from there to some kind of psychiatric facility, where a guy sedating a raging patient while saying he wants to fire the person who forgot said patient\u2019s morning dose himself. Then he gets told a \u201cnew wacko\u201d is coming in for The Mad Dog Ward. Hey, like in the title!
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\u201cMad Dog 2020\u201d is a little on the nose, hm? We move our scene next to The Daily Bugle, where a big runaway balloon in the shape of the \u201cFraid Roach\u201d from billboards in recent issues has several employees staring out the window, taking odds on whether superheroes or the fire department will get it down. The chaos of a newsroom is being rendered more dramatic than usual as Peter Parker shows up\u2026
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Peter passes an editorial being pasted up about how heroes only make things worse and wonders if it has a point before realizing he\u2019s late for Aunt May\u2019s and hustling out of there, JJJ yelling after him not to come back without good photos. We jump ahead to him leaving Aunt May\u2019s, having missed dinner but made it for dessert, when an ambulance rushes past him on the street. And then he runs into the kids from earlier, trying to chase it, because their mom is inside.
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I wonder if Peter is meant to seem a little out of it due to, you know, Kraven’s Last Hunt. Later, finding himself unable to sleep, Peter keeps thinking about those kids. He gets in his Spider-Man gear and decides to go visit Pleasant Valley. But we get there first, in time to see the kids on the roof of the facility, and Jacob has a gun. They\u2019re surprised to run into their dad. Tanya\u2019s happy to see him, but Jacob doesn\u2019t trust him anymore.
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Yikes. As they argue, Tanya runs to the roof access and bangs on the door, and suddenly armed goons descend on them. They call in the intruders, and are told to bring the whole family to The Mad Dog Ward, but of course\u2026
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Spidey does his thing, dispatching all the goons. Jacob asks if he\u2019s going to help them save their mom, but they\u2019re interrupted by a last goon, who\u2019s dangling Tanya off the side of the roof, telling Spider-Man to surrender to save her. He thinks that he\u2019ll be opening himself up to get shot if he dives in, but he has no other choice when the goon just drops her, anway. And he dives after her, and does get shot, as he predicted.
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This has got to be the worst month of Spider-Man\u2019s life (Up to this point). How long has it been since Kraven? Seems like it\u2019s been a couple days at most. Now he\u2019s left bleeding out in an alley. Sheesh! Come back next time to see if he survives.
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We finish a 6-issue crossover by a single creative team and\u2026 jump right into a 3-issue crossover by a single creative team. Pretty weird! Wonder what editorial was thinking when they decided…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[399,35,400,13,270,2,401,398,265],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-ann-nocenti","tag-aunt-may","tag-cynthia-martin","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-janet-jackson","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-leialoha","tag-the-mad-dog-ward","tag-web-of-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","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=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4561,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions\/4561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}