Cover by the great Paolo Rivera! Behold ye the only issue of FNSM I bought as the series was coming out. I’d read what this was, and thought it would be interesting. I think I was wrong, but it’s been almost 20 years, let’s see. I was holding this for later, thinking it was a standalone issue, but now I know it follows directly from the last one, so here we go. I am a mere 22 pages away from not having to look at Todd Nauck’s weird, misshapen people spouting Peter David’s allegedly clever one-liners anymore. And given that this is the end of this run, and given that editorial would never saddle the new creative teams with a dangling plot thread from this era, while I don’t really recall this issue, I feel fairly certain Robbie will be rehired by the time it’s over. Tho goodness knows why he’d go back. Martha was right. She was right when he quit in ‘98 and she’s right now. But it’s not the Bugle without Robbie.
Jonah’s right about one thing, they sure do need new writers! The situation is GRIM!
God, I hate Peter David’s “humor.” I saw through this garbage when I was 14! He was beloved for his humor and I was like “this is not funny.” But in the 2000s, he ‘s firmly in that Whedon camp, this kind of tired shtick is “cool” with the nerds, and is about to spread like a virus with the MCU. I was never down with Joss Whedon, either. I never watched that Buffy show or any of his other shows except Firefly, which I watched under duress. A new coworker literally wouldn’t take no for an answer and pressed bootleg DVDs of the show into my hands and I didn’t know how to say “no” without being rude. It was ok. I would say it had potential. Joss Whedon ruined Runaways, taking them on a time travel adventure and saddling them with a girl from the Industrial Revolution when they came back, if you can believe it. His X-Men run started with some potential and then quickly devolved into the usual endless loop of self-reference you get with the X-Men before collapsing into scheduling problems that make Civil War look flawless. I will say I think he did a pretty good job on that first Avengers movie, but the 2nd one was really bad, and then things started to come out about what a jerk he is, and then that Justice League fiasco, and… ugh. I digress. As I so often do. We flashback to Betty haranguing JJJ for firing Joe and being threatened with firing herself as they enter JJJ’s office and find it covered in webs with a note. It’s an address and the instruction to come alone at 6pm. Thus does JJJ arrive at Lieber’s Gym (Stan Lee’s real name). He opens the door and yells a bunch of threats only to be webbed inside.
This is why I bought this. These two having it out after all these years. Even if it was going to be by a creative team I had no faith in, I wanted to see it.
Spider-Man flips into the boxing ring, asking JJJ what it’s going to take for him to rehire Robbie, and to drop his lawsuit against him, for that matter. Jonah says he’ll do one or the other, and Peter says drop the lawsuit. JJJ says he knew it.
Spider-Man says he knows JJJ fired robbie solely to provoke this meeting which is BANANAS, and then JJJ basically admits to that, which is EVEN MORE BANANAS, and then refuses to do anything and prepares to leave. Spider-Man says “hit me.”
Peter starts insulting and disparaging JJJ mercilessly until he finally gives him a sock in the jaw in a splash page. Hard to imagine a punch from Jonah hurting a guy who’s been punched by the Hulk, but Peter reacts like he’s really been hit and has a bloody nose.
And so, they don’t have it out. Not really. Lame. JJJ takes the film back to the Bugle and destroys it, and then, in true Peter David fashion, Betty Brant opens the door to the ladies’ room as JJJ is walking by, and he really does walk into a door.
It’s truly strange to me how much this comic was just clean up work for its entire run. From Paul Jenkins’ Flash-in-a-coma to Millar making JJJ think John was Spider-Man to Kevin Smith’s new Mysterio right through to JMS’s the Other & JJJ lawsuit, almost the entire run was a Mark Gruenwald-style collection of tied up loose ends. Bizarre. But it’s over! Let’s go see how the SSM brand of filler winds down, and then we can get on with it.