Man, it’s always a slog when it’s multiple oversized issues in a row. Even when the last one was really good. My primary interest going into this is going to be whether Golden knows Spider-Man has already met the monster way back in MTU 36 & 37. The staff could be forgiven for not knowing (Especially without today’s internet to run to); Spider-Man, less so. Golden is joined by Mike Deodato, Jr., Joe Pimentel and John Kalisz for this, and I think they remain the art team for the rest of the run. To open, Peter Parker goes to The Bugle on a dark and stormy night to drop off some shots, and JJJ offers him a gig that will require him to fly to The Swiss Alps, then asks him how he feels about cloning. Then Peter wakes up, already on a plane with Betty, having been dreaming of how he got here, which is a fun kind of segue. He tells Betty he “sort of has a thing about clones.” Then we jump ahead.
Peter has found himself wandering into spooky European castles a lot more often over the years than the casual reader would probably expect. Now 2 with Betty, even. Something weird happened on the first page of this story, and it’s happening again here:
Last time we saw Deodato, he was tracing Spider-Mans out of other comic books filling in for Luke Ross on Spectacular. Now he’s trying to draw John Romita, Jr.’s Peter Parker, specifically. The top one doesn’t look traced, it just looks like emulation. The bottom one, tho? The profile pic? That’s lookin’ real Romita-y. How bad is this gonna get? Well, in a 2-page spread, we jump ahead awhile, and find Betty & Peter reuniting after mingling awhile, and both having heard bad things about this guy, Kraft. So they sneak into an off limits stairwell and find themselves face to face with Frankenstein’s monster, and also a guy named Ivan. Peter & Betty slowly back way after being lightly threatened.
Well, I guess Deodato’s just gonna trace a Peter Parker closeup from Romita any chance he gets. This feels of a piece with his later work that makes me such a staunch detractor, but I suppose that’s for later. Also, Peter does, indeed, not seem to recognize the monster. Which is pretty surprising since he’s even more or less dressed the same, only now he’s got some pouches, because it’s the 90s:
Next morning, Peter and Betty talk, and she says she’s heard that there’s another castle 15 miles from here owned by Baroness Frankenstein who’s against Kraft’s work. So Peter heads out there in a rented van, curiously without Betty and still seemingly not knowing the monster. Romita faces continue. The fact that he’s ONLY doing it for Peter is both distracting and, again, very familiar for his MO. He arrives as the castle, lets himself in, and finds Victoria Frankenstein locked in a cell, yelling for help. She says she’s been in there for weeks, but “the little ones” were keeping her fed, and Peter finds himself surrounded by weird little mutant guys. Cut to the monster eager to be a real person, cut back to Victoria confirming her ancestor did everything in the novel, and saying her dad & grandpa were trying to replicate the process, creating all the weird little guys in the castle.
Now he’s even dressed like the MTU issues. Which, in fairness, is probably also how he looked in the 70s monster magazines, which they probably referenced for this. The mad doctor in the MTU stories was named Ludwig, tho. This is frustrating. Well, she goes on to save Vincent shot Ivan, but also apparently did something to him to stop him from aging, and he eventually came back, imprisoned her, and went off with the monster, but he is not its friend. Peter thinks the monster could use a friend right now. Yes, perhaps someone he met several years ago who was nice to him and didn’t find him scary and wore red & blue tights. Well, later that night, Peter spies on the doctor working, is sure he’s making clones, and then sneaks into a room in the castle…
Super obvious Romita face. Peter thinks he should get back down to Betty, but as he sneaks out, he sees her being harassed by Ivan as she’s looking for him. And then he sees the monster, and since it’s not with Ivan, he tries to talk with it.
I wonder how much else in here could be sourced to other artists. The monsters battle their way into the party still happening downstairs, and everyone flees. They keep on fighting and destroying stuff as Peter appears, trying to herd people out of the room without a panic. Then there’s some pretty obvious John Buscema faces on Ivan…
Kraft shows up with an army of Frankensteins, and the original decides he has to burn the place down with all of them inside to scour the doc’s evil from the Earth. Peter points out that they’re more victims than monster, but Frank says they’re mindless, and if they don’t fight, the beasts will kill them, and he’s discovered he wants to live.
They go smashing out the window, and it appears the whole castle… you know, the one made of stone?… burns to the ground. We see sunrise over the ruins, and then our heroes sitting by a riverbank.
In the 2010s, Deodato gets way, way into distractingly, unnecessarily complicated page layouts. This feels like him testing the water, this pointlessly skewed page.
It is so insane that Peter Parker has now canonically befriended Frankenstein’s monster TWICE. Once is crazy enough. I really don’t blame Golden for not knowing about 2 obscure issues of Marvel Team-Up, but it’s a shame. He could’ve done so much with that past history. Either way, that does it for him on this title. Only 2 issues, but at least they were unique. Coming up with stories that at least try to justify this book’s existence is always appreciated.