{"id":27718,"date":"2025-07-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=27718"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:38:21","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:38:21","slug":"mksm-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/07\/23\/mksm-13\/","title":{"rendered":"MKSM 13"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s that new logo type over here, too. I swore not to buy this. I really did. I think I even said something about it writing for MKSM 12. But\u2026 That made this arc of this title the only issues I was missing from any of these series until\u2026 well, later. Just 6 issues not in my boxes. And, what, like I don\u2019t already have a ton of material, much of it from around this time, I\u2019d just as soon rather not? What\u2019s 6 more bad comics? This is the idiot mentality of the comic book collector. So, when I was ordering some other stuff, I went ahead and got them. The thing is, I just know they\u2019re going to be a miserable experience. Reginald Hudlin came to comics from Hollywood, Bill Jemas\u2019 dream come true. The director of such movies as House Party, Boomerang and The Great White Hype, he was obviously a natural fit for superhero comics. They brought him in to do Black Panther a year and a half after the always critically acclaimed but never commercially successful Panther run by Christopher Priest, Et al., finally closed up shop. Priest revolutionized the character, taking him back to first principles as the smartest man in any room, as Kirby and Lee had originally portrayed him, and created such familiar-to-movie-goers names as Okoye, Nakia, Zuri and Everett K. Ross along the way. Hudlin also has points on the board in the MCU, having created Shuri and reconceptualized Priest\u2019s Dora Milaje as a military force (With John Romita, Jr. providing the designs as he drew the first arc. The guy\u2019s everywhere). But his Panther run was terrible, top to bottom. Needless retcons, meandering, choppy plots that made it clear he\u2019d never written for comics, and a tone like he was making fun of the character and comics in general much of the time. But he would stay on the book for years, somehow, never once turning in a story any better than \u201cok,\u201d usually downright awful\u2026 Until his final project, a miniseries teaming Cap with the Panther\u2019s grandfather in WWII drawn by the great Denys Cowan called Flags Of Our Fathers that, for some reason, was great. It was like someone else wrote it, it was night and day different. I still don\u2019t get it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my part, I bailed on his Black Panther the minute Romita was done (#6), and didn\u2019t read the rest of Hudlin\u2019s run til more than a decade later, digitally. And that first arc with Johnny wasn\u2019t even over when Hudlin got his brief stint writing this title alongside it. And given the amateur hour quality and seeming disrespect for the material on almost every page of those 6 issues of Black Panther, well, I did not want to see this guy\u2019s Spider-Man, to put it mildly. But\u2026 he wrote part of the big, terrible crossover looming in the near future of this blog. So that left just 6 issues of this title that I didn\u2019t have, like I said.\u00a0 Thus\u2026 here we are. I could not possibly be less excited. Not least because Hudlin is paired here with Billy Tan, an up and coming artist at Marvel who, frankly, was not very good. Not ready for primetime. How he winds up drawing New Avengers is completely beyond me, but that\u2019s years in the future. So! Sure-to-be-bad writing AND bad art? And I bought these comics, anyway? Like, recently, like weeks before I\u2019m typing this? The real villain of this story is me. This run has covers by Steve McNiven to hide the art inside from unsuspecting buyers. Inside, John Sibal inks and Avalon Studios handles color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The bald guy shrank 2 feet between panels. Off to a rollicking start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I mean come on. Yuck. But wait, let\u2019s go see Peter Parker, high school teacher, at his job\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026where he suddenly has a MULLET and a weirdly feminine face and all the high school students are now little kids! What are we doing??? Peter reads in the paper that Absorbing Man got loose on his way home to Avengers Tower. Having moved in in ASM 519 a few weeks before this came out, they can just assume you read that and not spend much time explaining. He finds May and Jarvis hanging out, Tan having no idea what May\u2019s hair is supposed to look like now, and is made nervous by them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Everyone\u2019s talking about polishing Iron Man\u2019s helmet these days. Look at this art! Every visible part of MJ is a different proportion in that last panel, and none of it matches Wolverine! Sheesh, man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boy oh boy. I bought this on purpose. This comic sucks so bad! Billy Tan comes to Marvel from Marc Silvestri\u2019s Top Cow imprint at Image, giving him something of the same lineage as Talent Caldwell. Both guys who were working in the general house style of that company, and you can see it. Caldwell is a lot better, tho. This entire scene is so lame and cliche and stupid, but also awkwardly paced, like Hudlin\u2019s Black Panther. This is only part 1 of 6! I\u2019m not even halfway through it! Uuuugh, the next day, Peter catches the subway to work when the car slams to a halt because Absorbing Man is tearing things up nearby for some reason. He was in a desert at the top of this issue, and now he\u2019s in New York. I didn\u2019t know he could teleport. So, Peter ducks out of and\u2026 I guess under the train? The images make no sense. And he loses his keys as he turns into Spider-Man in a 2-page spread that makes you turn the book sideways, like Romita, Jr. was really into in the late 90s, only this one looks bad. And guess what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tan draws Spider-Man\u2019s mask eyes like Spawn\u2019s. Awful. Absorbing Man came into this scene throwing a car. We only know he robbed a bank because Spider-Man says he did. A bank is pictured in the background of the 2-page spread prior to this, that\u2019s all the setup we got. This typical Hudlin storytelling. Choppy, missing pieces. The two continue their fight, with Abs Man becoming pavement and then metal, but then\u2026 he gets an upset stomach and throws up a bunch of black top. That makes zero sense. He throws up A BUNCH of black top. He covers Spider-Man in a pile of rubble. How? Why? He just leaves. Spider-Man is apparently unable to dig out of a 6 foot pile of loose rocks in time to stop him. And then Spidey just gives up and goes to work. Where he is fired from teaching summer school for being late. An administrator tells him they overstaffed, and \u201cwe just figured whoever would make it here first would get the last job.\u201d That is comically unprofessional. So, now Peter has to find another way to\u2026 pay the bills? He\u2019s living for free in Avengers Tower, but he\u2019s worried about money. Elsewhere, Crusher is indulging in some unspecified pills when some lady shows up and says her employer will keep him in drugs for special favors. One wonders where Titania is in all this. Hudlin probably doesn\u2019t even know about her. Then we cut to Peter crawling back to the Bugle for work, where a giant man is in his way at Jameson\u2019s door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s a Superman analog. Not only is that beyond cliche, THE SENTRY JUST CAME BACK. Marvel doesn\u2019t need TWO fake Supermans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They didn\u2019t even really explain what JJJ has them doing. Meanwhile, Crusher has been taken to see random lady\u2019s boss. That was a job offer earlier, even tho it totally did not read like one. It\u2019s the Owl. He wants Creel to kill a bunch of people in exchange for his drug habit. Creel says there\u2019s \u201csome capes\u201d on the list, but agrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ok, it\u2019s straight up hilarious that Tan draws the Iron Man armor better than Finch does. That\u2019s embarrassing. He\u2019s got Cap with that tiiiiny wee shield and no star on his back, he\u2019s apparently made up a new mask for Spider-Woman, and he\u2019s drawing Iron Man better than Finch. Insane. Cap\u2019s training plan allows Spider-Man and Wolverine to square off, of course, and that somehow goes this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ll give Tan this, he draws Wolverine with claws that could actually fit in his arm instead of swords like\u2026 almost everyone else by 2005. I am so mad at myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s that new logo type over here, too. I swore not to buy this. I really did. I think I even said something about it writing for MKSM 12. But\u2026 That made…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[1090,2033,2171,60,64,13,26,2172,139,2105,21,2170,2,1041,300],"class_list":["post-27718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-absorbing-man","tag-avalon-studios","tag-billy-tan","tag-captain-america","tag-iron-man","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-joe-robertson","tag-john-sibal","tag-luke-cage","tag-marvel-knights-spider-man","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-reginald-hudlin","tag-spider-man","tag-spider-woman","tag-wolverine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27718","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=27718"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27733,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27718\/revisions\/27733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}