{"id":16357,"date":"2023-03-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=16357"},"modified":"2021-12-01T13:41:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T17:41:19","slug":"asm-367","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/03\/10\/asm-367\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 367"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lookit these jokers. Even as a callow youth I was like \u201cThis is lame.\u201d Faux-Cap is obviously the worst. He looks like a backup dancer for Paula Abdul. And then the other two. Why put so much effort into making them look vaguely like the real thing? Just make them look like the real thing. Serious hair on Fauxeye, tho.Jerry Bingham hangs in there this month, and Renee Witterstaetter hops in on colors as Spider-Man closes in on the address The Red Skull\u2019s flunky gave him last issue. But he\u2019s being followed, and after some traditional dodging of the gunfire, to no one\u2019s surprise, his assailant is\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Solo is just a less interesting Punisher. At least The Punisher looked cool. But it\u2019s the exact same dynamic, only worse. Anyway, the boys head inside, facing zero resistance and knowing it\u2019s a trap, and then Taskmaster appears. He lets them know he\u2019s been, uh, tasked with creating \u201cnasty versions\u201d of The Avengers (They shouldn\u2019t even bother trying to talk to Janet Jackson), and now it\u2019s time to test them\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I remembered that they were colored differently inside, but not how. Not improvements! \u201cBlood Spider\u201d looks close to Spider-Man 2099, oddly enough. Solo is forced to use his teleport to get behind Fauxeye and beat him up with nunckuks (The 90s!), while Spider-Man has some trouble with Not-Captain America, but overcomes him. Then Fake Spider attacks him and Spidey downs him with a gut punch in a single panel, which is kind of an obvious gag, but it still lands. Taskmaster, being Taskmaster, sees things going wrong and abandons his goons to their fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s worth pointing out that Spider-Man\u2019s kinda been up to his neck in evil twins lately. Venom, Carnage, Doppleganger, now this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Just like early Punisher stories. Spidey takes off, fretting. Taskmaster reports his failure to The Skull, who makes vague but ominous threats about both Taskmaster and about what\u2019ll happen to Spider-Man if he shows up at the thingie tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Weird, weird posing choices, Jerry! If MJ doesn\u2019t want to be compared to a collie, maybe she should sit on the bed like a normal person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What an insane position for Peter & May. Even more insane to consider Peter already went through this when Gwen seemed to turn up alive at the top of the 70s clone saga. He\u2019s always so hung up on the people around him dying, but how do you cope with them coming back? Peter heads to work to try to find clues about what The Skull could be planning, and when that doesn\u2019t work, tries to get Joy Mercado to tell him anything she knows about what might happen, which is very random, and somehow works out. As Spidey tells Solo later, he\u2019s learned a Japanese official is making a surprise speech at the ceremonies tomorrow to ease trade tensions with the US, but The Skull is having him killed to do the opposite. This is pretty well in line with the kind of thing Gruenwald was doing with The Skull in Cap around this time, trying to get America to eat itself from within. Soon, Mr. Kuroto is arriving by boat under guard when goons start shooting. And Solo teleports in shooting back, but Spider-Man keeps him from killing anyone. Then Ultimate shows up in droves to keep things on task. Spidey notices the SWAT team guarding the VIP taking him to some random warehouse instead of away from the scene and smells a rat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The physics of that punch are beyond comprehension. Solo and Spider-Man handily defeat the goons, Spidey managing to keep them from getting killed. He\u2019s all set to web up Solo and include him in the arrests when\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Marvel was starting to make all the big books run 15 issues a year in this period. Which isn\u2019t that uncommon now, but these days, when, say, Amazing Spider-Man is publishing at least 3 issues a month, there\u2019s like six guys rotating on the art. This was very punishing on their biggest talent, and the bi-weekly summers were a reason McFarlane told them he wanted off ASM. You\u2019d think that alone would\u2019ve made them rethink. But Marvel wasn\u2019t used to thinking the talent sold the books. As long as Spider-Man was on the stands, it didn\u2019t matter who was producing it. Very shortsighted. Anyway. That\u2019s it for this block. Time for as close to a trip through the eras as I\u2019ll get from here on out. Next up, the last block of Marv Wolfman, then 80s Defalco, back to Michelinie, then 90s DeFalco. Really running out of time periods, as \u201887-\u201998 proves to be almost as much content as \u201862-\u201987. Sheesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lookit these jokers. Even as a callow youth I was like \u201cThis is lame.\u201d Faux-Cap is obviously the worst. He looks like a backup dancer for Paula Abdul. And then the other…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[9,35,259,13,231,21,1290,432,698,909,1289,696,2,807],"class_list":["post-16357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-may","tag-david-michelinie","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-jerry-bingham","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mary-parker","tag-randy-emberlin","tag-red-skull","tag-renee-witterstaetter","tag-richard-parker","tag-solo","tag-spider-man","tag-viper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16357","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=16357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16371,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16357\/revisions\/16371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}