{"id":16994,"date":"2023-05-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=16994"},"modified":"2022-01-24T17:59:52","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T21:59:52","slug":"sm-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/05\/10\/sm-27\/","title":{"rendered":"SM 27"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the first time in awhile, this era\u2019s books are pretty close together. I skipped this month\u2019s Web because it begins a multi-parter, previous post was this month\u2019s TAC, and I did this month\u2019s ASM last block, so we\u2019re in pretty good shape. This is, itself, the beginning of a 2-part story. Marshall Rogers has done some covers around the Spider-Office in recent years by this time, but here he\u2019s finally doing interiors. He\u2019s mostly known as a 70s & 80s DC artist, with a memorable time on Detective Comics, and it\u2019s always been kinda fascinating to me to see him at Marvel and adapting to this period. Adjectiveless Spider-Man is still a ship with no direction at this point. I guess it really stays that way til Howard Mackie and Tom Lyle become the regular team in issue 44. No small way off. I skipped most of the 2 years between Larsen and that, seeing the lack of direction right on the covers and short of funds. Barring the occasional \u201cmust-see\u201d issue or crossover, I was just down to ASM in this period most months, which was fine given I was trying to follow X-Men and a bunch of Image titles. I know I had given up on Daredevil and Captain America by this point (Cap, incidentally, is a werewolf this month in his own title. Really!). I bought into X-Men, Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor with the big X-Line relaunch of 1991, but by this point was just getting the 2 X-Men books. From Image, I was reading Spawn, of course and WildCATS. I guess that\u2019s it, actually. I would sometimes try something, like Stormwatch, but I only had so many dollars, and I\u2019d wander off. So I guess my comics pull list, at this point, was ASM, X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Spawn and WildCATS. Plus random things here and there. That\u2019s $7 and change a month on comics, I think, in 1992, just shy of 14 at this point. It costs at least $20 to follow that many titles right now, and that\u2019s only if they didn\u2019t ship 2 and 3 issues a month, which they often do, now. No real wonder comics only caters to old men like me now. Who else could afford them? Hey, that\u2019s a big tangent before even opening the comic. It\u2019s Don McGregor, Marshall Rogers, Keith Willams and Sarra Mossoff at the helm for a preachy anti-gun comic. Again? This happens kind of often in Spider-Man comics. This is looking to be even preachier than MTU 140<\/a>–141<\/a> or even TAC 71<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I mean, I totally agree with basically any message of this kind. But the thicker you lay it on, the less appealing it is. The sad thing is, things only get worse as each of these comics comes out., and have only gotten worse since. Spider-Man posts up on a water tower and ruminates about how much he loves them as he stakes out the\u2026 interestingly named\u2026 Nutcase Walker, Skull\u2019n\u2019Bones Adams, and\u2026 Rags\u2026 who a crack-dealing 12-year old told named Greg is meeting for a gun deal. Peter Parker heard him talking about this in a deli, and has gone to investigate. As a true Don McGregor comic, it\u2019s covered in text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Instead of watching what Spider-Man\u2019s up to, we follow that weird little kid to school. The text tells us he\u2019s routinely offered drugs there as some kids chase him into a stairwell and rough him up for his lunch money. Just another fun time Spider-Man comic! Speaking of, we then cut back to our title character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey\u2019s preparing to head down there when he\u2019s spotted by \u201cRags,\u201d who starts shooting at him. Spidey webs his gun and quotes the movie Shane as he swings the gun around and clocks Rags in the face with it. A nearby cop hears the shooting and tries to do something, but \u201cSkull\u2019n\u2019Bones\u201d gets a line on him. Cut to that Elmo kid getting in trouble for being out of class because he was mugged, but to Spider-Man coming for \u201cNutcase.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bone guy keeps shooting at the cop while Spider-Man webs Nutcase\u2019s gun and makes it explode in his hand when he tries to shoot again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We have fun around here. That Elmo kid seems like he\u2019s got some undiagnosed issues. Skullguy and the cop manage to hit each other, but Skullguy only gets it in the leg, and gets up to advance on his prey. Nutcase, meanwhile, slices the side of Greg\u2019s head as Spider-Man quietly webs a passing bus, then webs Nutcase\u2019s boot, tangles the lines, and sends him zooming down the street. A bit brutal for Spider-Man, but circumstances, I guess. Spidey goes and gets him before he can be too hurt as Elmo stumbles on one of the dropped weapons and Skull is about to execute the cop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey lets the cop know Nutcase is webbed up down the way, then swings off to make sure no one picked up that guy that Elmo has now picked up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We\u2019re in for it now. McGregor\u2019s run on Black Panther is revered, but when I finally read it, I found it absurdly wordy and full of dopey character with names like Baron Macabre and Lord Karnaj and Salamander K\u2019Ruel, and it made Wakanda seem far more primitive than Kirby and Lee had it. It wasn\u2019t my favorite, and this follows suit. Marshall\u2019s drawing a really slick Spidey, tho. It\u2019s a shame most fans of the period (And certainly young me among them) wouldn\u2019t appreciate it because it didn\u2019t look like flashy Image art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time in awhile, this era\u2019s books are pretty close together. I skipped this month\u2019s Web because it begins a multi-parter, previous post was this month\u2019s TAC, and I did…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[1566,269,1567,1568,2],"class_list":["post-16994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-don-mcgregor","tag-keith-williams","tag-marshall-rogers","tag-sarra-mossoff","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16994","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=16994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17005,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16994\/revisions\/17005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}