{"id":24771,"date":"2026-02-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=24771"},"modified":"2024-06-16T00:21:34","modified_gmt":"2024-06-16T04:21:34","slug":"asm-546","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2026\/02\/13\/asm-546\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 546"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Well… Here we are. Swing Shift was technically the first post-OMD adventure, but being released months prior, it doesn’t feel like it. This, tho, is the beginning of the new deal. Having sold Peter & MJ’s marriage to the devil, a deal which nonsensically changed a whole bunch of other things, too, Brand New Day can begin. As mentioned at the end of OMD, this radical overhaul of the Spider-Man line replaced Spider-Man’s various ongoing titles with an ASM that would publish 3 times a month. To accomplish this, rather than a single writer, ASM would now be written by the so-called “Brain Trust,” a collection of writers including Dan Slott, Marc Guggenheim, Bob Gale and Zeb Wells. There are some real “oh no!” names on that list! And it’s drawn by… seemingly a kind of random assortment of a whole lot of guys, actually, but starting here with Steven McNiven, aided and abetted by his usual partners Dexter Vines and Morry Hollowell. so you get a Spidey book by a rotation of big name artists and the “Brain Trust” 3 times a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was an obvious problem with this: 2, 3, 4 Spider-Man titles a month let you pick the one(s) you liked and follow them. Maybe you don’t like the people doing Spectacular, but you like ASM and Web, so you buy those. Or whatever. Maybe you couldn’t afford 3 or 4 Spider-Mans a month, or simply didn’t want to buy that many. Brand New Day meant there was one title, with stories developed by committee, 1 of 4 writers any given issue and who knows who drawing. Being selective was suddenly impossible. If you were someone who only bought ASM every month (ME), choosing to pass on TAC and FNSM, keeping up with Spider-Man suddenly cost 3 times what it used to. Even if you were ecstatic about the dissolution of the Spider-Marriage, they put up a real barrier to entry right off the bat. Given how I felt about the Spider-Marriage and the way it was dissolved, the new 3-times-a-month mandate was the final nail in the coffin. The thing that was supposed to sell me on it made sure I would not routinely buy ASM for the next 15 years. But, now I have digital copies gifted to me by a friend. So… why not? I’m not sure this really counts toward the blog theme of “All The Spider-Mans I Have,” but… I have the material, and I’ve reached it in the timeline, so… so here we go. I’ve had well over a decade to cool off about OMD. We’ll see how I handle this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dan Slott was the member of the Brain Trust who wrote Swing Shift, and he also gets the first arc of Brand New Day. Dan Slott has proven to be one of my least favorite comic book writers of all time, and his choices for Spider-Man are a big part of that. Not a hot start. And when the “Brain Trust” era ends, he takes over ASM solo, so… I mean, I feel like I got a real uphill battle on my hands, here. But, hey, at least I didn’t pay for it. For the first time in the history of this blog, if I don’t like something I read, I wasn’t stupid enough to lose money on it. Ok, BND, first page, here we go:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Macking?” Is it 1994?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you say so! That’s some random mugger in a Spider-Man mask shaking people down. Despite him wearing normal clothes and running away, Spider-Man is still blamed. A news reporter takes over, mentioning Jackpot from Swing Shift is New York’s “official licensed superhero,” and she says it was an isolated incident. New York, home to (checks notes) 99% of all superheroes and villains has ONE (1) licensed hero, and it’s some random new person? Suuuuuuuuure!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Where, indeed? Why would he have disappeared? Just because he’s a fugitive? How does that square with him continuing to appear in New Avengers the whole time? Oh, right, continuity is a dirty word. Am I gonna be this hostile for the next 16+ years of comics? Maybe!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Don’t talk to me, Peter, you’re not supposed to know you’re in a comic book. He goes and buys a Bugle from a news agent who says it just isn’t selling without his photos, despite him not having worked there in quite some time now. Then he starts looking for a job in the classified section, noting he doesn’t have a computer to do something more modern. Why… doesn’t he have a computer? What sense does that make? Then he gets a call from Betty Brant. She thinks she’s found him an apartment. But the landlord wants a check tomorrow for him to move in, so the job hunt is only more intense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wokka wokka wokka! It’s interesting what a reboot this is, despite it not technically being a reboot. I mean, they would never admit to rebooting anything, Marvel is very proud of not rebooting like DC seems to do all the time now. But… You’d be hard pressed to find a Marvel situation that’s more of a hard reboot than Brand New Day. And as such, they’re assuming a lot of eyes will be on them for the first time in a long time and\/or ever, so they’re really acting like this is the first issue of a new title. For the biggest superhero in the world. Bizarre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For having been dead since 1993, Harry sure found a “gal” quickly. This setup feels not dissimilar to ASM circa 2000, when MJ was “dead” and they tried to make Jill, Randy, Glory & Peter the cast of the book. I guess it just goes to show how cyclical comics are. Hell, more than anything, this whole issue is reminding me of a comic from 2022. Later that night in Chinatown, we see a crooked police detective delivering a case stolen from lockup to the goons of Mr. Negative. He’s a brand-new villain no doubt familiar to players of the Sony Spider-Man game or Marvel Snap. The detective heard Mr. N was giving top dollar for this case, and when his goons try to take it without paying the cop, Mr. Negative appears, very unhappy with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yikes! Not just tossin’ pumpkin bombs at people. Now we got yet another ancient tablet in Spider-Man. Too many, if you asked me. Well, that brings us back to the opening splash: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, now they’re just messing with you. They start the very issue after the end of the marriage with a kiss, only to reveal it’s a swerve and then remind you he’s not married anymore, just for good measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“I’m way too young to get married! I’m, like, 19!” Hard reboot. Surely Harry hasn’t been married 3 times. Really? That just feels wrong. Peter doesn’t want to take Harry’s money, saying he did that way too much in college, but he does. He calls it a loan and swears he’ll pay him back. Then Mia Flores is back on the hunt, and Peter runs off to the bathroom. As she follows, she thinks that she couldn’t get Harry, but if she gets his friend, she’ll be in the “in” crowd, which is weird. But she walks right into the men’s room and finds no one in it, because Peter’s gone out a window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now that’s embarrassing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter sees a Daily Bugle on the ground and decides suiting up as Spider-Man would only profit JJJ, so instead decides to give chase as himself. Which seems… stupid, but we’ll quickly learn that Dan Slott’s Spider-Man is routinely stupid. Ten years, he writes this book. Anyway. Peter catches up in no time, but the guy… runs away. And somehow, that is a problem. Peter chases him into the FEAST Project, a shelter we’ll see a lot of, but then<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, at least it’s not May for once. I’m just excited to see people from the Bugle. Dan Slott is a difficult character for me. On the one hand, he’s old school, and so am I. He’s been writing for Marvel since the early 90s, which makes the fact that he never did anything of much significance before the mid-2000s very strange. He’s trying to make comics like the old days, in a way. His stuff can even feel a little dated. 1970s Spider-Man is, like, his wheelhouse. But he’s ALSO trying NOT to write like the old days, trying to compete with the new guys, and that leads him to crazy ideas which I, almost 100% of the time, think are stupid and terrible and a bad fit for Spider-Man. But, apparently they sold, so I guess I’m just a relic, and that’s fine, too. We all have to face irrelevance someday. At any rate, here we are. Across the threshold. I swore of Amazing Spider-Man for 16+ years, and now I’m on my way to filling in that big, big blank. Wish me luck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This issue also included a few more bits. It’s only fitting that this “Brand New Day” feature something from John Romita, Jr. to mark the occasion, so the back of this issue included this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That’s a lot of retconning on 2 pages! So, yeah, Harry wasn’t dead, he just went to Europe. Like his dad did, when he was dead. Ugh. So lazy. We will soon see that literally no one knowing Peter’s identity both sucks and is untenable. But I guess that’s getting ahead of ourselves. I think this is the first time Romita, Jr. had drawn any Spider-Man in nearly 4 years. No matter what he does, he just can’t stay away for too long. Always nice to see him (And Klaus Janson, and Dean White, for that matter, one of the finest colorists of his generation). They will rope him into this for something more substantial before too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of this issue is shorts featuring non-Spider-Man cast members sure to be important in the coming months by the other 3 “Brain Trust” writers and some other artists. I don’t think any of the artists are going to be regulars on ASM, tho. We are now pretty much into the era of the star writer, where artists are a distance second in terms of importance. Establishing new writers for ASM was crucial, but artists? Eh, whoever. They got McNiven for these 3 because they wanted a big name to launch with, but he’s done now. I know Chris Bachalo and John Romita, Jr. draw some of this stuff, but I really don’t know who the regular artists are, or if they even have any. The power dynamic is now the inverse of the days of the Image founders, and it stays that way, sadly. Not that people only caring about the art was good, either, of course, but ideally, a comic book reader would care about both. But in the age of the star writer, the people who do most of the work on the comics are afterthoughts, unappreciated by fans. Bonkers. First, 3 pages for Jackpot by Marc Guggenheim, the always terrible Greg Land, Jay Leisten and the late, great Justin Ponsor. Jackpot stops a stolen armored car only to find no one’s driving it, all really just continuing to try to convince you MJ really has become a hero. She mentions being a model and once again uses “tiger” as a term of endearment. Then Bob Gale gets his turn, aided and abetted by Phil Winslade & Chris Chuckery. It’s so awful I feel the need to run it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why did they let this hate crime happen? Bob Gale should be flogged. Top to bottom. Next, Zeb Wells is joined by Mike Deodato, Jr. & Rainier Beredo, because they just won’t stop making me look at Deodato’s awful art, to have a look at Harry & Lily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I wonder what celebrities he’s tracing for this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The earring on Harry is killing me. Well, there’s a little bit from the writing staff. I think the composition of the “Brain Trust” changes over time. I know Slott and Wells hang in there, but I think the other 2 shuffle off. The sooner the better for Gale!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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