{"id":16939,"date":"2023-05-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=16939"},"modified":"2022-01-09T20:17:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10T00:17:58","slug":"asm-283","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/05\/04\/asm-283\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 283"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It must be around the production of this issue, if not before, that, according to Christopher Priest, Jim Shooter had been pressuring him to fire DeFalco and Frenz for habitual lateness so long that Priest had tried to relent. He\u2019d decided he would pitch the duo a quarterly \u201cSensational Spider-Man\u201d title, so they could keep working on the character they loved and Shooter would be mollified. Neither party took it well in the slightest, according to Priest, who says the incident permanently ruined his friendship with DeFalco and that Frenz, a self-professed Spidey superfan just fired off his dream job, and not in the Marvel offices to talk to Priest face-to-face like DeFalco, had to be called to be \u201ctalked off the ledge,\u201d as it were. The offer of Sensational Spider-Man was not met with warmth. And, per Priest, the incident led to Shooter demanding to know why he\u2019d fired the ASM team after spending months telling him to do just that. So things behind the scenes are about as grim as Spider-Man\u2019s endlessly sour mood on the page. But, I mean, whether due to receiving late scripts or being late himself or both, Frenz hasn\u2019t turned in full pencils since ASM 277, which he only drew half off, and has entirely missed 3 of the 6 issues since then, as well. Something is clearly wrong here, no matter how mad it made them to lose the title. Even here, Bob Layton is credited as \u201cfinisher,\u201d not inker. At any rate, this is, believe it or not, DeFalco\u2019s SECOND comic butting into a famous non-Spider-Man storyline. In the aforementioned ASM 277, we saw him add a completely nonessential bit of nothing to Frank Miller & David Mazuchelli\u2019s Born Again in Daredevil, and now we\u2019re going to add a pointless detour to the beloved Avengers story Under Siege. Roger Stern, John Buscema and Tom Palmer told the tale of The Masters of Evil launching a brutal assault on Avengers mansion. Rarely had heroes been defeated so soundly. Of course, their comeback from such a defeat was, then, rousing and exciting. It has a well-deserved rep as a classic. And no one actually thinks this issue is part of it, but, well, we\u2019ll see. Flash Thompson is here to remind us he\u2019s on the run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meanwhile, Spider-Man is swinging around, looking for Flash and whining about how he hates being Spider-Man, when he sees the same police car and tags along on its roof to\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Again, how can Spider-Man be scared of Titania or literally anybody when he\u2019s beaten Firelord? We\u2019ve seen Titania overcome her fear of Spidey in the far off future of Web 59, but this is maybe the introduction of the idea. I dunno, time is hard to keep up with. Spidey makes a crack about Crusher Creel, her man, as he swings by, prompting Titania to throw a van into the building next to him. He stops to web it up to keep it from falling down (For a whole hour??) and keeps on. Titania has slipped out of sight into an alley and put on a big coat and hat to hide her identity, but Spidey sees through it and follows her to a fancy hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Elsewhere, Captain Keating (Not a Lieutenant anymore?) is demanding his cops bring Flash Thompson to justice, stomping off and thinking they\u2019ll never understand how important this case is to him. Are we supposed to think Keating is The Hobgoblin? That\u2019s too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Avengers have their hands full, Pete!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gee, what\u2019s with Ned? Could he be, you know, The Hobgoblin? This has gone on so ridiculously long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Avengers 274, The Masters of Evil have beaten Jarvis nearly to death and taken control of Avengers mansion. The Masters have taken out Black Knight and Captain Marvel and tried to get Captain America to fall into their trap by faking a message from Jan, but he knew Jan wasn\u2019t home and went to see her, instead. Then Jan shrunk down and flew into the mansion and saw what was going on, and flew back out just in time to stop a drugged Hercules from being the next in the trap. She, Cap & Herc then got attacked and Wasp was the only one to escape. Herc was beaten nearly to death and rushed to the hospital. And this issue posits that\u2026 somewhere in there\u2026 Jan snuck away to look at this hotel room. Absolutely bonkers. Complete garbage. AT ANY RATE, Titania recaps her origin, being empowered by Dr. Doom in Secret Wars, and how she also was defeated by Spider-Man then. She schemes internally about wanting to get Crusher to kill Spider-Man. Then there\u2019s this\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At this moment, as far as Tom DeFalco is concerned, Roderick Kingsley is The Rose. That’s not who\u2019ll be under that mask when it comes off soon, tho. And now\u2019s a fun time to say that, as far as Roger Stern was concerned, Roderick Kingsley was The Hobgoblin. They\u2019ve definitively made that impossible now. But the person DeFalco wants under that Goblin mask has been forbidden to be Hobgoblin by Christopher Priest. The pot is finally about to boil over. Anyway, Pete & MJ quietly discuss the impending end of his superhero career, which is totally gonna happen, and share a moment so tender they both become uncomfortable, given their weird \u201csort-of-not-really-dating\u201d status. As they pay for lunch, the radio says there\u2019s a \u201cmajor disturbance\u201d at Avengers mansion, and Peter hopes they took care of Titania & Absorbing Man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What a jerk, indeed. Titania chucks a car at him. He leaps down to engage, but of course, Crusher is there to back her up. She exaggerates her distress and fear to try to get him to kill her foe. Seeing he\u2019s outclassed (Or would be if he wasn\u2019t someone who\u2019d beaten Firelord), he\u2026 retreats into the airport, endangering dozens of people when Crusher tosses a whole truck in there. Great stuff, Spidey, really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That guy with the teeth is Tigershark, I think. He just wanders in and back out of all this. Spider-Man gets a 3rd truck thrown at him this issue as Titania races in to save her man. They square up, but Spidey is exhausted from fighting Creel (Despite having beaten Firelord!). He tries to hide his fatigue, but then Crusher picks up a whole plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Titania & Crusher are now on their way to Avengers 275 to burst into the hospital Hercules is in to try to kill him. Only The Wasp and Ant-Man (Scott Lang) can defend him. And Jan makes no mention of having been to a hotel room looking for them just hours prior. Because why would she? That wouldn\u2019t make a bit of sense. Don\u2019t worry, the Avengers rally, more Avenger show up, and the baddies are defeated by issue 276. It\u2019s a good story. And this definitely is not part of it. But, whatever. The stage is set. Next time we visit this era, it\u2019s the end of The Hobgoblin story. For real. Or is it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It must be around the production of this issue, if not before, that, according to Christopher Priest, Jim Shooter had been pressuring him to fire DeFalco and Frenz for habitual lateness so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[1090,9,11,367,12,163,26,286,122,215,21,55,872,224,321,2,879,124,62],"class_list":["post-16939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-absorbing-man","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-betty-brant","tag-bob-layton","tag-flash-thompson","tag-hobgoblin","tag-joe-robertson","tag-kate-cushing","tag-lance-bannon","tag-lt-keating","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-ned-leeds","tag-nel-yomtov","tag-roderick-kingsley","tag-ron-frenz","tag-spider-man","tag-titania","tag-tom-defalco","tag-wasp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16939","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=16939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16954,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16939\/revisions\/16954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}