{"id":5872,"date":"2020-08-18T00:00:44","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T04:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=5872"},"modified":"2019-08-16T21:11:58","modified_gmt":"2019-08-17T01:11:58","slug":"asm-319","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2020\/08\/18\/asm-319\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 319"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Uh-oh! Hammer has sent in the clowns! You\u2019ll remember Blacklash from being a total screwup in MTU 145<\/a>. Has he done anything since then? I have no idea, but I haven\u2019t seen him in a Spidey comic, so who cares? I got him and Killer Shrike mixed up as a kid. Similar costumes, both fought Spider-Man during this run of ASM, neither shows up very often. Seems like an honest mistake. And look, The Rhino got a makeover! More on that inside. This one opens with Spider-Man delivering a pizza. Really.
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This issue is also a victim of Silly Putty, but I don\u2019t have a better copy of it (yet?). Spidey talks to another military guy while Scorpion eats his pizza so we can get a recap of last issue, and then Scorpion says their time is up, and drags the General off to his helicopter to escape. He promised to kill the guy last issue, but when pressed, asks why anyone would expect him to tell the truth. Fair point. Spidey hitches a ride, but…
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McFarlane\u2019s action staging is not always too great. On the other hand, weird panels like these probably make it easier to deal with the twice-a-month schedule. Didn\u2019t do himself any favors with that cityscape, though. Anyhow, at his own home, Justin Hammer recaps his deal and then summons up a visual list of his available goons\u2026
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You can see Hammer isn\u2019t exactly bankrolling the A-List. Who killed MAN-KILLER? Meanwhile, Spider-Man arrives at Aunt May\u2019s house. Aunt May says MJ is still out at a modeling gig. Peter thinks he\u2019s happy she\u2019s been able to get some work again. However\u2026
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Gasp! But wait, what\u2019s the payoff on that Harry Osborn cliffhanger last issue?
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Wah wah waaaaaah. Told you you\u2019d never guess. Because it\u2019s quite the letdown. I recall being let down by it as a child. \u201cAwesome, Green Goblin!\u201d \u201cWait, what?\u201d Back at Aunt May\u2019s, MJ gets home. Peter says he spent all night looking for someone (Which, if this is Marvel method, feels like Michelinie trying to explain why Peter seemed to abandon Scorpion\u2019s 2 hostages to their fate earlier), and then an irate MJ says her old pal Sandy asked around about some rumors she heard, and has confirmed that the reason she can\u2019t get work is Jonathan Caesar.
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Let me tell you, Scorpion on that TV down there was extremely weird and confusing to a young me, and in all honesty, still seems pretty weird now. It\u2019s a very awkward segue to a badly Silly Puttyed Scorpion in Connecticut, where he\u2019s tied up his chopper pilot in\u2026 a barn or warehouse or something in the country, and has decided to try to find someone to sell Musgrave to who\u2019d want the military secrets he must possess. I dunno, maybe Justin Hammer would be a good idea?
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Nothing on Earth could explain Spider-Man\u2019s anatomy in that bottom panel. As we go forward, McFarlane will increasingly have this bizarre problem making Spider-Man\u2019s lower half comically huge as he wraps it around his upper half for dramatic effect. Scorpion is going to Queens because he doesn\u2019t know how to drive and has gotten turned around on the highway, which is legit funny. Musgrave tells him to ask a nice policeman for directions, which is also great, and then Spidey webs the windshield, causing Scorpy to crash, and then rips his way into the van.
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This took a strange turn, yeah? Spidey leads Blacklash on a merry chase away from the general, who wishes he could help in some way, while this page\u2026
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…exposes not-quite-10-year-old me to the word \u201cAyatollahs\u201d without enough context for me to figure out what it means. I still don\u2019t really get that line even now. Is he implying that elderly Muslim clerics would be a physical match for people other than Rhino? Why or why not? Show your work. I have thought about that panel every single time I\u2019ve read, seen or heard a news story about Iran my entire life. It haunts me. Aaaaanyway. While Spider-Man is being yoinked to the ground, Scorpion is also taken to the mat by Rhino simply demolishing the entire building he\u2019s standing on. A building that happens to also hold up a giant globe, which is now rolling away like this is an Indiana Jones movie.
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Extremely abrupt ending! That\u2019s some real Early-Fantastic-Four-Jack-Kirby-level running out of pages. They say steal from the best, but maybe not like this. Well, then. Join us next time for something (almost) completely different.
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Uh-oh! Hammer has sent in the clowns! You\u2019ll remember Blacklash from being a total screwup in MTU 145. Has he done anything since then? I have no idea, but I haven\u2019t seen…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[9,35,669,253,259,22,668,172,21,160,2,51,274],"class_list":["post-5872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-may","tag-blacklash","tag-bob-sharen","tag-david-michelinie","tag-harry-osborn","tag-justin-hammer","tag-liz-allen","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-scorpion","tag-spider-man","tag-the-rhino","tag-todd-mcfarlane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5872","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=5872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5887,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5872\/revisions\/5887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}