{"id":26587,"date":"2025-05-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=26587"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:39:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:39:10","slug":"asm-514","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/05\/11\/asm-514\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 514"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Spider-Man\u2019s web has often been portrayed as being so strong he, himself, can\u2019t break it (But certainly not always). Ever since McFarlane popularized the image of him hanging in a bunch of his own web like this, I\u2019ve always wanted someone to draw him trying to get out of it. Not so dramatic then, one assumes. Page one here is the last page of 513, only with an inset panel of Gabriel\u2019s voice triggering a computer routine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I would point out how nothing Norman is saying makes sense, but A) Who cares, and B) I\u2019m sure they\u2019d just say \u201cbecause he\u2019s crazy!\u201d by way of explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A doctor comes out and says they got the bullet out, but she\u2019s lost a lot of blood, and they can\u2019t get her body to accept any, due to a genetic alteration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey suddenly blurts out that they should use his blood. He tells us, not the doc, that he knows he\u2019s the same blood type as Gwen was, and tells the doc that his blood is weird, too, so what does she have to lose? SCIENCE. What a crock of shit. “My GOOD weird blood can fix her BAD weird blood! Maybe!” So they get him hooked up for a transfusion. This idiotic page happens\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What an insane comic book this is. Spider-Man wakes up with MJ at his side, and my growing suspicion that she\u2019s played by Liv Tyler becomes near certainty on this page. MJ says a nurse tried to get a picture of him with his mask off. So no one\u2019s gotten word to the press that famous model\/actress Mary Jane Watson-Parker is at Spider-Man\u2019s bedside in the hospital? Is this before or after the news was waving his mask around when he was in the hospital in the Millar story? This is really beyond the pale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh, sure, she\u2019s just a groupie. Not famous model\/actress Mary Jane Watson-Parker. It\u2019s like if Beyonce was there and the staff uniformly said, \u201cEh, it\u2019s just some lady.\u201d Well, this bit is inevitable, I suppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While Gabriel is pummeling Spider-Man, we learn Sarah escaped the hospital, subduing a guard and stealing his gun. The weakened Spider-Man manages to web himself away, but falls onto a roof, dislocating his shoulder before getting hit with some razor bats, but don\u2019t worry, just in the leg. It\u2019s not Millar having him electrocuted nearly to death and then shot multiple times and then immediately get better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And so this turkey comes in for a landing, with MJ hearing Peter tell Gwen he\u2019ll always love her and thinking he means her, which is gross, and the threat of having to see these idiot kids again. And, I am sad to say, we will, pretty soon, in a story I\u2019ve never read before. Lucky me. This ending felt very rushed and incomplete. Why\u2019d they waste so much time in the news guys and the hospital angle when they amounted to nothing? I don\u2019t actually care. I have weathered my second miserable storm this block, and I\u2019m still alive. The craziest thing is, with this over, with the curtain down on one of the worst Spider-Man stories ever published\u2026 Straczynski has 2 more in his future. That run back-to-back, even. I don\u2019t think anyone has ever gone from such high highs to such low lows on this title, before or since. Some guys have written the very best ASM, and some, the very worst, but no one else has done both. JMS is in this class all by himself. But between this disaster and those 2 disasters, we mostly just have mediocrity, as I recall. It\u2019s just bonkers to me how this title, which was better than it had been in a decade thanks to JMS, goes 0 to 100 off a cliff. The drop in quality is so immediate and drastic it\u2019s like someone else took over. It\u2019s really insane. I\u2019m no fan of Deodato, but what a thing to come blundering into. \u201cI get to draw and\/or trace Amazing Spider-Man! What a dream, what an honor! What\u2019s the story?…. I\u2019m sorry, what?\u201d I might have rethought my whole career\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spider-Man\u2019s web has often been portrayed as being so strong he, himself, can\u2019t break it (But certainly not always). Ever since McFarlane popularized the image of him hanging in a bunch of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[1863,1981,950,21,1968,1686,2],"class_list":["post-26587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-amazing-spider-man-vol-2","tag-j-michael-straczynski","tag-joe-pimentel","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-matt-milla","tag-mike-deodato-jr","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26587","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=26587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26605,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26587\/revisions\/26605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}