{"id":30392,"date":"2025-12-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=30392"},"modified":"2024-03-05T19:30:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T23:30:02","slug":"ssm-v2-41","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/12\/23\/ssm-v2-41\/","title":{"rendered":"SSM V2 41"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Now it\u2019s a month later. And this is the only issue of this story to come out this month. If these were 4 issues of ASM, we\u2019d expect 1 per month, but it\u2019s not, so we expect 3 the first month and then 1 next month, and it did not happen that way. The Spider-Titles missed a combined 3 months during Back In Black, and now SSM 41 & ASM 545 each arrive a month late. And we all knew One More Day was coming, of course. And we all had a pretty good idea it would do what it does, though they officially kept it all under wraps. There was much turmoil. So the delays only made it worse. The little girl from the end of last issue looks like some kind of troll on this cover. The middle guy at bottom looks like Stephen King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boy, that credit text is not in perspective. Why even do that if not well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Can you guess? She tipped it pretty hard this page. The girl lectures Peter in a way so vague it doesn\u2019t really make sense about his lifestyle, then says her job is just to lead him to the next step. She goes down an alley and disappears. Following her brings Peter to a park bench with the middle guy from the cover on it. He says he\u2019s a tester for video games, and says people like him get into that job because something is missing in their life. What on Earth are you yammering about, man?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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JMS just kind of crapping on his own audience. But we\u2019re nerds, we\u2019re used to that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You just have to imagine comicdom assembled, as Stan might say, reading this comic, assuming we know what\u2019s going to happen, wondering what on Earth we\u2019re looking at. PLUS the delays. This was among the least-satisfying reads in the contemporary history of comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I think life will provide you with plenty of evidence that the nerd, hated because he\u2019s soooo smart and special, who will one day show those mean ol\u2019 jocks by succeeding in life while they fail, is unmitigated horseshit, made up by losers who don\u2019t take responsibility for their choices. I think back to my own high school days, where all the smartest kids were also popular kids. It\u2019s bitter, self-aggrandizing, unpleasant people who aren\u2019t nearly as smart (or even as ostracized) as they think who tell themselves this myth to feel better about their paradoxical high & mighty attitude toward others. And in my experience, rather than outperforming the popular kids as adults, they work at Walmart. I think the last 20 years of popular entertainment and internet malefactors have been a grand experiment showing us just how bad things are when the self-described nerds win. But no one\u2019s looking for social commentary from me in the middle of this comic, so anyway. This guy tells Peter he\u2019ll \u201ctake him where he needs to go,\u201d then gives a long speech about how he\u2019s rich and successful and can have anything he wants, but he\u2019d trade it all for \u201cher,\u201d for a woman who honestly loved him. He leads Peter to a stoop with a mysterious woman in red on it, who says she\u2019s always been right there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thus we learn, as if we couldn\u2019t guess, that the pathetic nerd stereotype and the business man are alternate Peters, where he didn\u2019t get bit by the spider, one where he \u201cturned his rage inward\u201d and one where he \u201cturned his rage outward,\u201d neither living a full life. Remember when this was a superhero comic book? Those were fun times. He\u2019s told they\u2019re just 2 of a zillion alternate possibilities, etc etc. He asks about the little girl, and is told he\u2019s not ready to hear that one yet, but come on. A little redheaded girl who says she has a smart dad and a beautiful mom? We know what she is. The lady goes on to say he\u2019s already failed. Everyone told him May is going to die and there\u2019s nothing he can do about it. \u201cBut I can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I think I just have to run this. Me summarizing it wouldn\u2019t be sufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good night, folks! Tip your waitresses! I\u2019ll save my commentary for next post. This month\u2019s backmatter is, naturally, Mephisto\u2019s handbook entry and a reprint of the Silver Surfer comic he first appeared in. This pointless backmatter cost money, by the way. These issues are a dollar more than the ones before them. Not only are they making you read this stupid dreck, they\u2019re shanking you for it. The nerve of these people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now it\u2019s a month later. And this is the only issue of this story to come out this month. If these were 4 issues of ASM, we\u2019d expect 1 per month, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[1863,35,2026,1981,1890,21,672,2130],"class_list":["post-30392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","tag-amazing-spider-man-vol-2","tag-aunt-may","tag-danny-miki","tag-j-michael-straczynski","tag-joe-quesada","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mephisto","tag-richard-isanove"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30392","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=30392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30401,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30392\/revisions\/30401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}