{"id":3450,"date":"2020-03-18T00:00:07","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T04:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=3450"},"modified":"2019-06-03T00:28:28","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T04:28:28","slug":"mtu-127","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2020\/03\/18\/mtu-127\/","title":{"rendered":"MTU 127"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This may be a good place to mention, if I haven\u2019t yet, that the month on the cover isn\u2019t what it might seem. The cover date is actually the month newsstands were supposed to remove a book from the rack. I don\u2019t know exactly, but I think comics actually came out six months before the cover date. Hence what would appear to be a Christmas issue in March upon first glance. At any rate, it\u2019s a Christmas issue, and Kerry Gammill is back to pencil it. I usually don\u2019t show the splash because it\u2019s not full of crucial story, but I just like this Spider-Man, so here it is:
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Just a cool Spider-Man. Spidey\u2019s on his way to Aunt May\u2019s for a Christmas party. He arrives, changes clothes, and unpacks a big pile of gifts from his web pack for Aunt May and her many tenants and heads on in.
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Adorable. Comics can be really efficient. Look how well they\u2019ve introduced all Aunt May\u2019s boarders, established the mood and filled the scene with business in just 4 panels. From there, we jump ahead awhile, everyone still having a good time\u2026 except Arthur, who\u2019s sad. Peter goes over to ask him what\u2019s wrong. He asked his granddaughter to be here, who he hasn\u2019t seen much over the years because her parents died in a plane crash, and he\u2019s pretty sure she\u2019s not coming. He shows Peter her photo as he tells him all this. Pete tries to cheer him up, and to get him back in the spirit by asking him to read one of his poems, but then his Spider Sense goes nuts. He makes an excuse about them being out of ice cream and runs out of the house, only to be magically put into his Spidey suit by a big, mysterious guy he doesn\u2019t know.
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I didn\u2019t realize Spider-Man made it into the 80s without meeting The Watcher. That\u2019s surprising. The Watcher is, of course, a bit of prime Kirby\/Lee cosmic craziness, an alien who lives on the moon, from a race of big bald guys sworn to observe everything that happens in the universe, but never to interfere. He is often in the process of interfering as he tells people this, and here he is, getting involved. Uatu the Watcher\u2019s heart is too big for his job. Spidey has no idea what to do, but decides he has to go try to find Bette Chekov somehow. Meanwhile, on the moon, The Watcher says few things he\u2019s observed have ever meant more to him than what happens tonight. The Watcher\u2019s deal has always been a little vague, but him seeming to know what\u2019s gonna happen BEFORE it happens feels off. He usually just appears in times of great significance to observe (Or interfere).
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It\u2019s looking pretty real out there. Meanwhile, Spider-Man is swinging around Brooklyn, because he remembers Arthur once mentioning his granddaughter lived here (This seems unlikely, but ok). He has no idea where, though, so he calls information, and there\u2019s some Komedy Business about the operator not hearing the name right before he\u2019s on his way to Brooklyn Heights, and when he gets to her building, a dead woman is being brought out on a stretcher. Some tense moments between Spidey and the cops reveal the dead woman to be Bette\u2019s rooommate, which sends Spidey off with even more urgency trying to find her.
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Well, that\u2019s random. And DeMatteis & Gammill seem to be playing fast & loose with the Spider Sense rules. After hearing Spidey\u2019s story, Cap tells him he can\u2019t give up, and if he needs help, he\u2019s got it, but Spidey thinks he\u2019s helped enough just giving the pep talk and takes off again. The Watcher is happy with his progress, and once again interferes, showing Spidey a vision of a seedy bar he knows in Manhattan through the jewel he gave him earlier. So he heads on down there and does what superheroes do in places like this.
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It\u2019s Spidey\u2019s favorite informant, Joe Face, who, as we\u2019ve seen, DeMatteis would later kill in the opening moments of Kraven\u2019s Last Hunt. This is apparently his first appearance. But he doesn\u2019t know anything, and Spidey leaves confused and frustrated, not suspecting that in the room above the bar, Bette Chekov is talking to a guy called Buck about some stolen cocaine.
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Of course, Spidey heard the commotion and comes in through the window, taking out this \u201cBuck Todd\u201d (These names\u2026), but Bette runs away while he\u2019s busy. Unfortunately for her, because a carfull of goons is outside waiting for her, and they chase her into a dead end alleyway. But come on, y\u2019all, it\u2019s Christmas, even JM DeMatteis isn\u2019t gonna let anything worse happen to this girl on Christmas. Right? Riiiight?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good grief.
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Well, what a holly jolly Christmas. JM DeMatteis, man. What is his problem? \u201cYou know what these stories about colorful characters going on adventures are missing? Endless depression, that\u2019s what.\u201d Meanwhile, in space\u2026
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I wouldn\u2019t be patting myself on the back too hard since you coulda just told Spidey where she was before she wound up in a place where she could get shot, Uatu. Ugh. This one started out so nice, too. Fool I was to trust this writer not to try to bum me to with a Christmas story.
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Come back next time to finally get into this super long TAC story I\u2019ve been dancing around.
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This may be a good place to mention, if I haven\u2019t yet, that the month on the cover isn\u2019t what it might seem. The cover date is actually the month newsstands were…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[35,125,127,71,52,2,151],"class_list":["post-3450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-aunt-may","tag-jm-dematteis","tag-kerry-gammil","tag-marvel-team-up","tag-mike-esposito","tag-spider-man","tag-the-watcher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450","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=3450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3540,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450\/revisions\/3540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}