{"id":21003,"date":"2024-04-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=21003"},"modified":"2022-09-06T20:49:47","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T00:49:47","slug":"smu-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/04\/22\/smu-21\/","title":{"rendered":"SMU 21"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Man, it\u2019s always a slog when it\u2019s multiple oversized issues in a row. Even when the last one was really good. My primary interest going into this is going to be whether Golden knows Spider-Man has already met the monster way back in MTU 36<\/a> & 37<\/a>. The staff could be forgiven for not knowing (Especially without today\u2019s internet to run to); Spider-Man, less so. Golden is joined by Mike Deodato, Jr., Joe Pimentel and John Kalisz for this, and I think they remain the art team for the rest of the run. To open, Peter Parker goes to The Bugle on a dark and stormy night to drop off some shots, and JJJ offers him a gig that will require him to fly to The Swiss Alps, then asks him how he feels about cloning. Then Peter wakes up, already on a plane with Betty, having been dreaming of how he got here, which is a fun kind of segue. He tells Betty he \u201csort of has a thing about clones.\u201d Then we jump ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter has found himself wandering into spooky European castles a lot more often over the years than the casual reader would probably expect. Now 2 with Betty, even. Something weird happened on the first page of this story, and it\u2019s happening again here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last time we saw Deodato, he was tracing Spider-Mans out of other comic books filling in for Luke Ross on Spectacular. Now he\u2019s trying to draw John Romita, Jr.\u2019s Peter Parker, specifically. The top one doesn\u2019t look traced, it just looks like emulation. The bottom one, tho? The profile pic? That\u2019s lookin\u2019 real Romita-y. How bad is this gonna get? Well, in a 2-page spread, we jump ahead awhile, and find Betty & Peter reuniting after mingling awhile, and both having heard bad things about this guy, Kraft. So they sneak into an off limits stairwell and find themselves face to face with Frankenstein\u2019s monster, and also a guy named Ivan. Peter & Betty slowly back way after being lightly threatened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, I guess Deodato\u2019s just gonna trace a Peter Parker closeup from Romita any chance he gets. This feels of a piece with his later work that makes me such a staunch detractor, but I suppose that\u2019s for later. Also, Peter does, indeed, not seem to recognize the monster. Which is pretty surprising since he\u2019s even more or less dressed the same, only now he\u2019s got some pouches, because it\u2019s the 90s:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next morning, Peter and Betty talk, and she says she\u2019s heard that there\u2019s another castle 15 miles from here owned by Baroness Frankenstein who\u2019s against Kraft\u2019s work. So Peter heads out there in a rented van, curiously without Betty and still seemingly not knowing the monster. Romita faces continue. The fact that he\u2019s ONLY doing it for Peter is both distracting and, again, very familiar for his MO. He arrives as the castle, lets himself in, and finds Victoria Frankenstein locked in a cell, yelling for help. She says she\u2019s been in there for weeks, but \u201cthe little ones\u201d were keeping her fed, and Peter finds himself surrounded by weird little mutant guys. Cut to the monster eager to be a real person, cut back to Victoria confirming her ancestor did everything in the novel, and saying her dad & grandpa were trying to replicate the process, creating all the weird little guys in the castle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now he\u2019s even dressed like the MTU issues. Which, in fairness, is probably also how he looked in the 70s monster magazines, which they probably referenced for this. The mad doctor in the MTU stories was named Ludwig, tho. This is frustrating. Well, she goes on to save Vincent shot Ivan, but also apparently did something to him to stop him from aging, and he eventually came back, imprisoned her, and went off with the monster, but he is not its friend. Peter thinks the monster could use a friend right now. Yes, perhaps someone he met several years ago who was nice to him and didn\u2019t find him scary and wore red & blue tights. Well, later that night, Peter spies on the doctor working, is sure he\u2019s making clones, and then sneaks into a room in the castle\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Super obvious Romita face. Peter thinks he should get back down to Betty, but as he sneaks out, he sees her being harassed by Ivan as she\u2019s looking for him. And then he sees the monster, and since it\u2019s not with Ivan, he tries to talk with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I wonder how much else in here could be sourced to other artists. The monsters battle their way into the party still happening downstairs, and everyone flees. They keep on fighting and destroying stuff as Peter appears, trying to herd people out of the room without a panic. Then there\u2019s some pretty obvious John Buscema faces on Ivan\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kraft shows up with an army of Frankensteins, and the original decides he has to burn the place down with all of them inside to scour the doc\u2019s evil from the Earth. Peter points out that they\u2019re more victims than monster, but Frank says they\u2019re mindless, and if they don\u2019t fight, the beasts will kill them, and he\u2019s discovered he wants to live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They go smashing out the window, and it appears the whole castle\u2026 you know, the one made of stone?… burns to the ground. We see sunrise over the ruins, and then our heroes sitting by a riverbank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the 2010s, Deodato gets way, way into distractingly, unnecessarily complicated page layouts. This feels like him testing the water, this pointlessly skewed page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It is so insane that Peter Parker has now canonically befriended Frankenstein\u2019s monster TWICE. Once is crazy enough. I really don\u2019t blame Golden for not knowing about 2 obscure issues of Marvel Team-Up, but it\u2019s a shame. He could\u2019ve done so much with that past history. Either way, that does it for him on this title. Only 2 issues, but at least they were unique. Coming up with stories that at least try to justify this book\u2019s existence is always appreciated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Man, it\u2019s always a slog when it\u2019s multiple oversized issues in a row. Even when the last one was really good. My primary interest going into this is going to be whether…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[11,1780,13,621,950,442,1686,2,439],"class_list":["post-21003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-betty-brant","tag-christopher-golden","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-joe-bennett","tag-joe-pimentel","tag-john-kalisz","tag-mike-deodato-jr","tag-spider-man","tag-spider-man-unlimited"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21003","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=21003"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21249,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21003\/revisions\/21249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}