{"id":17976,"date":"2023-08-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-10T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=17976"},"modified":"2022-03-25T00:15:13","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T04:15:13","slug":"asm-377","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/08\/10\/asm-377\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 377"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This month, regular inker Randy Emberlin tags in and Bob Sharen colors solo. Emberlin\u2019s appearance is rather remarkable in how he\u2019s normalizing Spider-Man. Johnson\u2019s Spider-Man was pretty off-model last issue, but Emberlin, who\u2019s inked both Larsen and Bagley (And will later ink Steven Butler) suddenly has Johnson\u2019s Spider-Man looking much more like theirs on the splash:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More like Larsen in particular. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Somewhat flimsy explanation, especially for a costume with material allegedly so thin his fingers and feet can stick to walls through it, but there you go. Still some great Spidey patter from Grant here, and another fun motion panel from Johnson. This blog is full of evidence of the importance of inkers, and this issue vs. last is still more. Johnson looks good in both, but Emberlin has everything looking tighter and crisper here without drowning him out. Out on the street, Cardiac is done beating up that guy from last issue, when the sounds of the battle above finally catch his attention. Back inside, Spider-Man asks if Stone and his gear are joined at the hip as he webs his cannons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is the most fun these villains have ever been, actually. Cardiac shows up and ruins the vibe, smashing through a window and, strangely, telling the baddies to run, and he\u2019ll catch up with them later \u201cto do business.\u201d Spidey gets a tracer on Styx as they flee. Spidey has no idea what\u2019s going on, and Cardiac zaps the pool, shooting a jet of water up at Spidey on the ceiling and fleeing himself in the chaos. Our waterlogged hero takes off, hoping to catch up to the villains before Cardiac does, but not right now\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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JJJ is a complicated guy. Next page, it\u2019s time to learn Cardiac\u2019s connection to Stone, as well as Styx & Stone\u2019s origin, although I think it might\u2019ve been shown before. Hard to keep track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I feel sure some version of this saw print in the McFarlane era. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that\u2019s weird. Stone sure wasn\u2019t being written or drawn as anything but genuine. Who knows, maybe Cardiac\u2019s the one who\u2019s crazy. At any rate, Spidey later follows his tracer to a van with Styx & Stone in it as they head to the aforementioned facility. Cardiac is waiting for them there, promising Styx salvation. Stone has to knock him out given how irrational he is, and then they put him in a \u201cdiagnostic tube.\u201d And once in there, Cardica begins using to kill him. Why the subterfuge? Why not just shoot his head off? Stone sees what\u2019s happening and Cardiac confesses to it, so\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Guess who alive shows up right then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At least this time Cardiac isn\u2019t fighting for the protection of rich peoples\u2019 cars and whatnot like he was last time. Here you can say what he\u2019s doing is evil. Although\u2026 I mean, far be it from me, but this is a wildly unstable dude who can\u2019t touch anything without killing it and only derives pleasure from doing so. Not sure how humane a life you could give him even if you could keep him from hurting people. Good thing I don\u2019t have to make such choices! The two get to fightin\u2019 all over the facility, allowing Stone to creep out to his van unnoticed and retrieve his weapons. He feels bad for putting Styx in this position, and now knows he can never trust anyone to help them again, so good job, there, Cardiac! He comes back in guns blazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cardia shoots them down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Right-o. Both these ASMs\u2019 letter pages feature people demanding the return of Carnage, and editorial is all-too happy to direct them to Maximum Carnage, the upcoming crossover which was, at the time, the single worst idea ever to come out of the Spider-Office. But that\u2019s getting ahead of ourselves. This month\u2019s Bullpen Bulletins features a column from Tom DeFalco addressing the speculator boom that\u2019s about to derail the whole industry and bankrupt Marvel in particular, talking about how they sell \u201cinvestment guides\u201d for comics, rejecting the notion that Marvel is encouraging speculation with its ever-expanding variety of stupid gimmick covers (Spoilers: they were totally doing this), and imploring collectors to \u201crip open the bags\u201d and actually read the books. This is going to sound really funny next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month, regular inker Randy Emberlin tags in and Bob Sharen colors solo. Emberlin\u2019s appearance is rather remarkable in how he\u2019s normalizing Spider-Man. Johnson\u2019s Spider-Man was pretty off-model last issue, but Emberlin,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[9,35,253,604,259,13,1607,26,21,1290,432,1289,2,1037,344],"class_list":["post-17976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-may","tag-bob-sharen","tag-cardiac","tag-david-michelinie","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-jeff-johnson","tag-joe-robertson","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mary-parker","tag-randy-emberlin","tag-richard-parker","tag-spider-man","tag-steven-grant","tag-styx-stone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17976","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=17976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17977,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17976\/revisions\/17977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}