{"id":21913,"date":"2024-07-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-05T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=21913"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:44:06","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:44:06","slug":"asm-v2-annual-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/07\/05\/asm-v2-annual-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM V2 Annual 1999"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is the book that will be about Betty investigating Senator Ward? I guess we\u2019ll see. One I\u2019ve never read before. You see the word \u201cBuscema\u201d on the cover of a Spider-Man comic, and you think you know what it means. But you\u2019re wrong, it\u2019s Big John Buscema! His first work on ASM in 29 years! Even more surprising, no inker is credited. He\u2019s 70 or 71 drawing this, and has seemed to rely heavily on inkers for much of his latter career, mostly just doing layouts, most often for Tom Palmer. This is kind of incredible, honestly. Steve Bucellato colors. I\u2019m suddenly excited to read this. It really hits the ground running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the requisite 2-page spread, Peter suits up and swings out to find a giant green & orange vortex spinning in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s John Buscema all the way. Betty recoils from Spider-Man, thinking he\u2019s part of it, and then Spidey finds he\u2019s been glued to the floor by Trapster. Trappy exposits about how he broke out of jail after turning himself in in SM 93<\/a>, then Wizard reveals himself to be Trappy\u2019s boss, as usual. He has Trapster put some of his flying discs on Spider-Man and Betty and chuck them into the vortex. As they go in, Wizard says now they wait and learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey wakes up with the lance of the knight on the cover poking him in the chest. Spider-Man tries to be diplomatic, but the knight isn\u2019t having it, and when our hero shatters his lance, he calls in a bunch of other guys. But then some other people show up, and they\u2019re a lot weirder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They say that, despite a whole lifetime in the biz, John Buscema didn\u2019t much care for superheroes. He had a long association with Conan and other fantasy things. Maybe this is Mackie trying to make him happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, the green people take Spidey to the castle, which is surrounded by a moat of fire with dragons in it. Pretty tuff, but not for a guy with webs. Spidey makes a tightrope for everyone to walk, but then some beam zaps it loose, and now everyone\u2019s falling into the fire, which is a pretty good bit of peril to put our hero in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The vortex begins to grow, and Ward flees, while Wiz lets it take him, eager to see what\u2019s inside. Ward gets in his car and has his driver speed odd, while answering to a mysterious panel of people on a screen. They say if he fails, he will be unmade as expediently as he was made. I guess that\u2019s explaining why no one\u2019s got any dirt on him. Meanwhile, Spider-Man\u2019s just found Betty, who says he should be stopping HIM instead of saving her. She has no time to explain, and tries to lead Spidey through the battle raging outside when they\u2019re stopped by the knight from earlier. They start to scrap, but\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Betty\u2019s got moxie in this one. Cut to Ward on a plane, telling his bosses it\u2019s almost over, cut to Spidey, Betty & Ranger stuck in some kinda metallic harnesses with Trapster and Wizard looming over them. Wiz reveals this is all a plan to open a portal to the Negative Zone. His reality warping whatever field is alleged to make it safe, since the anti-matter universe touching ours should be catastrophic. Wiz says bringing the untapped energies of the Zone to Earth will prove he\u2019s an even bigger genius than Reed Richards is for discovering it (Wait \u2018til they both find out the Blue Marvel beat Reed to it by decades later). Ranger does some weird \u201ctrance\u201d that allows him to free his hand and make Trappy shoot solvent at Spider-Man\u2019s bonds, freeing him to return the favor. But Ranger is now too weak to help, and says Spidey has to stop Wizard alone. Shouldn\u2019t be too hard. Trapster stands in his way, but Trapster is a chump, and despite the preposterous events of ASM 5<\/a> showing him fighting Spidey and the whole FF, Spider-Man takes him down in less than 2 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why on Earth would they mindwipe Betty? She was handling that fake reality better than Spider-Man! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So many mystery figures in this period. Maybe someone will finally be revealed as something soon. But certainly not next issue! A treat to see Buscema going crazy this late in his career, tho. Very cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the book that will be about Betty investigating Senator Ward? I guess we\u2019ll see. One I\u2019ve never read before. You see the word \u201cBuscema\u201d on the cover of a Spider-Man…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[1863,225,11,415,810,1873,1872,2,994,244,1600],"class_list":["post-21913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-amazing-spider-man-vol-2","tag-annual","tag-betty-brant","tag-howard-mackie","tag-john-buscema","tag-ranger","tag-senator-ward","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-bucellato","tag-trapster","tag-wizard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21913","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=21913"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21927,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21913\/revisions\/21927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}