{"id":23740,"date":"2024-11-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-22T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=23740"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:41:06","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:41:06","slug":"asm-v2-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/11\/22\/asm-v2-36\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM V2 36"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Well, here we are. ASM 36 was released in November of 2001. With the delay between print and publication, you can perhaps guess what recent event had occurred that might have greatly overshadowed anything else going on at the time. The effects of 9\/11 were powerfully felt in the comics industry. Marvel and DC were both based in Manhattan at this time (Since the 30s, until DC moved to the West Coast several years ago). Basically all writers and artists are freelancers working from all over the world, but editorial is in New York. And because editorial is in New York, a lot of talent has generally been from there or moved there, too, over the years. John Romita, Jr. is in New York. In the wake of the tragedy, Joe Quesada rush released a variety of comics product for charity. It was something he was passionate about, as not only is he a lifelong New Yorker, but he comes from a family of firefighters. Marvel put out a magazine-sized book about first responders. Marvel put out a charity book. DC and Dark Horse teamed up on their own huge charity book. All this stuff had the greatest talents in the business involved, because who would say no? Then there was this. It was decided that Spider-Man, perhaps the most New York-associated hero in comics, would react to 9\/11 directly. So our regular creative team dropped what they were doing and cranked out a totally different ASM 36 in record time, to produce this. This book has become somewhat valuable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It feels so weird that my first reaction is to notice ASM finally got the higher quality paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine being Romita, Jr., born and raised New Yorker, drawing this in September of 2001. A raw, bleeding wound and he\u2019s gotta document it. Just very bizarre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The art team sure is giving it everything, though. I mean, you\u2019d never know this was a rush job. As he thinks that they couldn\u2019t be here to stop this, but they\u2019re here now, Spidey looks around and sees Thor, Cap, Thing and DD helping the emergency professionals dig through the rubble. He gets to work, joining Wolverine and Cyclops in helping clear a path through debris, always surrounded by firefighters and EMTs and cops. Then we hit the most infamous page of the book, and I\u2019m surprised it comes so early, in retrospect:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I haven\u2019t seen this book since it came out, but every comics person on the internet has seen Dr. Doom crying about 9\/11 repeatedly over the years. Dr. Doom, brutal dictator. Kingpin, drug trafficker. They\u2019re all here to be sad about the sort of thing they themselves usually do. It\u2019s pretty absurd. But, you know. It was a weird, weird time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I mean, Romita, Hanna and Kemp are just at the top of their game here. That this comic done on the fly looks better than the rest of this run put together really speaks volumes, everyone\u2019s putting their all into it. I doubt any of them got much sleep that month. Straczynski widens the scope to show how people are reacting more broadly, and pairs a Middle Eastern cleric and a Jerry Falwell-type American \u201cChristian\u201d talking about how America deserved this, which is kind of radical, showing the brutal evil of the Christian right alongside their true counterparts in the Muslim world. The team also shows the terrible effect on Muslims in the hysteria that followed, which is to be commended. The last thing any reasonable person wants to see in this is deranged anti-Islamic bigotry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pretty brutal, man. I guess it would\u2019ve been hard to try to sugarcoat it so close to the event, even if they wanted to. Spider-Man keeps trying to help, keeps comforting people, still with no idea what to really say to anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The book turns to a pretty shocking segment urging temperance and wisdom over retaliation, noting that all wars have innocents and urging the US not to \u201cdo as they do\u201d over images of scared Afghani women and aircraft carriers. I mean, who was being that reasonable in September 2001? Not enough people in positions of authority, that\u2019s for sure. There follows a lot of florid language about the resilience and decency of the American people and unity and such over montages of thankfully very diverse groups of Americans, pretty standard post-9\/11 language. Ask the brown people attacked in the streets for \u201clooking Musilm\u201d about unity. Ask my old friend from India about being scared to go to the grocery store in coastal AL without being with white people. Ask the people of Iraq about our unity. Ask any of us who had to watch vile beasts like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove licking their lips at the thought of attempting to colonize the Middle East and strip the United States of as many civil liberties as possible now that they had the chance. Would that we were as decent and unified as people told us we were. But, you know. This is the guys who made this book working out their trauma in front of us, I don\u2019t begrudge them the chance to deal with this on their own terms. And if it helped anyone feel a little better along the way, so much the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a strange, strange comic book, but it comes from an honest place, and they really gave it their all. In addition to this and all the previously mentioned 9\/11 things, Marvel soon launched a whole line of books about first responders, presumably the comic book equivalent of any randomly chosen show on CBS (I didn\u2019t read them). Captain America was relaunched with a muddled, nonsensical storyline vaguely about him fighting terrorism in 2002, with a lot of uncomfortable covers in the style of WWII propaganda posters. It got to seem like a lot. Some people thought they\u2019d gone from honoring the people who died to profiting off of them. Every Marvel book had a little 9\/11 ribbon on the cover for at least a year, I don\u2019t even remember how long. It was a weird time for everyone, but an especially weird time for comics. But I think they were right that, if any part of the Marvel U was going to tackle this subject, it would be Spider-Man. Captain America Vs. ill-defined Muslim terrorists proved to be just as terrible an idea as it sounds. Books like FF or Thor or X-Men, they\u2019re too fantastical for this (I mean, Dr. Doom owns a time machine, the X-Men know time travelers, Thor knows a guy who can see everything happening in the universe at all times, etc). But Spider-Man is the \u201ceveryman,\u201d and so he could do this from a genuine place. Ultimately, any attempt to bring people comfort in those strange days is commendable to me, even if it\u2019s pretty weird. At any rate, with that out of the way, ASM will return to its previous storyline next issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, here we are. ASM 36 was released in November of 2001. With the delay between print and publication, you can perhaps guess what recent event had occurred that might have greatly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[1863,60,77,1982,58,106,63,1981,118,100,878,247,105,417,2,138,663,65,104,300],"class_list":["post-23740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-amazing-spider-man-vol-2","tag-captain-america","tag-cyclops","tag-dan-kemp","tag-daredevil","tag-dr-doom","tag-hawkeye","tag-j-michael-straczynski","tag-john-romita-jr","tag-kingpin","tag-magneto","tag-reed-richards","tag-scarlet-witch","tag-scott-hanna","tag-spider-man","tag-storm","tag-the-thing","tag-thor","tag-vision","tag-wolverine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23740","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=23740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23741,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23740\/revisions\/23741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}