{"id":23256,"date":"2024-10-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=23256"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:41:55","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:41:55","slug":"asm-v2-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/10\/22\/asm-v2-25\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM V2 25"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hey, an actual monthly issue of Spider-Man, who\u2019d have thought? With a dumb, shiny foil cover, even. Welcome to the countdown to the end of Howard Mackie\u2019s tenure on the Spider-Books. Joining him as usual are John Romita, Jr., Scott Hanna & Gregory Wright. We open on Norman Osborn, standing in that unmistakable Romita, JR. rain, thinking sometimes, he can still hear the voice of his father in his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Young Norman having actual braids! Old Man Osborn portrayed with the family hair for the first and last time ever! Romita is committed to the hair!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve been missing that regular hit of Romita excellence. Everyone\u2019s doing good work on the mood here. Norman decides not to kill the spider, saying it has nothing to fear from him and even picking it up as flashback young Norman is locked in the old house. Soon, Randy & Glory are out on the town when they\u2019re suddenly attacked by the Green Goblin, in his traditional outfit. They run as he chucks a bunch of bombs, Randy saying he knew that dream he had meant something, but then the Goblin just flies away, leaving them scared in an alley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So clean! Man, Romita and Hanna make such a good team. Peter wakes up half out of bed with his head on the floor to the sound of Randy calling the police. Glory tells him the Goblin is back, and asks rhetorically if they have to go through all this again. Randy is hung up on by the cops, ranting about how he\u2019ll get his dad to cover this, when they notice Peter is gone. He\u2019s already Spider-Man, already trying to find Norman. He swings around recapping their history and seeing all this evidence of Goblin attacks, including a Bugle headline, wondering how he hasn\u2019t noticed any of this, still unaware he\u2019s being mind controlled. He decides to go to the Bugle to try to learn more, since JJJ hates Norman almost as much as he does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, obviously, it\u2019s Peter doing these Goblin attacks in his sleep. Shades of the symbiote storyline. Kind of a wild move, tho. Our man has come to the Osborn residence to make sure it\u2019s safe. He\u2019s glad to see all the security, but less glad when little Normie, still sporting the family hair since Romita, Jr. decided he should back in the Spider-Hunt story, says he\u2019s waiting for his daddy. That grandpa always comes back, so his daddy will, too. Surely they\u2019re not trying yet again to convince us it\u2019s Harry in the suit when we already know it\u2019s Peter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hours later, Peter\u2019s headed to May\u2019s, thinking about how he can relate to Normie believing his daddy will come home. Aunt May is happy to see him, and they have dinner together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For years, Romita, Jr. has been doing this sketchy thing for dreams and flashbacks, and guess what, I love it. Peter wakes up exhausted to the sound of fire trucks, and Spider-Man goes to find the Stacy home ablaze, only 2 issues after being blown up in ASM 23<\/a>. Arthur and Jill are ok outside, but Arthur says Paul is still inside, so Spidey goes in\u2026 and finds his longtime foe tied up with a pumpkin bomb stuck to his throat. Which is pretty crazy, Peter-as-Goblin lashing out at someone he doesn\u2019t like. This is certainly not the usual Spider-story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back in the 2000s, there was this documentary about Jack Kirby, featuring a real who\u2019s who of comic pros from all eras. It was really great. There\u2019s a bit in there where Barry Windsor-Smith is trying to describe how amazing a Kirby page he\u2019s holding is before putting it down and saying, \u201cUgh, I can\u2019t even look at it\u201d in the most affectionate way possible. I understand that reaction looking at Romita, Jr. stuff all the time. And Kirby stuff, too, but that\u2019s less relevant here. Well, anyway, leaving the scene, Spider-Man finds a trail of Goblin stuff leading back to May\u2019s house. He begins shouting that he knows Norman can hear him, and to get out here and fight already. Norman, watching through binoculars, says Spider-Man is ready. Peter goes home, leaving a note for May, and finds Randy gone and the answering machine full of messages from JJJ, Betty, Jill and Randy all talking about how the Goblin has ruined their nights or scared them. He feels terrible that everyone he knows is a target. Peter decides he\u2019s not sleeping tonight, that he\u2019s gonna get back out there and find Norman. But, first, he brushes his teeth, and he suddenly, finally, figures it out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is probably the best story you can do with a returned Norman. His hatred of Spider-Man turning into this. It\u2019s different, it\u2019s unique, it\u2019s working pretty well. Peter has another dream about his dad, chasing his silhouette through a tunnel of darkness, while elsewhere, the Green Goblin has shown up for Normie, as he expected. Then Spider-Man wakes up in the pitch dark house, stumbling through it as Norman waxes poetic about how the darkness is comforting and soothing, and how bad things happen in the light. Then Spidey hears Normie calling for his dad, to which Norman says the boy needs a father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spider-Man wakes up outside in the rain with Norman saying he tried to warn him, and that he only wants what\u2019s best for him. As he goes on, he pulls off Peter\u2019s mask and gives him another one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kind of a weird twist ending when we knew that already, but still. For a post-resurrection Norman story, this has an unusually good head of steam. Can Jenkins and Buckingham land it? How many more swipes will be in PPSM 25? We shall see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey, an actual monthly issue of Spider-Man, who\u2019d have thought? With a dumb, shiny foil cover, even. Welcome to the countdown to the end of Howard Mackie\u2019s tenure on the Spider-Books. Joining…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[1863,617,35,40,275,415,13,976,26,118,39,545,1242,417,2],"class_list":["post-23256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-amazing-spider-man-vol-2","tag-arthur-stacy","tag-aunt-may","tag-green-goblin","tag-gregory-wright","tag-howard-mackie","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-jill-stacy","tag-joe-robertson","tag-john-romita-jr","tag-norman-osborn","tag-normie-osborn","tag-paul-stacy","tag-scott-hanna","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23256","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=23256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23257,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23256\/revisions\/23257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}