{"id":22494,"date":"2024-08-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=22494"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:42:28","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:42:28","slug":"ppsm-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/08\/22\/ppsm-19\/","title":{"rendered":"PPSM 19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Look at that ugly blur. It adds nothing to the image, makes it actively uglier, and makes all the effort Larsen put into the background largely meaningless. I hate blurs in comics. Haaaate. Blurs stop making sense in a world where everything has an outline. Manga kas have known how to make a blur effect work with their line art for ages, and American comics finally started ripping that technique off way later than you\u2019d think. But at the turn of the century, newly granted access to Photoshop and drunk with power, colorists did some really ugly things. Is Erik Larsen really drawing 2 issues of Spider-Man AND writing and drawing an issue of Savage Dragon this month!? No, this is another of the surprisingly common cover credit errors of this period, slapping the creators of ASM 19 onto PPSM 19. Despite the Larsen cover, inside, it\u2019s good ol\u2019 John Romita, Jr., Scott Hanna & Joe Rosas at the helm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mary Jane\u2019s head is in there. Just kidding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That is the most sexed up picture of MJ I think I\u2019ve ever seen Romita, Jr. draw. Even at the heights of 90s excess he avoided that kind of thing, that\u2019s surprising. Well, of course, Randy comes knocking on the door, saying he has some friends over who want to meet his new roommate. Really only have yourself to blame for this one, Peter. He scrambles to hide everything and manages to get in bed with headphones and a book before Randy just lets himself in. Peter agrees to come meet people, and thinks he\u2019s got to put a lock on that door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good grief, a 3rd Chantal in 2 years (Tho one was spelled differently). But the real story on this page is that marvel.com link. At the turn of the century, trying to be cool, Marvel started offering comics on their website. But instead of just putting up whatever was being published, they commissioned new material by real pros. To show online. For free! And it was all in continuity. And it no longer exists. No one seems to have backups of any of the material. That\u2019s so wild. Hundreds of pages of official Marvel comics lost to time. Crazy. Well, Peter wants to call Aunt May, and Shea there has the phone line tied up (2000!), so he\u2019s gonna go to a payphone. But first, Randy wants to know if Peter can put in a good word for him with Glory Grant, who he has suddenly noticed is \u201ca babe.\u201d She used to be a model too, ya know. Turns out May is trying to call Peter, but the phone line\u2019s tied up. She has received the box on page one, and she and anna are staring at it, wishing they could get Peter over so they could all open it. Meanwhile, Peter can\u2019t find a payphone, and decides to just swing out to the house. He picks a bad spot to change clothes, tho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good call bringing back that billboard, that\u2019s fun. Well, you can see where this one\u2019s going. But this comic feels like a story, not just a collection of incidents, for a change, so that\u2019s nice. Things get worse for that guy at the bottom as a bus almost hits him, but then Spider-Man is there, pushing the bus away in a great 2-page shot. But the guy reveals his daughter is still in the stolen car, and her mother just died, in case Peter wasn\u2019t thinking about MJ for 2 seconds, and Spider-Man is off on a mission. And out in Queens, the supporting cast is arriving, no doubt summoned by Robbie, to be there for Peter when he shows up. Jill & Arthur, Glory, Betty, Ben Urich, The Robertsons (Martha gets to be on panel for the first time since Vol. 1), the Jamesons. Everyone seems to know this is it for Peter pretending MJ\u2019s not dead. Back in Manhattan, the guys who stole the care are now very aware of the terrified kid in the back seat, but as they run into a wall of web, it quickly stops being their problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then Spider-Man ends up watching as that guy has to explain to his daughter that her mom is dead right there next to their webbed car and beneath their attackers, which is pretty awkward. But that\u2019s nothin compared to\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My goodness, Gayle and the kids! And Aunt Anna audibly misspelled Kristy\u2019s name somehow! Kristy Watson! No one\u2019s thought of her since Web of Spider-Man 84<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Solid stuff on those last few pages all around. But, uh, what could be in that box to make Peter change his mind other than a dead body? Some clothes? It kinda looks like books. What\u2019s that prove? That she didn\u2019t take the luggage that was in the baggage compartment with her when the plane blew up? It doesn\u2019t quite work. But, they had to get Peter past his denial phase somehow, because MJ is really, truly dead, and it\u2019s not like she\u2019ll be back in less than a year or anything. He\u2019s got to get on with his life. For 10 issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look at that ugly blur. It adds nothing to the image, makes it actively uglier, and makes all the effort Larsen put into the background largely meaningless. I hate blurs in comics….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[617,36,35,113,11,308,415,13,976,26,525,118,571,116,287,1871,24,417,2],"class_list":["post-22494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-arthur-stacy","tag-aunt-anna","tag-aunt-may","tag-ben-urich","tag-betty-brant","tag-glory-grant","tag-howard-mackie","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-jill-stacy","tag-joe-robertson","tag-joe-rosas","tag-john-romita-jr","tag-kristy-watson","tag-marla-madison","tag-martha-robertson","tag-peter-parker-spider-man","tag-randy-robertson","tag-scott-hanna","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22494","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=22494"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22644,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22494\/revisions\/22644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}