{"id":5114,"date":"2020-06-10T00:00:10","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T04:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=5114"},"modified":"2019-07-09T01:10:58","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T05:10:58","slug":"asm-397","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2020\/06\/10\/asm-397\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 397"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ladies & Gentlemen, the catastrophically embarrassing 1990s \u201cbad girl\u201d craze presents\u2026 Stunner. The female powerhouse who\u2019s apparently been skipping leg day her entire life (And also, uh, torso day). Seems to be having a good time. Wait\u2019ll you see her deal. I recently read that Stunner first appeared in an issue of Spider-Man Unlimited that I don\u2019t have. I always thought this was her strange introduction. Nearly everything about this one is strange, so hold onto your butts. Let\u2019s get right into the sadness:
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Kaine: haunting 4 comics a month! Is that our first clear look at the suspiciously spider-y thingie on his wrist? He thinks he is what he was meant to be which, as we know, is categorically untrue, and that Spider-Man was born to a different destiny. Then our guy takes over the narration, thinking maybe he should give in to the fever and the pain to escape all the suffering of his recent life (UGGHHHH) and then:
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When they reveal the shocking truth that Peter is the clone, and then double back and reveal the EXTRA-shocking truth that he ISN\u2019T the clone, this sure is going to be hard to reconcile. He winds up passing out on a rooftop, just as he was shown as Ben groused about how great his life must be in Web last week, and then the shadow of Dr. Octopus looms over him. Egads! Found by his greatest foe in this, his hour of greatest weakness! We\u2019ll let him say his piece for a bit.
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Due to all the jumping around, this is our first look at the best thing Erik Larsen contributed to the history of Marvel Comics: Doc Ock in a suit. It immediately makes so much sense. So much better than tights. Better than his far more infrequent \u201cmad scientist\u201d outfit. A simple stroke of genius. And I believe this storyline is its final appearance. A travesty. The good doctor internal monologues a bunch of crap that falls totally flat about how he \u201calways thought of Spider-Man as the last decent man\u201d and how, like every other character in this godforsaken comic, he\u2019s tired of life and sad and also his parents abused him when he was a kid, because naturally. He says he\u2019s upset that Spidey seems to have become \u201cas bloodthirsty as those other so-called heroes out there,\u201d decides not to kill him, and leaves. Then Kaine hovers over Spider-Man as he recovers to let us know he doesn\u2019t trigger the Spider Sense, and Spidey realizes he knows where to go for help. Then we turn to Stunner walking into a bar, and an extremely cynical, hypocritical version of feminism that you saw in a lot of comics of this period:
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She proceeds to trash the place. That was kind of the thing in this period. An impossibly proportioned sexpot talking about how men are scum and how independent and strong she is while the artist makes sure to get as many boob & butt shots in as possible. Lady Death. Shi. Lady Rawhide. All the ladies, really. Tough talkin\u2019, blood spillin\u2019 no-nonsense dames wearing almost nothing and poking their butts out all the time because they don’t need no man! Grim times. Doc Ock shows up, revealing to us that Stunner is his girlfriend and also paying the barkeep for the damages. What just happened? They go to some nice looking apartment, where Ock is in a contemplative mood. Note Stunner\u2019s increasingly insane poses:
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Only a truly liberated woman poses like she\u2019s shooting a swimsuit calendar while her man monologues at her. And still more totally egregious retconning. Doc Ock, Spider-Man\u2019s most vicious, most bloodthirsty, most truly insane enemy by far until Carnage showed up, now a sad old man who wishes ol\u2019 Spidey could just live laugh love again. Dreck. I was going to say I have no memory of Stunner vanishing, but the more I think about it, maybe I do. Speaking of posing for swimsuits, MJ\u2019s back! She thinks about how foolish she was to think he\u2019d be here waiting for her after the way he\u2019s been acting (True!) and feels so tired she just goes to bed without dealing with the wreck he\u2019s made of the place.
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I submit a better question would be \u201cwhy have you been running from the person you love most in the ayeee in the first place, you selfish idiot.\u201d The pain in his head unsteadies him and he falls to his death (His signature move!) only to be caught by Stunner. She introduces herself and then starts beating the crap out of him.
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This is so weird. Like, the other writers have had Spider-Man learn the value of love and stop being an emo so many times during this debacle, only for DeMatteis to ignore it. What about that time Spider-Man got taught the value of friendship by a pile of poop? I got used to that. The fact that Peter suddenly does want to be himself again in ASM, even though that\u2019s what he said in last month\u2019s TAC, is surprising to me. It\u2019s been a long time. Once Spidey is passed out, Doc Ock appears, saying this was all a test to see if Spidey was as sick as he seemed, and as he pulls off his old foe\u2019s mask, he says something is deeply wrong with him, and he intends to find out what it is. Shock! I don\u2019t remember this well enough to know if he\u2019ll comment on the fact that Spider-Man really is that kid he unmasked way back in ASM 12, or the adult he tried to murder, along with his whole family, in Parallel Lives. Perhaps we\u2019ll see in the next issue of TAC, but first, we\u2019ll check back in with Ben Reilly.
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Ladies & Gentlemen, the catastrophically embarrassing 1990s \u201cbad girl\u201d craze presents\u2026 Stunner. The female powerhouse who\u2019s apparently been skipping leg day her entire life (And also, uh, torso day). Seems to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[9,253,25,125,488,461,339,21,2,594],"class_list":["post-5114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-bob-sharen","tag-doctor-octopus","tag-jm-dematteis","tag-kaine","tag-larry-mahlstedt","tag-mark-bagley","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-spider-man","tag-stunner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114","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=5114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5226,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions\/5226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}