{"id":20366,"date":"2024-03-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=20366"},"modified":"2022-07-26T18:51:07","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T22:51:07","slug":"asm-388","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/03\/12\/asm-388\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 388"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Annuals, of course, are 64 pages, and expected to feature 3-4 stories. Big deal anniversary issues are usually oversized, maybe double-sized\/annual sized, and contain several stories, with at least the excuse of trying to celebrate a milestone. This one\u2019s double-sized with multiple stories for no obvious reason except to get more money out of me, the broke teenager, and I did not appreciate it. If it was oversized to give a bigger ending to this story, ok, that\u2019s one thing. But it\u2019s not. It\u2019s got 2 unrelated back-up stories after the climax of the parents event AND a shiny foil cover. Just 90s bloat in its purest form. So very annoying. Well, here we are. The absolutely obvious, inevitable end of the parents story. The how and the why may not be obvious, but the result? Only one way this was gonna go. Well, as we begin, Vulture is throwing a tantrum at the evil Dr. Sanchez, and of course, that turns out to be\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Again, obviously. I must say, if you\u2019re trying to create a monumental event in Spider-Man\u2019s life, teaming up his first 2 villains is a nice way to do it. They may not be the most popular or even have the most complex history with Spider-Man, but they\u2019re the OGs. Speaking of Spider-Man, Peter is telling MJ he revealed his secret to his parents while also recapping him turning old and her getting shot at to her. She says some trite and supportive things, the sort of thing she\u2019s been reduced to in this period, and then he\u2019s off to check on Aunt May, recapping his suspicion that she has mental problems. Why\u2019d he come all the way back to Manhattan only to turn around and go back? Meanwhile, some exposition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Uh, no? What sense does that make? This story is not great, man. Even as a dumb kid, I wasn\u2019t being sold. I mean, what Chameleon\u2019s deal, even? \u201cI\u2019ve been researching LIFE ENERGY for REASONS and also plotting to be a mob boss! For reasons!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oooof! Peter is obviously just arriving in that first panel, and yet the conversation is underway, then the word balloon going to the wrong person, and then the instant reversal. Shame on you, Peter Parker. Well, now things are in place for this to get weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Beep boop. I don\u2019t see why they\u2019d suddenly talk like that once they got Order 66 or whatever. Well, it turns out Peter just bounced on his parents. I mean, even if you suddenly agree with May, wouldn\u2019t you go back and see what\u2019s what? But apparently he took May to MJ and then became Spider-Man, instead. This issue feels so choppy. He got a line on that traced license plate, and it leads him to the villains\u2019 secret hideout. He sneaks into some air ducts and gets into a snooping position just in time to see Chameleon press a button and tell Vulture he\u2019s about to witness \u201cThe Chameleon\u2019s greatest triumph!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, rrrrrright off the bat, that seems insane. Why would Chameleon make fake parents for some photographer to try to suss out Spider-Man\u2019s secret? A tenuous connection at best to go to such trouble. And while an explanation is coming, it is in no way satisfying. Also, unsurprisingly, a completely different read on the Chameleon\/Kraven relationship than DeMatteis\u2019. No miserable abuse and whatnot detected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THE LICENSE PLATE THING??? Spider-Man dives into Chameleon\u2019s goons so he\u2019ll have time to say artificial life is experimental and unpredictable as a way to justify \u201cMary\u2019s\u201d behavior. Then he reveals he\u2019s got a remote control for the robots, and has Richard-Bot smash Mary-bot into a wall, then says it\u2019s time to reveal the surprise. Oh boy, more surprises. I bet it\u2019s very surprising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wow, the killer robot turns into a killer robot, that IS a surprise! This stuff sucks. The psychological aspect of having to fight, what, a guy you know\u2019s fake dad? The way they\u2019re playing Chameleon doesn\u2019t hold up to a second of scrutiny. He both knows and does not know who Spider-Man is at all times in this issue. Spider-Man thinks he can\u2019t fight his own father. Which is a weird thing to say about a robot with half a simulation of what your dad\u2019s face would look like aged up on it, but we\u2019re well past trying to make this a logical or satisfying experience. Richard-bot starts morphing and stretching his limbs, much like Sandman does, and Spidey just dodges around. Vulture decides to get in on the act, but gets brained by Mary-bot with a lead pipe, which absolutely, 100% should execute a guy his age, but of course, does not. He doesn\u2019t even fall down, he turns around and belts her across the room. This, of course, enrages Spider-Man and diverts his attention. He rescues his \u201cmom\u201d from Vulture, leaving himself open to an attack from Richard-bot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It doesn\u2019t want to hurt her, ding dong, it wants to hurt you. Chameleon sees his goons fleeing and his Richard-bot controller smashed and decides to run for it. He says Spider-Man will pay for this, etc. With Vulture knocked out, that just leaves Spider-Man and his \u201cparents.\u201d He continues to find it difficult to fight half his dad\u2019s face, and then realizes he can maybe beat it til it\u2019s shaped differently, which is hilarious, and then robo-dad pulls a \u201cI\u2019m not really in control, help me!\u201d gag. Tale as old as time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mary-bot is the real MVP of this fight. Look, man, ok, you\u2019re an orphan who\u2019s magically gotten your folks back, every orphan\u2019s secret dream, and then the rug gets pulled out from under you. Traumatic, no question. But to be like \u201cI can\u2019t fight my own dad!\u201d when discussing this goofy Stretch Armstrong thing is just stupid. To eulogize that same goofy Stretch Armstrong thing is just stupid. And speaking of stupid\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Forever, or until Sensational Spider-Man 18<\/a>, whichever comes first. Spidey flies into a rage and delivers Vulture a beating that for sure would\u2019ve killed him 1 minute prior (I mean, I guess), until his Mom calls out for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Really twisting the knife there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An opportunity for a line-wide crossover? You know they love it! And that means it\u2019ll somehow take 4 issues for Spider-Man to find Chameleon, and if you think those are gonna be satisfying, you\u2019re crazy. So ends the parents nonsense. So begins Peter\u2019s decent into madness and stupidity that we picked up way back in 2019. In the oft-referenced Comic Book Creators On Spider-Man, Michelinie says his last 2 years on ASM were not his favorite. That Jim Salicrup had given him a lot of freedom, but once Danny Fingroth came in as editor, he was driving the stories more. That, in fact, it was Danny\u2019s idea to bring back Peter\u2019s parents, but that Danny himself didn\u2019t know whether they were real, and if not, what they really were. Michelinie said he felt like he was writing Danny\u2019s stories, not his own, and that he just had to tread water on the parents story until a resolution was handed down. And you can really feel that reading the issues. The lack of any real development for their characters, the lack of any meaningful plots around them, and then them going and getting jobs for no reason right before being activated as killer robots. It doesn\u2019t add up to much, and it sounds like it wasn\u2019t Michelinie\u2019s fault. No wonder he chose now to get out. And good for him, avoiding having the stink of the clone saga on him. Fingroth has a lot to answer for from his time on these books. But this particular book isn\u2019t over. We have to do some totally, TOTALLY unrelated shorts now. First up, Michelinie is joined by Ron Lim on breakdowns, Tom Palmer on finishes and John Kalisz on colors to tell Venom\u2019s point of view on his first \u201cappearances\u201d in Web 18<\/a> & 24<\/a>, when he was harassing Spider-Man but hadn\u2019t yet revealed himself. Venom is thrashing around his living space, already the 1994 Venom with the stupid tongue and all, yelling \u201chow do we kill him?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He finds a file from a story he did on a vet whose paperwork was lost, and so was denied help when he returned from war, and decides that knows a thing or two about being beat down by life and goes to see him. Eddie Brock is already well be-mulleted, Lim just drawing the 1994 version of him, too. After some discussion, this guy, Chuck Stone (Chuck Stone!) agrees to help Eddie get revenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boy, that\u2019s some hair. He goes back to Chuck for more advice, and is told he has to be a machine with only one mission in life, a lesson he sure took to heart. He gives Chuck a wad of money, and implies that he should go get \u201csomething he needs.\u201d Chuck has told Eddie that he\u2019s fighting drug addiction, so I\u2019m sure that won\u2019t come to anything! Then we get Venom\u2019s view of the 2nd incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He sneaks out of the hotel, and then spends a train ride back to Manhattan ranting to his other about how from now on, they\u2019re one, Eddie Brock is dead, long live Venom, etc. then he goes to see his friend Chuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s funny how many prequels Michelinie did for such a one-note villain. And then, in 2022, he came back to do a brand-new one, a miniseries called Venom: Lethal Protector, just like his first one, in which we see still more of Venom\u2019s early days. It doesn\u2019t seem like the most fertile soil, and yet he just kept going back to it. The final story is about 2 other Michelinie creations, Cardiac and Chance, fighting each other, and it doesn\u2019t really matter, so I\u2019m not covering it. So, next post, time for \u201cPursuit.\u201d But David Michelinie won\u2019t be here for the ASM part. This is his last issue, which, one assumes is why he wanted to revisit Venom, Cardiac & Chance in it. Gave himself a little retrospective.  Long run. He wrote almost 100 issues. I guess 89, if I remember right (290-387 minus 3 issues early on for Kraven\u2019s Last Hunt and Maddog Ward and that 6-issue Round Robin thing). At the time, he easily took the title for 2nd longest run after Stan. Now he\u2019s like 3rd or 4th. And as the co-creator of Venom and Carnage, he really secured his place in Spider-Man history.  When you see those retro t-shirts from Target or whatever with a gaggle of characters on them, the only one considered famous enough to be there created after the 70s is Venom. That\u2019s a legacy. And yet, I\u2019m not sure how well this run is remembered. The early Venom stuff definitely still gets talked about, from his intro to the island fight. Having the good fortune to be the writer on the book that turned Todd McFarlane into a superstar meant anything he wrote would\u2019ve been remembered in that period, but he did some fun things regardless. Carnage\u2026 Carnage is more famous as an idea than for any of his stories in this time. But as for the rest of it, I\u2019m not sure it really stuck. The early marriage stuff was big for those of us reading then, but not so much now. The fake parents were a huge deal at the time, but then the Clone Saga came along and kind of took all the air out of the room; I don\u2019t know if people even remember the parents were sort of the inciting event. And Styx & Stone and Cardiac and such\u2026 I don\u2019t know. But however well it\u2019s regarded, it was \u201cmine.\u201d I came in pretty early in his run and stayed til the end, and it really informed how I think of the book and the character to this day. I\u2019ll always have a fondness for it that I don\u2019t quite for any other period, even ones Dave himself would probably say are superior. So I\u2019m very grateful to him and his collaborators down the years for keeping young me so engaged and entertained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Annuals, of course, are 64 pages, and expected to feature 3-4 stories. Big deal anniversary issues are usually oversized, maybe double-sized\/annual sized, and contain several stories, with at least the excuse of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[9,35,253,177,259,442,339,21,1290,432,1289,441,2,227,98],"class_list":["post-20366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-may","tag-bob-sharen","tag-chameleon","tag-david-michelinie","tag-john-kalisz","tag-mark-bagley","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mary-parker","tag-randy-emberlin","tag-richard-parker","tag-ron-lim","tag-spider-man","tag-tom-palmer","tag-vulture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20366","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=20366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20396,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20366\/revisions\/20396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}