{"id":30339,"date":"2025-12-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=30339"},"modified":"2024-03-05T19:03:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T23:03:45","slug":"ssm-v2-annual-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/12\/19\/ssm-v2-annual-1\/","title":{"rendered":"SSM V2 Annual 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This annual is covered dated July 2007. It came out about halfway through the Back In Black period. That seems early for this. It seems much more appropriate here, as the final Back In Black comic. And so it is, because no one can stop me. Please welcome Matt Fraction back to the blog. Matt\u2019s about to hit a homerun clean out of the park and really make you wish he\u2019d written a Spider-Man comic. He is unfortunately joined by Salvador Larocca, who he will further unfortunately be joined by for a very long run of Iron Man comics with excellent stories and annoying, distracting celebrity tracing art. But that\u2019s for later (We\u2019re gonna see their 7th issue when we get to it due to you-know-who guest starring). This I bought when it came out, already an avowed Fraction fan from his Image comics The Five Fists of Science and Casanova, and having enjoyed that Punisher War Journal run to this point, and really enjoyed the Iron Fist run to this point (Which we sadly have no reason to look at). Paco Roca colors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 Oh my God, she\u2019s Liv Tyler again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I wonder who Peter is. He\u2019s gotta be somebody. We flashback to \u201cearlier,\u201d as MJ trying to get some coffee (At the Coffee Bean, no less) runs into a \u201cBrady,\u201d who seems to have been security for her in her modeling days in CA. They were apparently very close, almost romantic. MJ is happy to see him, but also paranoid about him drawing attention to her. This leads to our first classic era flashback, which is still LaRocca drawing, but now he\u2019s doing \u201cTim Sale as John Romita, Sr.\u201d, an extremely convoluted thing to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Very much enjoy this take on the old gang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aaaand, there it is. Oh, Brady, you jerk. But where\u2019s Peter in all this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lamont! Someone remembered Lamont!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter flashes back told times again, saying even when they were kids, they all clung to each other for survival. That the guys were outclassed by the girls, who could play them like fiddles, and they just let them play. Which is just a fine bit of language and very Fraction and if I could, I think I\u2019d run every page of this book. Back at the Coffee Bean, Brady tells MJ she & May get fully immunity if they turn in Peter. It\u2019s time to put the \u201cSpider-Nightmare\u201d behind them. MJ says he doesn\u2019t know what Peter\u2019s lived through, what he\u2019s lost and what it cost him. What it cost all of them. She talks more about how he was going through so much in the old days, and no one could offer him any relief or reassurance as the flashback officially becomes ASM 87<\/a>, referenced a 2nd time in this period, Peter stumbling in on everyone to admit he\u2019s Spider-Man in a daze. A comic I hadn\u2019t read when this came out, by the way, it was kinda confusing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter tells Lamont the bullet points of his backstory, as MJ tell sBrady\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Is that meant to be the older Peter & MJ in the window there? I remember this bit very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is such a great Mary Jane, in the past and the present. Ugh, why didn\u2019t Matt get a Spider-Man run?Peter is telling Lamont that the first thing MJ ever said to him was \u201cFace it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot.\u201d Agrees with LAmont that that\u2019s insane thing to say, but he couldn\u2019t let her go. Maybe because he\u2019s a scientist, the fact that he couldn\u2019t explain her made her fascinating. Then they replay the mixtape scene with Peter\u2019s internal monologue, freaking out, hoping she gets the \u201cmagnetic fields\u201d reference, totally getting what the mistletoe is and running away because he panicked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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MJ is telling Brady that her time in LA, while she and Peter were separated, was the loneliest time of her life. And Brady is 100% Ben Affleck in a single flashback panel. He says he felt something when they were together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then MJ flashes back to ASM 143<\/a>, first a new sequence of her talking Peter into coffee at the airport (And a funny bit with Joe Robertson) before a slightly modified version of\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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She tells Brady to arrest her, and he begins to do so. Then he notices the spider tracer on the seat. I think it\u2019s meant ot be the one from the clone mess that she could trigger to get him to come running. She says she wasn\u2019t rambling, she was stalling. And then Peter comes smashing through the window and scoops her up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I mean, wow, right? A tour de force on this relationship. Versions of Peter and Mary Jane you\u2019d love to read more of, and a reaffirmation that their now 20-year old union is still strong. What a strange and cruel time to do this comic\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This annual is covered dated July 2007. It came out about halfway through the Back In Black period. That seems early for this. It seems much more appropriate here, as the final…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[225,1989,21,2317,2353,1855,2266,2],"class_list":["post-30339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","tag-annual","tag-lt-lamont","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-matt-fraction","tag-paco-roca","tag-salvador-larocca","tag-sensational-spider-man-vol-2","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30339","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=30339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30362,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30339\/revisions\/30362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}