{"id":20981,"date":"2024-04-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=20981"},"modified":"2022-08-23T20:20:31","modified_gmt":"2022-08-24T00:20:31","slug":"made-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/04\/19\/made-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Made Men"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don\u2019t really know why this exists. I don\u2019t really know why I bought it. It\u2019s $6! But here we are. Howard Mackie obviously loves the crime side of Spider-Man and the Marvel U, and here, he gets to really dig into it, in more than one way. I can\u2019t imagine there was much expectation that the average teenager would be jazzed about something like this. I bought it, tho, so I guess it worked. Norman Felchle draws and John Kalisz colors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yet another square-bound one-shot that will be hard to photograph. Maybe they just wanted to do this format once a year or something, this following Spider-Man\/Kingpin: To The Death<\/a>. Rather bigger selling points in that, tho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, yeah, Urich is gonna write about the mob guys. But that\u2019s only part of the book, as it switches to  narrative following the 2 boys in photos on page 1, who see Kingpin brutally beating and seemingly killing Spider-Man and Daredevil in an alleyway before straightening his suit and noticing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As the bartender breaks up their fight, we learn it\u2019s Paul\u2019s bachelor party, and Tommy only came to make their wives happy, and leaves. The next page is a sort of profile of Hammerhead, framed as Ben telling the story of his mentor getting too close to a murder Hammerhead committed and getting killed himself. It also includes Hammy\u2019s origin and his deal. So we\u2019re gonna have those in amongst the narrative. Then we\u2019re off to JFK, where a private plane lands and Kingpin comes out. As he has who knows how many times before and since, after losing everything and fleeing the country, Fisk is back to reclaim his title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then Fisk\u2019s car explodes, and Hammerhead and some goons appear to try to discourage him from his plans. Hammerhead says he\u2019s got enough trouble with Fortunato, and this town already has too many bosses. Fisk tells Hammy he should join his new organization, but he\u2019s not into that. Before he can try to shoot Fisk, tho, Tommy smashes his car through the fence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ben Urich breaks in with a profile on Fortunato, and how when he was trying to take his mentor\u2019s seat at the crime desk at The Bugle, he went to Europe on vacation in search of the mythic crime boss, and soon found himself pinned to his hotel bed by one Fortunato\u2019s wolves. But then we\u2019re off to the story again, and it\u2019s the next day, and Paul is revealed to be an undercover FBI agent being fitted with a wire. That doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019ll go well, and he says so, but is overruled. He throws the wire in an alley trashcan on his way, and then shows up for his new job as Fortunato\u2019s driver, where he is immediately searched for a wire. Then Ben Urich tells us about how Silvermane was a legend even when Ben was a kid, and how he managed to talk his way into a sit-down with him that made his career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tommy and Rat find Punisher raiding Silvermane\u2019s place. But even that doesn\u2019t scare Tommy off, and he manages to shoot Silvermane in the shoulder while saying Kingpin sends his regards. Very classic material. Then Ben wants to talk about The Rose\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What is Ben writing, anyway? A memoir? Certainly not a Bugle article. It\u2019s funny that The Rose he writes about isn\u2019t The Rose anymore, but he wouldn\u2019t know that (Or may he would, I don\u2019t know what kinda contacts he has).  Well, back in the story, Paul and Tommy have been forced to sit down to dinner by their wives, because Paul & Joanne are getting married and she has the other 2 in the wedding. And it\u2019s going well until some guys show up to kill Paul. Paul & Tommy fight their families\u2019 way out of there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Perhaps worth mentioning that Ben was created in the pages of Daredevil by Frank Miller. Not the most subtle tribute. Ben refers to the classic Born Again storyline, which, I will never forget, Tom DeFalco awkwardly butted into in ASM 277<\/a>. But Kingpin\u2019s been reinstalled as big boss (In ASM 288<\/a>) and deposed (In DD 300) at least once since then. Seems like if Ben had anything to worry about, it would\u2019ve happened already. Well, anyway, Fisk takes a midnight meeting with Norman Osborn. The Green Goblin was just a two-bit wannabe tough guy back when he was trying to make inroads in the mob in the 60s, but now he\u2019s been retconned into this bigshot international man of mystery, and warns Fisk that he\u2019s tearing the city apart by coming back, and that Norman \u201cwon\u2019t allow it.\u201d Quite a thing to say to Wilson Fisk. This leads to Ben\u2019s page on Norman, which is just a handwritten note saying he can\u2019t go through this again. \u201cNOT FOR PUBLICATION.\u201d So what is this? Some kinda Sunday insert on the mob?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We\u2019re told all this violence isn\u2019t really touching any civilians, and superheroes aren\u2019t getting involved, and so it just keeps escalating, with images to match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That\u2019s our old pal Caesar Cicero. Fortunato sics his wolf on him, and is seconds away from having him killed when a torpedo hits the boat. As everyone flees the sinking ship, Fortunato orders Fisk killed, and Cicero says the truce is over and the bloodshed up to now has been nothing compared to what\u2019s coming. Then we learn it was Osborn\u2019s goon who sunk the boat, and Osborn  intentionally had it done so everyone would survive to kill each other later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ya know, \u201cFalcone\u201d is a mob name with a lot of weight in the Batman comics. Kind of a weird choice to use it here. Like when, a year from this, famed Superman writer Dan Jurgens will create a character in his Thor run named \u201cOlson.\u201d Slightly different spelling, but still kind of distracting. Meanwhile, Kingpin\u2019s in his building, still wrecked from the battle Mackie wrote there in Web 86<\/a>, which is a nice touch, telling Tommy how things used to be, and how he will see it all restored. They hear an explosion, and Tommy cautions they should move to safety, but Fisk says war can be a cleansing thing, and that his opponents are as likely to go after each other as him, and that long before they can reach him, the superheroes will get involved. As he says this, we see the fighting in the street is interrupted by Spider-Man, Daredevil, Punisher & Captain America, right on cue. Kingpin says eventually, his foes will deplete their resources and he\u2019ll swoop in to establish peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kingpin, of course, betrays Tommy, saying he hesitated and he\u2019s weak, zapping him with his electrified cane, then leaves. Paulie is alive, and Tommy is able to tell him he tried not to shoot to kill, and he was right all along about Fisk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A pretty cool book! Again, I really doubt the average superhero lovin\u2019 teenager was geeked to read this crime noir thing, but pretty cool. I wonder how I reacted to it. As is distressingly common, I don\u2019t remember. Mackie proves time and again to be the best Spider-Writer of this period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t really know why this exists. I don\u2019t really know why I bought it. It\u2019s $6! But here we are. Howard Mackie obviously loves the crime side of Spider-Man and the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[113,947,60,58,1707,615,81,415,442,100,1841,39,171,316,2,325],"class_list":["post-20981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-ben-urich","tag-caesar-cicero","tag-captain-america","tag-daredevil","tag-doris-urich","tag-fortunato","tag-hammerhead","tag-howard-mackie","tag-john-kalisz","tag-kingpin","tag-norman-felchle","tag-norman-osborn","tag-punisher","tag-silvermane","tag-spider-man","tag-the-rose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20981","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=20981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21002,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20981\/revisions\/21002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}