{"id":25613,"date":"2025-03-13T00:53:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T04:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=25613"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:39:42","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:39:42","slug":"asm-v2-55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/03\/13\/asm-v2-55\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM V2 55"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve put myself in this weird position where, when I finish a batch of USM issues, I don\u2019t want to go back to ASM, and when I finish a batch of ASM issues, I don\u2019t want to go back to USM. Maybe doing it this way was a mistake, I dunno. I\u2019m pretty engrossed in both universes. At any rate, we\u2019re back in the OG world, and welcomed home by this hideous Mike Deodato, Jr. cover that looks like it took at least 10 entire minutes to draw. Thankfully, inside (For now), it\u2019s our stalwart art team of JRJR, Scott Hanna and Dan Kemp. For writing, it\u2019s a bit different. At this time, J. Michael Strackzynski had, like, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 or something called Fiona Avery. And, presumably when JMS was feeling the deadline crunch, he\u2019d sub out some of his ASMs to Avery. Certainly not the first or last instance of blatant nepotism in comics, but anytime an unvetted person is given the keys to a major title, it feels weird. More recently, Marvel shouted from the heavens that Hollywood bigshot JJ Abrams was doing a Spider-Man comic. And then they more quietly said it was him and his son writing. And then they even more quietly said it was mostly just his son, a guy with no writing credits, using his dad\u2019s name to write a frankly terrible alternate future story that landed with a wet thud. Aces. Anyway, this issue claims a plot by JMS and Avery and a script by Avery, a very old school writing arrangement. We open with Peter walking to school and catching a kid about to ditch class with some friends who aren\u2019t in school anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If they had just put Stackzynski\u2019s name on this, I would have been fooled. Peter goes to see a secretary and gets Melissa\u2019s file. He finds out she\u2019s in remedial reading, and doesn\u2019t buy it, having clocked her as a smart kid. The secretary chides him for \u201ctaking in another stray.\u201d He finds out she had to drop Honors bio and take a PE credit, and we find her sitting in the gym with her crutches, talking about how she wanted to just skip this, but she got caught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From my vantage point, writing this in 2023, it\u2019s hard to remember when Peter Parker actually went to a job in comics. Things are so upside down right now. This is nice. Peter is right about Melissa, who proves a great student and quick learner. Then he talks her into letting him carry her stuff home for her, which takes an hour, but he\u2019s growing on her. Unfortunately for them, they\u2019re in a superhero comic, so they catch some guys robbing the place. Peter doesn\u2019t know how to get away and spider up, so\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wacky. Peter meets Melissa\u2019s mom, who is clearly into him, and since Peter almost never wears a wedding band in these comics, she\u2019s disappointed to learn he\u2019s taken. Then he finds out Melissa\u2019s brother is in jail, caught \u201callegedly\u201d stealing a car by the creep Spider-Man. Melissa notes Peter\u2019s reaction to her brother\u2019s situation, and rightly intuits he knows something about it. And while he really is off to meet his wife for dinner, like he said, he\u2019s thinking about the brother, Jack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aaaah, between the USM block and the Tangled Web block, how I\u2019ve missed primo John, Jr. Spider-Man. He proceeds to fight all these guys, but doesn\u2019t want to, trying to talk to them the entire time. He seems to be trying to say he won\u2019t bother them if they don\u2019t prey on people who can\u2019t defend themselves, which\u2026 seems very out of character. But they\u2019re not listening, anyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spider-Man Vs. The Unfortunate But Predictable Side Effects of Late Stage Capitalism! Let\u2019s see him punch his way outta this one! The countdown to the end of John Romita, Jr.\u2019s \u2026 I wanna say 4th run on Spider-Man (ASM, PPSM, PPSM, Vol. 2, ASM, vol. 2, is what I\u2019m thinking, but I\u2019m not sure you can make such a hard distinction between the last 3) has begun. And when he goes, it\u2019s basically all downhill from there\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve put myself in this weird position where, when I finish a batch of USM issues, I don\u2019t want to go back to ASM, and when I finish a batch of ASM…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[1863,1982,1983,2085,1981,118,21,417,2],"class_list":["post-25613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-amazing-spider-man-vol-2","tag-dan-kemp","tag-ezekiel","tag-fiona-avery","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\/25613","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=25613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25641,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25613\/revisions\/25641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}