{"id":3091,"date":"2020-01-23T00:00:24","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T04:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=3091"},"modified":"2022-07-26T18:28:45","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T22:28:45","slug":"asm-041","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2020\/01\/23\/asm-041\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 041"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Time travel is real, and we are back in 1966! To go from the absolute nadir of Spider-Man history back to the glory days is enough to make your head spin, but we are doing it. We are, in fact, going back further than most of the Stan Lee material we covered last time. Whenever that was. Here we\u2019ll pick up with just Jazzy Johnny Romita\u2019s 3rd issue on the title. He came to Spidey from Daredevil, intimidated by the idea of picking up after Ditko, but following orders. In his earliest work, he is visibly trying to maintain some continuity with Ditko\u2019s style, but as the months wear on, more and more of the John Romita style will emerge, and in the process, he will shape the look of these characters pretty much forever. His version of Spidey, Peter, Gwen, MJ, Harry and everyone else became a house style still followed by a lot of people even today, and his Spider-Man became the one that appeared on all merchandise and non-comics products until the 2000s. Quite a legacy! But at this point, he\u2019s still the new kid on the block. We also got Mike Esposito on the inks, and I\u2019m surprised to be able to tell you we got colors by Andy Yanchus. Comics of this vintage don\u2019t credit the colorist, but it looks like they added a credit for coloring this reprint (Which also explains Esposito not being billed by the pseudonym \u201cMickie Demeo\u201d he used in this period).
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I hate to get rolling with a reprint, but it\u2019s what I got. This is the first appearance of The Rhino, and the first appearance of any core villain is going to be outside my price range. But in this era of Marvel Tales, they reproduced the original covers pretty faithfully, so just pretend it says \u201c41\u201d up in the corner and you\u2019ve more or less got it. The splash promises the return of Betty Brant, an appearance by John Jameson, \u201cthe most exciting new purchase Petey ever made,\u201d and The Rhino, \u201cthe most fearsome villain of all!\u201d Pump the breaks, there, Stan, it\u2019s just The Rhino.
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Ah, the bike! I\u2019ve read a bit of stuff with the bike in it, but I didn\u2019t know this is where he buys it. JJJ complains that no one appreciates how nice he is before saying he needs to get to \u201croasting Spider-Man\u2019s hide in an editorial.\u201d John wants to know why he hates Spidey so much, especially since Spider-Man saved John\u2019s life in ASM 1<\/a>. Then he helpfully flashes back to that just in case you don\u2019t know it.
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JJJ dismisses that as a publicity stunt by Spider-Man, though, and rants some more about him while throwing darts at a poster of him. John finally gets him off the subject of Spider-Man by telling him about his last mission in space, on which he went for a spacewalk and came back covered in mysterious space spores! Nobody wants that. So they subjected him to a bunch of tests, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but now he travels under armed guard at all times, because the government worries foreign agents might try to kidnap him to study the spores. Speaking of which, a ridiculous looking dude is trying to stomp into the US from Mexico\u2026
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That\u2019s pretty much the whole thing with The Rhino. Head down, run into stuff. Not the most versatile or exciting toolkit for a villain. As he stomps toward destiny, Peter Parker is walking down the street when he runs into\u2026
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Improbably, Ned Leeds runs into them as their awkward conversation sputters out, and Peter is actually relieved. He leaves them to chat, thinking he\u2019s really grown up in the last few months, when he sees a news bulletin letting him know The Rhino is smashing his way directly to New York. He thinks he\u2019s probably gonna have to fight him, and then sees JJJ on the street.
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He walks home to Aunt May\u2019s, worrying she\u2019ll be scared of him on a motorcycle, but that news breezes right past her. She\u2019s trying to work up the courage to tell Pete about Anna\u2019s offer, but she can\u2019t do it. He can tell something\u2019s up, though. He wants to go webslinging to clear his head, but decides to work on his term paper, instead. Later, on the outskirts of the city, The Rhino smashes out of a train car to finish his trip on foot. And when a news bulletin goes out saying he\u2019s been spotted on the West Side, Peter gets suited up and heads out after him. But not before Rhino can crash into John Jameson\u2019s hotel room and kidnap him. Spidey finds them on the street, and it\u2019s fightin\u2019 time.
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Romita is still doing very Ditko-esque fight scenes, still trying not to rock the boat too much.
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Spidey keeps goading him further into a rage, until he\u2019s completely forgotten Jameson. Spidey decides all he can do is keep dodging and hope to wear The Rhino out. During the fight, he wonders if he really fights for justice, or just to hear the crazy sound effects, which is pretty funny, and eventually\u2026
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Spidey scampers off before things can get weird. The cops are dismayed to learn they can\u2019t get the suit off of him, and worry he\u2019ll break out of any prison they put him in. JJJ is furious they didn\u2019t arrest Spider-Man, and no common sense from John will deter him. For his part, Peter realizes he didn\u2019t think to get any photos of the fight, and that\u2019s no good, but he doesn\u2019t let that get him down. The next day, he goes and picks up his motorcycle.
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Wouldn\u2019t that be funny? Tune in next post for that. In a fun touch that I don\u2019t think was present in any Marvel Tales I\u2019ve read before, this issue features a \u201cPost Office of the Past\u201d page, reprinting letters about the very issue you just read from the old days. That\u2019s fun.
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In this issue from 1966, Aunt Anna says Peter is \u201calmost twenty.\u201d In a 2019 issue of Amazing, MJ said he\u2019s \u201cin his early twenties.\u201d It\u2019s best not to dwell on comic book aging, but\u2026 it\u2019s absurd to think Peter is still supposed to be, like, 24 or something after all he\u2019s been through. Married, unmarried (not divorced, heavens no, don\u2019t say the \u201cD\u201d word!), almost a dad, killed, resurrected, started an international megacorp, lost an international megacorp, still not old enough to rent a car.
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Time travel is real, and we are back in 1966! To go from the absolute nadir of Spider-Man history back to the glory days is enough to make your head spin, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[9,53,35,11,12,16,22,13,27,17,52,2,6,51],"class_list":["post-3091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1960s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-andy-yanchus","tag-aunt-may","tag-betty-brant","tag-flash-thompson","tag-gwen-stacy","tag-harry-osborn","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-john-jameson","tag-john-romita","tag-mike-esposito","tag-spider-man","tag-stan-lee","tag-the-rhino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091","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=3091"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20455,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091\/revisions\/20455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}