{"id":5004,"date":"2020-06-08T00:00:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T04:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=5004"},"modified":"2019-07-07T12:15:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T16:15:37","slug":"spider-man-collectors-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2020\/06\/08\/spider-man-collectors-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"Spider-Man Collector’s Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Now that we\u2019ve seen the new status quo, a slight detour. It\u2019s not really a comic book, more like a magazine to get you hyped for all things Spidey popping off in \u201895. \u201cTHE CLONE, THE TOYS, THE COMICS\u201d feels rather too much like an accurate list of Marvel\u2019s priorities when it comes to Spider-Man at this time. Look at all the features:
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It is so funny to read that editorial over there by Steve Saffel, whoever that is, essentially going, \u201cWhoa! What they\u2019re doing to Spider-Man sucks and the old clone stuff sucked too! I mean, uh, get excited!\u201d The first section of the magazine shows off several genuinely hideous designs for what would be Ben Reilly\u2019s Scarlet Spider costume. Tom Lyle threw in 6 designs, then they had Mark Bagley take a run at it before going back and tweaking one of Lyle\u2019s. But, like, look at this stuff\u2026
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The Scarlet Spider is stupid and his costume is terrible, but all the ones they didn\u2019t go with are actually worse. Also interesting to note that one of Bags\u2019 designs is essentially Ben\u2019s Spider-Man costume down there, they just didn\u2019t need it yet. This is followed by a 1-page Fred Hembeck cartoon. Fred Hembeck did comedy stuff in and around Marvel Comics a lot in the 80s and 90s, and to be completely honest, not generally a fan. I did get a kick out of the Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe one-shot. Maybe I should cover that some day.\u00a0 Anyway, after that, there\u2019s an interview with JM DeMatteis & Mark Bagley about the future of ASM. All the creative teams have one. A lot of it is a \u201cwe\u2019re joking, but maybe not really\u201d bunch of DeMatteis and Bagley talking about whose role is more important in crafting the story.
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It\u2019s kinda awkward. Then there\u2019s 2 pages about Judas Traveller that begins with what is alleged to be a quote from Traveller\u2019s journal wherein he quotes Martin Luther. Haha, ok. It\u2019s DeMatteis explaining the character and his deal, citing Dostoevsky as an influence and talking about how his guy is hundreds of years old, super mysterious and, like, totally even scarier than big villains like Magneto. Sheesh. Not only is this all very silly, but editorial would eventually change Traveller\u2019s whole deal once DeMatteis was gone, so whatever he thinks the character is isn\u2019t who he\u2019ll wind up being. Comics! This is followed by an interview with Editor-in-Chief Tom Defalco and Spidey editor Danny Fingroth on where all this is going.
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Those \u201csupposed discrepancies\u201d will not be explained in anything like a satisfactory way, dear reader. They go on to straight up spoil some things and tease that no less than 3 characters will die by ASM 400, and a bunch of other hype-generating stuff. Fingroth has the unmitigated hubris to say an upcoming story will \u201cdefinitely be the very last Spider-Man\/Dr. Octopus story.\u201d Mm hm. What nonsense. This is followed by a \u201cCountdown to #400,\u201d where they just tell you what\u2019s going to happen in every comic. Pretty literally, including spoiling that Doc Ock story. Great stuff! Great stuff. Next, a chat with Defalco & Sal Buscema about TAC. Their interview is very jovial and collegiate, and makes it clear how much they both really love Spider-Man, if their already long histories with the character didn\u2019t. Then there\u2019s a bit talking about Spidey villains which begins with this terrible nonsense:
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\u201cMaybe Spidey might kill people, bro, I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s the 90s!!\u201d Ugh. Fingroth goes on to talk about a few key villains and how they might find their way into the books as they stand. Next up is an interview with Howard Mackie & Tom Lyle, who talk about how much they enjoy working together and describe a pretty old school \u201cMarvel Method\u201d working relationship. Also, Tom Lyle is rocking a mullet to make the Peter Parker of this era green with envy:
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Woof. Then a spread hocking various miniseries and trades, then an excerpt from one of a few Spider-Man novels published at this time. Then Terry Kavanagh and Steve Butler get their interview. They enjoy working together, you\u2019ll be shocked to hear. Then a feature on Spider-Man 2099 (Which may or may not be something this blog covers some day? I\u2019m not sure), then the then-upcoming cartoon gets several pages. That\u2019s followed by a truly hilarious page about how awesome James Cameron\u2019s Spider-Man movie is going to be. That worked out. Finally, 3 pages on the toys coming out to support the cartoon, including this picture:
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Avi Arad would end up being in charge of Marvel when it merged with ToyBiz, and as an executive producer on the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, he would force Venom into the already overstuffed Spider-Man 3, ruining it. Great stuff, Avi! And that\u2019s it for this thing. I recall being very excited to read it back in my youth. Not necessarily happy to read its revelations, but as I mentioned in the last 90s block, there was an undeniable buzz around the ridiculous nonsense these guys were doing in the Spider-titles. As a superfan, I could only watch nervously as things got progressively worse.
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Now that we\u2019ve seen the new status quo, a slight detour. It\u2019s not really a comic book, more like a magazine to get you hyped for all things Spidey popping off in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[455,599,2],"class_list":["post-5004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-ben-reilly","tag-scarlet-spider","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5004","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=5004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5101,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5004\/revisions\/5101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}