{"id":22448,"date":"2024-08-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=22448"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:43:08","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:43:08","slug":"asm-v2-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/08\/19\/asm-v2-18\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM V2 18"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Not the best cover to announce your biggest villain is back. \u201cCan you guess whose hands these are?\u201d This issue is John Byrne\u2019s last (Huzzah!) and to send him off in style, John Romita, Sr. is inking. How\u2019s things in the life of superheroing\u2019s biggest loser?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yeah, but look at those immaculate lines. Not even Hanna had Byrne looking so clean. Out of options, Peter finally does the reasonable thing and calls Aunt May. But don\u2019t get too comfortable with him making reasonable choices. Thus, Spider-Man is soon riding on top of a train back out to Queens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Really, really asking for trouble, Liz. Man, this synthesis of Byrne and Romita is interesting. Romita can be a heavy handed inker, and you can see both of them coming through in different parts of different panels. Two of the most recognizable art styles in comics history jockeying for position on every page. Really interesting. And really asking\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meanwhile, in Queens, Aunt May takes her soaking nephew into the house and demands he go take a hot bath. As he showers, he thinks to himself he feels better already, and that he & MJ should move back into the house when he finds her. When he comes downstairs\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been so long, either. The way they brought her in as an ersatz Aunt May for a couple years was only more obvious and awkward when she got shoved right back out the door when May returned. Later, Peter is preparing to leave, and May is understandably worried about him refusing to admit MJ is dead. She asks him to move back in (Isn\u2019t this Anna\u2019s house still? Shouldn\u2019t she have a say?), but he lies and says he\u2019s got a line on an apartment and a job. She knows he\u2019s lying and forces him to take some money (Can you collect social security if you\u2019ve been declared dead?). He thinks maybe he will come back tonight. Meanwhile, The Green Goblin has crashed Liz\u2019s car and is tormenting her. She\u2019s figured out it\u2019s not Norman, and he doesn\u2019t seem to like that. Remember the other Green Goblin? The mystery guy from what feels like a million years ago? He\u2019s back. But in Norman\u2019s end of the world suit. Whatever, we go to the Bugle instead of seeing what\u2019s going on, as Peter is back for\u2026 some reason. Robbie is once again arguing with Randy, and asks if Peter has reconsidered that \u201cbonus,\u201d and Peter does the smart thing and says he\u2019ll take it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And yes, Byrne is making Romita, who created Robbie, ink his hair wrong. Sacrilege. But this meeting is fateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter and Randy talk for awhile, Randy revealing he\u2019s moved back to NY to try to be an actor, and the 2 commiserating about growing up. Randy has always been a severely underutilized character, but seems like once a decade, a writer decides to bring him back, and here he is. But then Betty bursts in, saying \u201csomeone thought they saw\u201d Peter go in this place, to say that Green Goblin\u2019s attacking Liz and they\u2019re going to go cover it together. And Peter suddenly wonders if Norman is behind MJ\u2019s death. That took long enough! He\u2019s not, but why wouldn\u2019t you assume the guy who faked Aunt May\u2019s death also did Mary Jane? Well, they arrive on the scene, which now has cops and the Goblin having a shootout, and the Goblin doesn\u2019t seem to want to do it. Peter picks up on it not being Norman immediately, and thinks about his recent encounter with Harry\u2019s holographic \u201cghost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But as the Goblin swoops down and slams Liz into a wall, making weird comments about not having a surname, hating the Obsorns, and wanting to look at \u201chis\u201d files, a web snags his hand before he can do anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So you get Romita inking Byrne\u2019s Spider-Man, and it somehow comes out looking not unlike Sal Buscema\u2019s. That\u2019s wild. The battle goes slamming into a cable car, which immediately brings the Nightcrawler\/Punisher story from ASM 171<\/a>–172<\/a> to mind, but this is a very different story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And with Peter literally sleeping in alleyways, we say goodbye to John Byrne. He\u2019s made quite a mark on the world of Spider-Man in this past year. Just not a good one. But at least his final issue is the best looking. That Romita touch of class! Man, anyone inked by him should count themselves lucky. I bet it was a thrill for Byrne. I hope so, anyway. But if he\u2019s done, who\u2019s the next artist on ASM? The answer may surprise you. It sure surprised me back in the day\u2026 But first, we\u2019ve got to resolve this cliffhanger in PPSM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not the best cover to announce your biggest villain is back. \u201cCan you guess whose hands these are?\u201d This issue is John Byrne\u2019s last (Huzzah!) and to send him off in style,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[1863,36,35,40,415,26,525,180,17,172,24,2],"class_list":["post-22448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-amazing-spider-man-vol-2","tag-aunt-anna","tag-aunt-may","tag-green-goblin","tag-howard-mackie","tag-joe-robertson","tag-joe-rosas","tag-john-byrne","tag-john-romita","tag-liz-allen","tag-randy-robertson","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22448","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=22448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22461,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22448\/revisions\/22461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}