{"id":124,"date":"2019-03-05T00:00:48","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T05:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=124"},"modified":"2024-06-10T14:24:55","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T18:24:55","slug":"asm-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/03\/05\/asm-86\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 086"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jumping ahead now to 1970, where we can settle in for a nice run of consecutive issues. By now, it\u2019s Stan Lee scripting, the legend John Romita penciling, and stalwart Jim Mooney inking every month, but this issue’s credits in particular are a little different. Romita just provides layouts for Mooney to finish this month. But Mooney’s a talented penciler himself, and inking Romita has influenced his work, so it’s a pretty seamless transition. Peter is now well into his college years. He’s dating Gwen Stacy and lives with his best friend, Harry Osborn. He and Flash Thompson have even moved on to a largely friendly relationship, it’s a whole new ball game in his social life. And in this issue, he’s going to help reboot a long standing Marvel heroine. But maybe not on purpose. I was very curious about this one because I don’t know much about Black Widow prior to it. I know the broad strokes of her story, but I don’t really know her initial powers, even. But I’m aware of this as the comic where she becomes the character we think of as Black Widow (Which is rather random given her histories with Iron Man & The Avengers), so we can all learn about her together here.<\/p>\n

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Well, that\u2019s weird. Black Widow\u2019s already sticking to things? Does she stick to things today? I can’t think of her doing so. We’re kinda jumping into a story in progress, I guess, but I didn’t have ASM 85<\/a> as of this writing, so I’m picking it up with you. Natasha scampers off, thinking that learning the secret of Spider-Man\u2019s powers and adding them to her own would make her unstoppable. Then she flashes back to her origins for a bit. How Russia pressed her into spying on the threat that they\u2019d kill her husband, how she fought Iron Man and fell in love with Hawkeye. How she switched sides, worked with The Avengers & SHIELD. And how one of those capers led to the death of her husband, the original Russian supersoldier, Red Guardian. She walked out on the costumed life then, and has spent the interim being a socialite and hating it. She wants to get back to superheroing, and she plans to use Spider-Man as her model.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Spidey swings home, desperate for some rest to clear his head, but the place he shares with Harry Osborn is being visited by Gwen Stacy and her Dad. Peter manages to web some clothes out of his room and change outside, but forgets what his face might look like after a beating severe enough to leave him in this condition.<\/p>\n

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Gwen immediately blames Spider-Man for this, and makes him promise that, if Pete really loves her, he\u2019ll never have anything to do with Spider-Man again. Well, that\u2019ll work out, I\u2019m sure. Harry offers to drive the Stacys home, and Captain Stacy once again kinda implies he knows Peter\u2019s secret. Peter is left alone, worried and sad. You know, the usual. Elsewhere, the Black Widow has put together her new ensemble.<\/p>\n

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But, she says, she\u2019s still just a \u201cfemale imitation\u201d of Spider-Man, so she needs to hunt him down, \u201csnare him, and see what makes him tick.\u201d I\u2019m only more confused. I thought this would be were she became \u201ca copy\u201d of Spider-Man, but she seems to already have wall crawling and webslinging in her arsenal. She\u2019s got a handy practice area setup wherever she lives, and flips around shooting targets and breaking stuff for a bit before heading out to get her man. She swings by JJJ\u2019s office, and boy is he not into it:<\/p>\n

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Her prey was trying to study, but his messed up head won\u2019t let him, so\u2026 he decides to go swing around and make sure he\u2019s not losing his powers. Now, I\u2019m no doctor, but this doesn\u2019t seem like this right course of action to me.<\/p>\n

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I mean, yeah, but you\u2019ll also probably splatter all over the pavement. Soon enough, he gets lightheaded and starts messing up. This leads him to JJJ\u2019s office for a quick round of insulting each other. You\u2019d think this is where he\u2019d hear about Black Widow, but Jonah says nothing (Well, about that). Then he decides to go check in on Aunt May, but she sees him out the window and freaks out. Batting 1000 today, Parker. On his way back, The Widow finally catches him. It\u2019s hard to tell what her angle is, but she just zaps him. He acts like it knocked him out to try to get some breathing room and see who he\u2019s dealing with. She catches him in a web(?) for his own safety, and then they collide when he breaks free of her line.<\/p>\n

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Natasha wants to test herself against a similar opponent, but poor Spidey is not doing good with his obvious concussion. She\u2019s pretty disappointed.<\/p>\n

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She’s probably right about Woody Allen’s interest in fighting Spider-Man. Then Spidey snaps her rope and webs up her wrist blasters so she can\u2019t zap him anymore, and she\u2026 immediately gives up? She decides he must have been born with his powers, and therefore there\u2019s no hope of learning from him, and\u2026 leaves. And Spidey just lets her, I guess, he\u2019s not even in this sequence.<\/p>\n

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Spidey swings home, barely able to keep upright. He\u2019s afraid to go to a doctor in case they want a blood sample, so he decides to check his blood himself, see if it\u2019s still all spider-y. Except he\u2019s freakin\u2019 out:<\/p>\n

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And that\u2019s that. Pretty random! I think Natasha will move on from here to her relationship with Daredevil. I’m not 100% sure on the timeline there. Really nice to see John Romita in his prime. It’s strange, his take on these characters is so definitive that, like a lot of people, it’s how I think of them. But, at the same time, I’ve only read some of the Romita Spider-Man. Less than Ditko, probably. So it’s cool to see him doing his thing here. Come back next time to see if Spider-Man is really unmasked at last!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jumping ahead now to 1970, where we can settle in for a nice run of consecutive issues. By now, it\u2019s Stan Lee scripting, the legend John Romita penciling, and stalwart Jim Mooney…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[9,19,20,16,18,17,10,2,6],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1970s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-black-widow","tag-george-stacy","tag-gwen-stacy","tag-jim-mooney","tag-john-romita","tag-peter-parker","tag-spider-man","tag-stan-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31998,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions\/31998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}