{"id":13191,"date":"2022-05-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=13191"},"modified":"2021-04-24T19:00:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T23:00:59","slug":"asm-350","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/05\/30\/asm-350\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 350"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Look at all we are promised this time. I may have been skipping ASMs sometimes, but even a very new comics nerd is quickly programmed to care about anniversary issues, so here we are. Let\u2019s get to it. This month\u2019s pun title is \u201cDoom Service.\u201d That\u2019s, like, not even trying. Ol\u2019 Victor is still eager to get his hands on Black Fox from last issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Somewhat unsurprisingly given last issue\u2019s exposition, we learn the bunch of European royal gems Fox stole to finance his current gig included The Dragon\u2019s Egg, which belonged to, you guessed it, Dr. Doom. But, as we also know from last issue\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The idea of someone grabbing Dr. Doom, the most fearsome villain in the Marvel Universe, by the cape and just chucking him into the distance is really funny to me. Spidey leaps to the ceiling to try to get some distance from the inevitable counterattack, and Doom collapses the whole thing on him with lasers from his fingers. He\u2019s about to cut Black Fox\u2019s legs off with said lasers when Spidey jumps back into the fray, now pretty badly beat up, and gets punched through a wall and into several other walls for his troubles. Rough night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Leaping away saves our hero, but only just. His costume\u2019s in tatters, he looks like he\u2019s got burns on all his exposed skin, and Doom is still coming. He flees into a nearby gym, but doesn\u2019t get far. He keeps trying, avoiding being electrocuted and then webbing a big rack of weights onto Doom, but nothing stops him. Spidey leaps out a window just int time to avoid being blown to pieces and finds a dock, hoping to escape on a jet ski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Quick thinking by the battered Spider-Man. It\u2019s always nice to see a writer give Doom his respect. He can fight the whole FF by himself, he\u2019s subdued The Silver Surfer and stolen the power of The Beyonder, he will go on conquer entire planets, he should be able to overwhelm Spider-Man. But, ya never know in comics. Sometimes Spidey can just randomly punch out Firelord, and Doom\u2019s been jobbed out before (Rather famously to Squirrel Girl, even). It\u2019s just nice to see him done right. Spider-Man has survived, but has no idea how he\u2019s gonna find Black Fox. Speaking of whom, he gets home and realizes he has to get that emerald back, but he\u2019s an old man who just had a near death experience, so he goes to sleep first. The next morning, Peter\u2019s feeling better, but his head\u2019s still spinning and the thought of swinging around makes him sick. He decides to take the day off. Fox, meanwhile, finds out his fence already sold the Dragon\u2019s Egg, but will perhaps tell him where it went for \u201ceverything he has.\u201d Hard bargain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All the little things Larsen does here to make sure you know Peter\u2019s hallucinating are nice. Also, the way he dutifully reproduces that famous but baffling shot of Spidey realizing who killed Uncle Ben, pupils and all. As Peter is rushed to the hospital, we check in on Doom, literally counting the seconds until he can either get his emerald or his revenge, so obsessed he\u2019s ignoring a goon saying they have some info on it. Hours later, Peter is diagnosed with a mild concussion, MJ by his side. He told them he fell down a flight of stairs. He\u2019s given some pills, but when the doctor says she\u2019d like him to stay overnight, he refuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201c–don\u2019t ask me to understand suicide.\u201d Fair point from MJ. And also, with the tracer, Peter has a better chance of finding Fox than Doom. If they both laid low, they might be able to ride it out. But, Spider-Man is Spider-Man, and The Black Fox is driving to New Jersey to try to get the gem back. He doesn\u2019t know that Spider-Man hitches a ride on the back of his car as he drives out of the city to the estate of one \u201c millionaire recluse Andrew Carpathian.\u201d Fox disables security and security guards and makes his way inside, tailed by Spider-Man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, hey, continuity! This is the first time I\u2019ve ever read this comic having seen those<\/a> issues<\/a> of Spectacular. It\u2019s funny what you can just take at face value reading comics. I didn\u2019t trip over this at all as a kid. Ok, Spidey\u2019s fought whatever this is before, he\u2019s done a lot of things I don\u2019t know about. Comic folk today are so, so very scared that if you mention an earlier story, new readers will be confused or put off, despite the fact that that\u2019s how comics have worked since the 60s without dying off. Anyway, Spidey dives in, and to his credit, Black Fox does, too. Fox\u2019s smoke bombs give them some advantage, but Spidey\u2019s in bad shape and overdue for his medication, taking hits he would easily dodge on a better day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Just as our man\u2019s about to be overwhelmed, the wall bursts in and Doom has arrived. He zaps a bunch of cultists who come at him, but has no intention of helping. When he says so, Spidey dives back into the fray, helped at least by Doom\u2019s confusing presence as he smashes his way through the swarm of goons even as he\u2019s close to blacking out, until\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The visible \u201cX\u201d that indicates the blue in Spidey\u2019s suit was supposed to be black in panel 5 is funny. But there you have it. Spider-Man finally taking Black Fox in is a nice change of pace. Hard as it is to believe, Black Fox is still a thing in contemporary comics. They\u2019ve wrapped his deal up with Black Cat\u2019s, even. Marvel and it\u2019s immortal elderly characters, I tell ya. Not bad for an anniversary issue, tho. The best of all villains, impossible odds, and a win for a change. That just leaves the all-star pin-up gallery. But it\u2019s not what it sounds like. Usually that\u2019d be images from all sorts of famous folk, but for this one, it\u2019s Erik Larsen drawings inked by famous people. Which is actually kinda cool, letting you see his work in different lights, drawing some attention to the importance of the inker, and no doubt giving Erik and his collaborators some big original art sales. First up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We\u2019ve seen a lot of examples of Jazzy Johnny finishing others\u2019 pencils so heavily they look like he drew them, but this is different. A synthesis of the 2 artists, but more Larsen than Romita.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Joe Sinnott is the gold standard at Marvel, and he does great work with Erik\u2019s pencils. This bright render of the FF would\u2019ve made great models for a cartoon. And the legends just keep coming\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Immaculate Al Williamson, one of the best to ever do it. This one really feels influenced by some of the stuff Frank Miller drew for Spider-Man in the early 80s, which would be appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sal always gets short shrift. Didn\u2019t even get to do a Spider-Man piece. Sal\u2019s inking is like a good drummer, doing the work without drawing attention to itself. He was a little more experimental on his own work in the mid-80s, but he always treats another penciler right. And finally\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even as a kid who thought Todd McFarlane was the greatest artist of all time, that wrist looked all messed up to me. Sheesh. It\u2019s like broken in 2 places. You can basically see Todd going \u201coh, his hand\u2019s going to go off the page, I don\u2019t want that.\u201d You almost never see Larsen ink himself in these pages. The fact that it doesn\u2019t look too different from when Randy Emberlin is doing it is a credit to him. And that\u2019s that for #350.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look at all we are promised this time. I may have been skipping ASMs sometimes, but even a very new comics nerd is quickly programmed to care about anniversary issues, so here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[481,9,575,273,253,259,106,574,880,228,17,21,432,37,2,274],"class_list":["post-13191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-al-williamson","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-anne-marie-baker","tag-black-fox","tag-bob-sharen","tag-david-michelinie","tag-dr-doom","tag-dr-swan","tag-erik-larsen","tag-joe-sinnott","tag-john-romita","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-randy-emberlin","tag-sal-buscema","tag-spider-man","tag-todd-mcfarlane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13191","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=13191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13213,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13191\/revisions\/13213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}