Please welcome to the blog Mr. Fred Van Lente. As mentioned previously, Van Lente made his name on an indie book called Action Philosophers with artist Ryan Dunlavey, which profiled a different philosopher in each issue through bombastic, superhero comics-style writing and crisp, dramatic cartooning to keep the material from being too dry. It was a lot of fun. I’ve not seen a whole lot of Van Lente’s Marvel work, but that’s in large part because he tended to be put on small titles that didn’t seem like essential reading. Getting ASM, even in some sort of part-time capacity, is pretty big. And, given that he tended to bring a more fun and comical attitude to his work, what better villain for him than the Spot? I don’t know if that’s just how he liked it, or he was pigeon-holed due to the wackiness of Action Philosophers, but that’s kinda how it seemed to me. He’s joined by the familiar team of Paulo Siqueira and Amilton Santos on line art, with Jeromy Cox on colors. We begin with a Russian mobster demanding to know where a piece of paper with a big spot on it came from, as one of his goons notes this was a death mark in Treasure Island, but the mobster guy is not afraid.
The guy with the massive mustache is the mobster guy.
Get ’em, Aunt May! We see Russian mob guy go meet with a Russian general, who’s prepared to sell him some high tech new rifles to further his criminal ambitions. But they don’t know abother party has joined their meeting…
Paulo Sequeira vexes me. Sharp stuff, walking a pretty fine like between the realism demanded by the day and a more expressive, cartoony style. I like his art. But his slavish devotion to Todd McFarlane means the title character is the worst looking part of the book when he’s around.
“It’s not your daddy’s the Spot!” They’re ahead of the curve on making him creepy and weird instead of a transparently stupid joke.
I only ran this page because I like the bit. Well, naturally, the Spot appears through one of his, uh, spots, and they get to scrappin’. Spider-Man mentally recaps who Spot is, his whole deal, including how he used to work for Kingpin and got his powers trying to replicate Cloak’s (As seen in TAC 98… were we ever so young?). for us while they fight. You know who else recapped the same information earlier? The recap page. It’s right there in the name! Why do it twice? Well, anyway, Spidey and Spotty battle it out for several pages, the Spot never saying a word, until…
Very Spider-Man. But why doesn’t the Spot talk? He talked, like a lot back in the day. What follow sis a very retro explanation for the Spot’s deal, including how he got trapped in his own spot dimension by the Mandarin awhile ago, went a little insane, and focused on “the one good thing I had in my life before I had my accident.” Which looks to be a child in his flashback, but we don’t know for sure and no name is given, and then, just as vaguely…
Oh, so that’s why everyone keeps bringing up this botched drive-by mob guy’s mob is responsible for. Spot being so insane as to write in spots seems a bit much.
Todd McFarlane not available? Call Paulo Siqueira!
Neat and tidy. This was a very 1970s comic. Which means it fits right in with so much of the Brand New Day era. I don’t know to what degree Van Lente is working on this title, but presumably, we’ll be seeing more of him, and that seems ok with me.