{"id":14142,"date":"2022-08-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-12T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=14142"},"modified":"2021-05-30T19:51:59","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T23:51:59","slug":"asm-421","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/08\/12\/asm-421\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 421"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Get it? Like Enter the Dragon? Do you get it? Do you? Ninjas are sooooo 1980s. ASM is still Tom DeFalco, sometimes Steve Skroce, Bud La rosa and good ol\u2019 Bob Sharen at this time. Let\u2019s get into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What a coincidence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I don\u2019t purport to be an expert on any cultures or languages, even my own, but because I am highly dubious that any real research happened in comics writing before, uh, 2000, I did some googling. \u201cYin\u201d is a Chinese name. \u201cMeiko\u201d is Japanese. Ninjas are also Japanese, of course. But who cares, right? This is the guy who made up his own transparently fake Native American tribe and writes black teens talking about people \u201cnot jazzin\u2019 at full volume,\u201d after all. Aaaaanyway. Peter has snatched the big mallet from one of those \u201ctest your strength\u201d carnival games and soon Spider-Man appears swingin\u2019 it at the \u201cKorean ninjas.\u201d Maybe we can say they\u2019re Korean Hwarang, or \u201cFlowering Knights,\u201d something I just read about for the first time and am now interested in, but I have no doubt the script just said \u201cninjas.\u201d One of them tells the intruding Spider-Man this is a matter of destiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cLittle Flower,\u201d huh? What if I end up eating crow about the ninja thing? I would be happy to! Also, Jackie Chan is Chinese and \u201cKarsano\u201d doesn\u2019t appear to be a real name at all. Sigh. I think we should have seen more instances of Peter photographing events where Spider-Man didn\u2019t show up back in the days when he was a photographer. He could\u2019ve just been leaving an event when something superhero-y happened sometimes. Just to make it less weird that literally everywhere he goes, Spider-Man shows up, even things he was assigned that weren\u2019t intended to involve anything super. Soon, Mieko is at Angela\u2019s apartment, being grilled about what happened. I\u2019ll say this, I may not be the biggest Steve Skroce guy, but he is, like, animator-consistent with his character designs. Meiko\u2019s hair is falling in the exact same way in every panel and the cover. Meiko explains Karsano used to be her finance. That\u2019s awkward. They trained in martial arts together, but he fell in with The True Believers (Are you serious, Tom?), \u201cwhispered to be an offshoot of the dreaded HAND.\u201d His evil boss, the lil\u2019 lady who was watching the fight, Madam Qwa (Not a real name), instructed him to kill Mieko to prove his loyalty. So we\u2019re doing this, just cliches and gross cultural ignorance all the way down, yaaaaaay. Tom DeFalco lived in New York City. He had access to maybe the most diverse cultural melting pot on Earth writing these comics. He did this. Anyway, The True Believers (\u201cExcelsior!\u201d) only give you 3 chances ot kill your fiance for them traditionally, it appears, and he\u2019s now failed twice, so she\u2019s either gotta beat him again or kill him. Then she almost catches Spider-Man peeping on them. He\u2019s somewhat familiar with The Hand, and thinks about trying to contact Daredevil or Wolverine, but then he sees the ninjas on the rooftop across the street, and it\u2019s too late. And he & MJ having a meeting at ESU this afternoon, so he\u2019s hoping to wrap this up quick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meiko and her former flame have a talk-fight about honor and various cliches which she loses, and she\u2019s about to get chopped up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At this point, I must almost begrudgingly admit that making the guy punch himself was pretty funny. Even the worst comics sometimes have their moments. Karsano handles the situation like a pro by yelling \u201cI am a fraud! I must atone for my failure!\u201d and burning to ash on the spot. Spidey is suitably grossed out, but Meiko rolls with it. She says she believes her quest has just begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What a shocking swerve. I think maybe the lil\u2019 lady works for Black Tarantula, too, I think she might\u2019ve been lurking in the margins of the last block. I forget and also don\u2019t care. Turns out, there\u2019s a 2nd story in this issue, by DeFalco, Geoff Isherwood & Paul Becton. How \u2018bout that. Isherwood\u2019s an old school guy, how is he adapting to the weird cartoony faux-anime stylings of 1997? Well, as we\u2019re told it\u2019s 20 minutes after the fight and Spider-Man is retrieving his regular clothes for the aforementioned meeting with MJ\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He is ignoring it, and more power to him. Jacob Connover! Last seen being fired as The Bugle downsized. It\u2019s kind of weird that DeFelco, who wrote the momentous issue where Peter told Aunt May he\u2019d dropped out of school and caused a rift between them in \u201884 (ASM 253<\/a>), is now writing him going back in \u201897.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boy, that is some choice of how to draw Mary Jane. Some things never change. Well, they kinda do, but not til like 2017. We see the \u201cKorean ninjas\u201d robbing a warehouse or something while our hero is getting his school finances sorted. We see a bill for $2812.75. I think it might be for BOTH of them! And Peter\u2019s freaking out because he\u2019s not sure how they\u2019ll pay it! Hahahaha. As it happens, I was starting college in 1997, and this is ridiculous even then! Hahaha. As clueless about college as he is about Asian names, this guy. Anyway, Jill and Paul Stacy, Gwen\u2019s cousins, happen to be in the same building. Jill has taken a shine to MJ, but Paul doesn\u2019t like Peter, and Peter thinks he blames him for Gwen\u2019s death. This is a horrible subplot. Also, we may recall The Rose and the awful, font-abusing Delilah are players in this period\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Speaking of The Black Tarantula, as Peter meets his new professor, who tells him if he can\u2019t keep up, he should drop out now, BT\u2019s lil weirdo establishes a video chat with\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, not so much a 2nd story this issue as the back half of the main story. Perhaps made to look like a 2nd story to cover up for Skroce failing to turn in the rest? Pure conjecture, no idea, but given his erratic and brief time on the title, seems possible. I cannot tell you how excited I am to get to Adjectiveless Spider-Man next post. If nothing else, at least it will look cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Get it? Like Enter the Dragon? Do you get it? Do you? Ninjas are sooooo 1980s. ASM is still Tom DeFalco, sometimes Steve Skroce, Bud La rosa and good ol\u2019 Bob Sharen…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[9,438,253,964,618,381,661,976,21,607,1242,2,963,325,124],"class_list":["post-14142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-angela-yin","tag-bob-sharen","tag-bud-la-rosa","tag-delilah","tag-geoff-isherwood","tag-jacob-conover","tag-jill-stacy","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-paul-becton","tag-paul-stacy","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-skroce","tag-the-rose","tag-tom-defalco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14142","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=14142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14153,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14142\/revisions\/14153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}