{"id":3094,"date":"2020-01-28T00:00:40","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T04:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=3094"},"modified":"2019-06-03T00:22:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T04:22:21","slug":"asm-annual-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2020\/01\/28\/asm-annual-03\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM Annual 03"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This cover sure promises a crazy story. \u00a0The art on this one is a meeting of the minds behind the respective properties. Layouts are provided by Romita, with full pencils by Avengers artist Don Heck and inks by Mike Esposito (Still going by \u201cMickey Demeo\u201d). There\u2019s rare additional credits on the inside front cover (for some reason, as opposed to the splash page) letting you know the colors are by stalwart Stan Goldberg, and even Marvel\u2019s less publicized Bullpeners of the period, like Sol Brodsky\u2019s production work, Roy Thomas\u2019 proofreading, Marie Severin\u2019s paste-up, and even Flo Steinberg gets a mention (\u201cPaintbrush procurer\u201d). The story itself opens with The Avengers deciding whether to offer Spider-Man membership on the team! The current line-up is Captain America, Hawkeye, Goliath, Wasp, Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver, but the rest of the old guard (Thor & Iron Man) has returned for this momentous decision, and we\u2019re told Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch are in Europe, so it\u2019s an unusual lineup. Most of them seem unsure, except Hawkeye, who\u2019s all for it, and Wasp, who \u201chates anything to do with spiders!\u201d Since they don\u2019t know if they can trust him, the decide to call in a character witness in the form of another lone vigilante\u2026
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Kinda awkward that they\u2019re not asking DD if he wants to join. \u201cHey, welcome to the most prestigious gathering of heroes around\u2026 tell us about your friend.\u201d At any rate, The Avengers split up and begin searching the city for Spider-Man. What\u2019s he up to, anyway?
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Spidey\u2019s not sure he would actually want to be an Avenger, and after some standoffish discussion, Thor gives him 24 hours to think it over. He switches to Peter Parker and heads home to find Aunt May needing to get her medicine from the pharmacy, but not feeling up to the trip. So he hops on his new bike and takes off, thinking being an Avenger would make people like JJJ be nicer to him, but also worrying he\u2019d lose his autonomy. He also worries being an Avenger would make it harder to hide his secret from Aunt May. After he brings her back her medicine, he decides to suit up and go check it out.
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I actually miss The Avengers having all this stuffy bureaucracy in contemporary comics. It\u2019s kind of funny and interesting for the team to be run by a byzantine maze of rules and regulations. But, this is Spider-Man we\u2019re talking about, so as The Avengers try to decide how best to test him for membership, nervous and worrying about Aunt May, Spidey loses his temper and things go downhill quickly. Like, really quickly.
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Goliath slaps him across the room, which only makes things worse, as the whole team keeps taking shots at him and he returns them in kind until Goliath and Thor break it up. Iron Man suddenly remembers The Hulk has been seen in town (This seems like it should be a bigger deal) and decides that is Spidey\u2019s test: He has to bring The Hulk back to the Mansion. But they let him swing away without telling him why they want The Hulk brought to them, so I\u2019m sure hijinks are inbound. Spidey searches the city for The Hulk without any luck\u2026
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Kind of a Looney Tunes quality to Spidey & JJJ\u2019s relationship in the early days. Also: What a reasonable place to find The Hulk! Spidey swings on down there and is soon face-to-face with his objective:
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(That was actually ASM 14, Stan) Spidey & The Hulk really get into it, smashing through a wall into the Gamma Ray Center and generally making a mess, Spider-Man pretty hopelessly outgunned. Spidey begins to think this was a mistake, but then Hulk punches through a \u201cgamma ray shielding wall\u201d and is hit with enough gamma radiation to turn him back to Bruce Banner (Shouldn\u2019t it make him even Hulkier, instead?). Banner happily tells Spidey who he is and relates his origin to him. Peter Parker, science nerd, has of course heard of him, and can\u2019t believe he\u2019s The Hulk. He immediately sees Banner needs help rather than trouble, and doesn\u2019t want to bring him to The Avengers anymore, but then he turns back into The Hulk. As Banner begins to slip away ,he tells Spidey he won\u2019t attain his full strength for a few minutes.
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All just a misunderstanding! Ah, well. Spidey would occasionally hang out with The Avengers, and even become a reserve member, in years to come, eventually joining the team for real in 2004. But that\u2019s a long way off\u2026
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After these last couple issues, has anyone gotten the mysterious urge to watch Marvel Super-Heroes on TV? These are not subtle ads. They\u2019re on almost every page of every issue. The rest of the book reprints one of Spidey\u2019s most memorable run-ins with Doc Ock from ASM 11 & 12, but I\u2019ll revisit those at a later date.
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This cover sure promises a crazy story. \u00a0The art on this one is a meeting of the minds behind the respective properties. Layouts are provided by Romita, with full pencils by Avengers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[9,35,57,60,58,66,61,63,59,13,52,2,67,6,65],"class_list":["post-3094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1960s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-may","tag-avengers","tag-captain-america","tag-daredevil","tag-don-heck","tag-hank-pym","tag-hawkeye","tag-hulk","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-mike-esposito","tag-spider-man","tag-stan-goldberg","tag-stan-lee","tag-thor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094","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=3094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3146,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions\/3146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}