{"id":23935,"date":"2024-12-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=23935"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:41:05","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:41:05","slug":"asm-v2-44","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/12\/05\/asm-v2-44\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM V2 44"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As of this month, Marvel comics got just a little bit taller? It\u2019s a weird distinction that\u2019s especially obvious if you keep 5-8 comics in one bag like I do (And no one else does). If you look at ASM 43 and 44 on top of each other\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Just a lil\u2019 bit taller. They would stay that way for at least a little while, it\u2019s not just this issue or this month\u2019s comics. Mysterious. At any rate, we pick up just where we left off, and as Peter says it would take more than 2 minutes to explain, MJ is counting seconds, so he rattles off a recap of ASM 40-42 in a single panel that\u2019s pretty funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI was an astral\u201d is hard work for that setup, but it\u2019s still a funny punchline, and also, Peter\u2019s hyper New York reaction is funny, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Look how much fun the creative team is having. This stuff still gets a laugh out of me years later. It\u2019s a smart way to do this. They\u2019re dealing with their stuff, but it\u2019s not too heavy. As MJ and Clawsome walk off, May says it\u2019s a first step. Then we\u2019re off to see Dr. Notcotopus, who I still don\u2019t have any other name for. He\u2019s in the penthouse suite of some hotel, paid for in stolen cash, and picking out an escort online. He tips his bellhop generously not to be disturbed, and then that guy goes down to the lobby to confirm to Doc Ock that his quarry is the guy upstairs in exchange for another large tip. That dude\u2019s the only one coming out of this day at the hotel on top. So, Ock scales the outside of the building and\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I assume it was Staczynski\u2019s idea to start graying Ock\u2019s hair. It will not last. The 2 armed foes go smashing down through a stairwell, the new guy\u2019s tech more advanced, Ock with far more experience and baseline cruelty. Meanwhile, MJ\u2019s in the makeup trailer with \u201cLobsterman,\u201d having a very meta conversation about what should motivate a superhero, and when she talks about Peter\u2019s motivations, her costar incredulously tells her only a woman with no self-respect would be with a guy who doesn\u2019t put her first in his life like that. Ouch! Pete & May are hedging to the cafeteria to wait for MJ when they hear about the Ock-Fight, which happens to be just up the street. Peter says he has to go, and May reacts. He\u2019s never had to tell her he was gonna do Spider-Manning before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A magnificent 2-page spread of the Ocks in combat follows, with narration by Peter about how someone will later sell footage to CNN for more money than he made in his entire tenure at the Bugle, and about how the hotel will have to go to court over insurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our man dives in anyway, introducing Notctopus to the ol\u2019 web in the face, but not fast enough to keep the real Ock from slamming him into a wall. At the movie lot, the news is covering the fight, and a very rattled Aunt May asks if they can turn off the TV. Back at the fight, Spidey gets Ock to explain what\u2019s going on while running the motormouth, but then Carlye gets his eyes uncovered and attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Unusually kind of Otto there. Spidey\u2019s in a very familiar trouble. This is a pretty old school story, more or less, and I like it. The back cover of this issue includes an ad for the infamous U-Decide stunt, kind of the moment Bill Jemas\u2019 craziness and ego went too far. After an unusually public spat with Peter David, Jemas, David and Joe Quesada in the middle launched this initiative to prove who was right about what made for good comics. Each was championing a different comic, and the reading public was to say which was better. The alleged stakes included Joe Quesada getting a pie in the face and Bill Jemas going into a dunk tank if they lost. On the table was David\u2019s critically acclaimed but commercially beleaguered Captain Marvel series (Starring the son of the original Cap, Genis-Vell) and 2 catastrophic mistakes, a \u201ccomedy\u201d book to be written by Jemas called Marville, illustrated by the talented and unfortunate MD Bright, and a Batman parody called Ultimate Adventures that Quesada commissioned from writer Ron Zimmerman & artist Duncan Fegredo. Marville was, by all accounts, an incoherent mess, called one of the worst comics of all time by a variety of comics media outlets. Ultimate Adventures cheapened what was the gold standard of Marvel\u2019s publishing line at the time with a dumb joke of a character, immediately forgotten. The choice was obvious, but this was a particularly bizarre experience because, while you\u2019d think this was all a transparent scam to drive more readers to Captain Marvel given how obviously slipshod and misguided the other 2 books were, Jemas apparently had full confidence he would win this bet and was not joking. Comic book readers, having loved Peter David for decades and faced with a colossal trainwreck in Marville (The few who bothered to read it at all, anyway), dashed his hopes pretty dramatically. And it was downhill from here. Despite undeniably bringing some new life and good projects to the table as President of Marvel, the writing was on the wall, and Jemas would be gone in less than 2 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As of this month, Marvel comics got just a little bit taller? It\u2019s a weird distinction that\u2019s especially obvious if you keep 5-8 comics in one bag like I do (And no…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[1863,35,1982,25,1981,118,21,417,2],"class_list":["post-23935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-amazing-spider-man-vol-2","tag-aunt-may","tag-dan-kemp","tag-doctor-octopus","tag-j-michael-straczynski","tag-john-romita-jr","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-scott-hanna","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23935","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=23935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23936,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23935\/revisions\/23936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}