{"id":14244,"date":"2022-08-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-23T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=14244"},"modified":"2021-05-30T20:43:13","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T00:43:13","slug":"ssm-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/08\/23\/ssm-17\/","title":{"rendered":"SSM 17"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pulling issues out of the box for this block, I assumed issues 16 & 17 of SSM were standalone issues looking at the covers. You literally can\u2019t judge a book by its cover. Good grief, this issue has a price tag on the cover. Not on the bag, but on the actual book! What kinda dummy did this??? As we pick up the first story from last issue, Peter is trying desperately to ditch Billy Walters in the crowd gathering to watch the faux Prowler threaten a guy high up on a construction site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Given how completely tone deaf the writing staff is about culture and race in this period, the fact that 2 out of 4 books have an artist who knows what a kufi is and draws black people wearing them is almost jarring. Before Spidey can wrap up his foe, the fake Prowler leaps out onto a girder suspended by a cable and cuts that cable, knowing Spidey will have to save the people below and let him flee, and you get this super fun page by Ringo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Man, I miss that guy. Peter hooks back up with Billy, who is raving about the experience of seeing his first super battle, and thinks Spider-Man is the coolest. Peter notes that he saw the vulture circling above the fight, and knowing he wants revenge on the real Prowler, thinks this new guy might be in trouble. And, as the new guy gets home later, thinking he needs to get the addresses of more patients int he hospital he obviously works at to rob while he knows they\u2019re not home, we see Vulture has followed him and knows where he lives. Meanwhile, our man has gone to see Hobie Brown in the hospital, to tell him he didn\u2019t get the guy, but he will. Hobie has worked out that someone working in the ER when he was brought in must\u2019ve seen enough of his costume to realize who he was, and then used patient records to go steal his gear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I think this is a pretty unusually good portrayal of a guy in Hobie\u2019s position. Being realistic about how terrible it is, while also showing he can still help even in the condition he\u2019s in. I like it. Later, fake Prowler gets home from ripping off patients to find The Vulture in his kitchen. And right outside, Spider-Man has narrowed Hobie\u2019s list of suspects to a Rick Lawson who lives there. But before he can get involved, he has another of his crazy headache pains and has to steady himself on the roof (With a Wallace & Gromit reference, which feels correct somehow). Really milking this mysterious ailment. Once his head clears, he\u2019s back in the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve had plenty of complaints about DeZago\u2019s dialogue in the past, but as he\u2019s eased up on the terrible, misused current (at the time) slang and gotten his Spider-Man back to essentially being Bugs Bunny, it\u2019s been much better. Vulture is at an extreme disadvantage stuck in an apartment, he really should\u2019ve attacked not-Prowler outside. Spidey webs fake Prowler to the wall to focus on the more experienced villain, but just at the wrong moment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wow, so this is going a 3rd issue. I really had no idea. Ok. Well, in feature #2, Spidey is still being attacked by the goopy menace of DK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You\u2019d think they\u2019d have enough sense to stop bringing up The Clone Saga, but here we are, fighting a Clone-era villain no one wanted to see return as Spider-Man laments his lost \u201cbrother.\u201d Spidey has figured DK out, and as he keeps dodging attacks, the big blob rages about his lost brother, alternately denying that\u2019s why he\u2019s upset and saying Spider-Man has no idea what it\u2019s like to lose a brother. But he does, and he explains that he does, and that he misses him, but life has to go on, and all the fight goes out of DK. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that\u2019s that. The stage is set for a full-issue finale to the Prowler\/Vulture thing. Theoretically. Maybe it goes on 5 more issues, I have no idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pulling issues out of the box for this block, I assumed issues 16 & 17 of SSM were standalone issues looking at the covers. You literally can\u2019t judge a book by its…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[427,1251,486,275,13,21,523,626,473,2,452,98],"class_list":["post-14244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-ashley-kafka","tag-billy-walters","tag-dk","tag-gregory-wright","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mike-weiringo","tag-richard-case","tag-sensational-spider-man","tag-spider-man","tag-todd-dezago","tag-vulture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14244","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=14244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14255,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14244\/revisions\/14255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}