{"id":28898,"date":"2025-09-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=28898"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:34:08","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:34:08","slug":"web-of-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/09\/30\/web-of-romance\/","title":{"rendered":"Web of Romance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I said he\u2019d be back, and here he is, Tom Beland! As the thing in the corner suggests, this is part of a thing called \u201cI Love Marvel,\u201d wherein the company sort-of-kind-of dipped its toe back into the realm of romance comics. A popular staple of 50s, 60s, and to a lesser degree, 70s comics (Popularized by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, like so many things), romance comics were not too common by this point, especially from the so-called Big Two. But the OG romance comics were about regular people, and this initiative is about superheroes, so it\u2019s not really the same thing. What it is, tho, is a project tailor made for Beland, who made his bones writing & drawing an autobiographical romance comic called True Story, Swear To God. He had a foot in the door with Marvel and he knew romance, who better to do this? They made one-shots for various characters, but I don\u2019t remember who, I just got this one. And, as I recall, it\u2019s great, and after the Other, I deserve a great comic. Beland is joined by penciler Cory Walker, inker Cliff Rathburn and ASM colorist Matt Milla, here credited as \u201cAvalon\u2019s Matt Milla.\u201d Has he been absorbed by one of the machines, or was he one of the rare people working at one who got a real credit til now? I don\u2019t know. The cover is  by a Gez Fry. I don\u2019t know who that is, but I always liked the Spidey on it. Cory Walker is one of the few artists who\u2019s worked with Robert Kirkman and not wound up in a bitter dispute with him, the co-creator of Invincible. Seriously, only so many people can say you screwed them over before it\u2019s a pattern. Enough preamble, let\u2019s see a familiar face you probably wouldn\u2019t have expected to ever see again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yes, not all that long since the Breakout mini, Mandrill. Put to much more entertaining use here, tho, this sequence stuck with me all these years. Spider-Man swinging home, fretting that he never gets MJ a cool gift, and she always knows what to buy for any occasion, and he wants this Valentine\u2019s Day to be different. I note Walker is drawing a weird take on the original Ditko spider on his chest. Arriving at the Tower, he finds May & Jarvis in the kitchen, and asks where MJ is. She\u2019s watching the Knicks with Steve, Tony & Luke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It has also stuck with me all these years that Walker drew MJ with no eyebrows and the worst possible take on her bangs. I mean, jeez. But I enjoy Beland\u2019s take on MJ as much as I do not enjoy Walker\u2019s. The bit about all her friends having been male is demonstrably untrue, but we can let that ride. MJ at ease with the superfellas is a great angle. I wish we saw it elsewhere. Peter takes a shower, thinking about how he thinks MJ believes Gwen \u201cmeant more to him\u201d than she does, but that isn\u2019t true. He talks about how Gwen wasn\u2019t \u201cStreetwise,\u201d how he was always worried about here, whereas MJ is tough and had already survived plenty before they got together, let alone since. He thinks she\u2019s strong and capable and he doesn\u2019t have to worry about her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter is relating the story of how he pranked Johnny with a giant bat made of webbing in the 2nd feature of ASM #8<\/a>. Good pull, Tom! Then it\u2019s the next day, and Spider-Man, Cage and Cap are fighting Dragon Man, while Spidey is also asking them what he should do about Valentine\u2019s Day. But Dragon Man\u2019s really making with the fire, and when Cap finds out from SHIELD that he\u2019s vulnerable to sonics, Cage borrows his shield, then slaps it with his super strength, unleashing quite the sonic attack. I\u2019m not sure that would work. Vibranium is called that because it absorbs vibrations, I don\u2019t know that you could make his shield \u201cCLANG.\u201d But, it did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, then, Peter finds Tony Stark at home, and says he thinks he knows what to get MJ, but he needs Tony\u2019s help. And then we jump to the big day, with our couple in fancy dress, and Peter asks her if she\u2019s ready to receive her gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cut to Johnny Storm walking to his car, when a giant bat attacks him, and he ends up covered in webbing, just like in ASM 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And that\u2019s the show. People talk about how Peter & MJ\u2019s marriage was terrible, but so much of it was written so badly. MJ constantly being kidnapped by Jonathan Caesar in the early days, MJ\u2019s dumb smoking subplot, MJ becoming a nagging shut-in who only existed to resent Spider-Man, the two of them mad at each other, whatever the hell Howard Mackie thought he was doing in the reboot. More comics like this one and I think people would have seen things differently. Especially if more comics had MJ with no eyebrows and insane hair. Tom Beland knew how to write a modern Marvel title, I don\u2019t know why he did so little with them. He would next write a Fantastic Four miniseries, and I think that\u2019s it. A shame, sez I. Ah, well. It was very nice to read a comic that didn\u2019t make me hate reading comics, and guess what, next post is TWO more of them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said he\u2019d be back, and here he is, Tom Beland! As the thing in the corner suggests, this is part of a thing called \u201cI Love Marvel,\u201d wherein the company sort-of-kind-of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[60,2248,2116,609,64,139,2153,21,1968,2,2239,2247],"class_list":["post-28898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","tag-captain-america","tag-cliff-rathburn","tag-cory-walker","tag-dragon-man","tag-iron-man","tag-luke-cage","tag-mandrill","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-matt-milla","tag-spider-man","tag-tom-beland","tag-web-of-romance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28898","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=28898"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28907,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28898\/revisions\/28907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}