{"id":21195,"date":"2024-05-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-22T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=21195"},"modified":"2022-09-05T16:25:38","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T20:25:38","slug":"asm-book-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/05\/22\/asm-book-record\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM Book & Record"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don\u2019t actually know where this came from. I know I got it as an adult. I suspect my Mom gave it to me, having picked it up at a thrift store or garage sale or something and thought I\u2019d like it. I didn\u2019t even get the record! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This book is really interesting to me, because the art is not credited and seems all over the place. I\u2019ve read online that the actual record credits the writing to one \u201cArthur Korb,\u201d but no artist is credited anywhere. Almost all the Spider-Men in it seem traced from a real comic. The Dragon Men often look like they\u2019re drawn by Gil Kane, but just as often don\u2019t, which makes me think the ones that do were traced from his Lizard in ASM 102. It\u2019s a weird, weird deal. We open on a group of kids identified as \u201cbeginner students in astronomy\u201d watching a meteor shower that looks like it landed nearby. 2 of the kids have snuck off with other things in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The next day, JJJ is furious they don\u2019t have pictures of dragon men and tasks Peter with finding some. He\u2019s just walkin\u2019 down the street thinking he doesn\u2019t believe in dragon men when MJ runs into him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know who drew this, but I\u2019d bet a dollar Vince Colletta inked it. I\u2019m not gonna bother pointing out all the swipes or I\u2019d be here all night, but suffice it to say, quite possibly every single Spider-Man in this book is swiped from Ditko, Romita or Kane. Spidey soon finds a big underground chamber full of the dragon men he doesn\u2019t believe in, and is astonished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ok, I just had to confirm my suspicions, and yeah, the Draco in panel 3 is straight up The Lizard from ASM 102<\/a>. Liz was even shaking his fist so his hand would be right there to copy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Draco plans to make the world declare him its ruler after this. You know, real book\u2019n\u2019record stuff. Spidey tricks him into fighting so he can get away from the controls, then webs them up so the machine can\u2019t fire. But as the rest of the dragon men come after him, he decides to flee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I mean, look, that\u2019s the Ditko Spidey I caught Ron Frenz copying. The whole book\u2019s like this. Later that night, the newspaper reveals the dragon men were robots. Spider-Man\u2019s surprised by this, and swings up onto the Empire State Building to think about it for awhile. And wouldn\u2019t you know Draco is up there for some reason?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s kind of jarring to see this book switch from instantly recognizable Romita, Kane and Ditko Spider-Men from panel to panel. The two of them scrap for a bit, and then poison fumes from Draco\u2019s fire breath almost kill our hero (Even here, gas is his worst enemy), but Draco charges at him, and when Spider-Man dodges, he falls off the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Well, that wasn\u2019t the most intellectually stimulating comic I\u2019ve read. But I owned it, so I read it. It\u2019s in my contract. Now, odds & ends will continue with something that\u2019s not actually comics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t actually know where this came from. I know I got it as an adult. I suspect my Mom gave it to me, having picked it up at a thrift store…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1848,1847,13,21,2],"class_list":["post-21195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1970s","tag-arthur-korb","tag-dragon-men","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21195","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=21195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21196,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21195\/revisions\/21196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}