{"id":23884,"date":"2024-12-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=23884"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:41:05","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:41:05","slug":"asm-v2-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/12\/04\/asm-v2-43\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM V2 43"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You cannot beat Romita, Jr. drawing someone in the rain. You can\u2019t. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve rambled about it more than once already. You can\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

As someone reared on late 80s\/early 90s comics, MJ is so core to the book for me. She was in every issue. And then I started reading old stuff, and there\u2019s so little Spider-Man she\u2019s not a factor in. Sometimes she was more present than others, but aside from that couple years in Wolfman and then Stern, she\u2019s essential to the book for most of its run. Before being Peter\u2019s wife, she was his best friend. Before that, his longtime girlfriend. Before that, a wildcard in his life that always showed up with a bang. Which is yet another problem with breaking them up. Stands to reason they wouldn\u2019t hang out much once their marriage ends. Losing MJ as a character is just very unfortunate. It looks like Kemp applied a texture to the building in panel one that accidentally got on panel 4, making it look stained. I had to eyeball it to make sure I didn\u2019t actually get something on it, but that\u2019s just how the book looks. Well, anyway, let\u2019s get awkward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Wait, what? This issue saw print just 4 months after PPSM 41<\/a>. If they hadn\u2019t missed 2 months, it woulda been just 2.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

I mean, Ock seems to be in a dramatically different headspace, and also mysteriously not on the run from Johnny Law despite having just been taken into SHIELD custody. But this is exactly the sort of thing I was alluding to before, where continuity seems to stop being terribly important to editorial. JMS wants Doc Ock, he gets him, no matter what you just published in your sister title. Well, things take a turn for the doctor, as that guy leaves the room, tells his compatriots who are from a temp agency that they\u2019re done, and then pumps gas into Ock\u2019s room. Ock gets his arms and begins smashing his way out of there, only to find the walls reinforced with steel, and slowly succumbs. Uh-oh!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Ouch. Well, Doc Ock wakes up in a tube 5 days later, with Mr. Glasses explaining the plot to him. How he came onboard Nexus under false pretenses and a false name and began running it into the ground and making a lot of money off it. His actual position in the company isn\u2019t stated or terribly easy to infer, especially when\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Well, that\u2019s weird. I only vaguely remember this one. May & Peter are discussing MJ\u2019s career, and how she\u2019s about to start shooting a movie in LA. Peter laments how, if they could just see each other in person, he\u2019s sure they could work it out. May says he should just go to California. He says he promised her they\u2019d do something fun during his break from school. And she says she\u2019s never seen anyone make a movie before. So soon they\u2019re on their way to LA, but Peter\u2019s having trouble in heightened post-9\/11 security. First his bag makes him get pulled aside, then they see the Spidey costume under his shirt (Why would you wear it??) and then\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Pretty funny. Guy in the last panel looks oddly like an Erik Larsen guy. Meanwhile, we learn that Mr. Glasses, Nexus and all that was, guess what, in LA, as Mr. Glasses walks into a bank in a long coat and announces his intent to make a deposit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

It\u2019s Dr\u2026 Notctopus! Too many arms. That last caption is the real Ock, thinking he\u2019s about to run out of air, and he has to escape now. He begins calling to his arms, and slowly but surely, they begin to pummel the box they\u2019re in. They smash free, and then smash Ock free. He\u2019s still too drugged to do anything, and commands his arms to take him far away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

MJ\u2019s movie career is right back where it was in SM 23<\/a>. That scummy producer guy sure hits different post-#metoo. JR really had some fun with those guys in the background of panel 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Can our beleaguered couple mend their fences? Will Doc Ock and Doc Not force Spider-Man to get between them? I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll find out next post. Straczynski was pretty committed to trying to do new things and not just lean on the classic villains. And I always appreciate that impulse, but\u2026 it so rarely works out. Maybe we comics readers are just creatures of habit, but everyone wants to see the FF fight Galactus, no matter how rote or increasingly improbable that is. You start trying to add new villains, and once in a great while, you get a Hobgoblin or a Venom, but more often, you get a Cyclone or a Hitman or an Armada or a Typeface. On the other hand, Morlun is appearing in a comic as I type this, 22 years after his debut, so who knows?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This issue also highlights something surprising to me: It\u2019s 2002 and Romita. Jr. has barely ever drawn Doc Ock. A quick mental inventory suggests his only previous Ock pages were in the Official Marvel Try-Out Book. A top-3 all time Spidey artist and he never worked with Doc Ock, that\u2019s insane. In a similar vein, Todd McFarlane only drew Ock on the cover of an issue of Marvel Tales. Thanks to the stupid decision to kill him, Mark Bagley drew Spider-Man for, what, 5+ years and only drew Doc Ock in 2 comics. How\u2019d all these massive Spidey artists miss his best villain?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You cannot beat Romita, Jr. drawing someone in the rain. You can\u2019t. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve rambled about it more than once already. You can\u2019t. As someone reared on late 80s\/early 90s comics,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[1863,35,1982,25,1981,118,21,417,2],"class_list":["post-23884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-amazing-spider-man-vol-2","tag-aunt-may","tag-dan-kemp","tag-doctor-octopus","tag-j-michael-straczynski","tag-john-romita-jr","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-scott-hanna","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23884","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=23884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23934,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23884\/revisions\/23934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}