{"id":6103,"date":"2020-09-04T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T04:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=6103"},"modified":"2021-12-01T13:36:25","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T17:36:25","slug":"asm-324","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2020\/09\/04\/asm-324\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 324"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Now that\u2019s a more reasonable depiction of Sabretooth. Don\u2019t let that cover deceive you, though, the ramped up summer schedule was too much, and this issue features the fill-in art team of penciler Erik Larsen and inker Al Gordon. Larsen has been bouncing around the comics biz for a bit by this point, and will be the one to follow McFarlane on ASM when he leaves. Maybe this was his try out for that gig. Spidey will end up being the last thing both men work on before leaving Marvel to found Image Comics. But that\u2019s all for later. While Larsen is another of the flashy new guys not adhering to a house style, he\u2019s from a pretty different mold than McFarlane, something that\u2019s obvious from page one:
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Larsen doesn\u2019t draw like McFarlane, but he is trying to keep up some visual consistency here, employing a lot of the tall, skinny panels Todd likes. This is actually really interesting to look at again, because while it\u2019s obviously Larsen, he\u2019s still figuring it out. He does a lot of things in just the first 3 pages that he wouldn\u2019t do a year from now. Spidey\u2019s back in the states, at Ellis Island, which Ultimatum planned to blow up in their misguided crusade to bring the world together by blowing stuff apart. He\u2019s got all the terrorists in a giant web ball, and basically justs asks them why they do stupid stuff like this, until Solo teleports in and machine guns them all Spidey is obviously furious. He also holds up a newspaper out of nowhere, which is pretty funny, and enables a running gag of this period:
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I don\u2019t know how visible it is, but the text on the paper is mostly about an imagined feud between Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld. Which, in this case, snuck the word \u201cpissed\u201d into a comic that doesn\u2019t allow cursing. Whoops! Let\u2019s let Spider-Man finish his thought.
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That gooey blood ball up there seemed pretty extreme to me as a youth. Meanwhile, in Mexico, Captain America and Silver Sable are flying toward the suspected location of Sabretooth. Silver makes it clear she intends to kill him (Good luck with that), while Cap says they need him alive.
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Larsen\u2019s got the quiet determination down for Cap. They land in the camp of some kind of outlaws, making short work of them as Cap snags their leader. He quickly agrees to take them to Sabretooth. Then it\u2019s time for another of Michelinie\u2019s totally bizarre attention grabber opening lines that don\u2019t actually make any sense:
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Like, I get it, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good idea. The next day, Spidey is staking out the Metropolitan Museum of Art based on a tip from Cap. Solo arrives, and then Spidey tells him the renovations being done to the building are being funded by The Life Foundation (That doesn\u2019t seem likely), so they\u2019re gonna go in there and see if they\u2019re still involved in the plot. This seems very poorly thought out. Even if The Life Foundation is financing the renovation, that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019d physically be on site. Or maybe it does, we\u2019ll see in a sec. First, it\u2019s back to somewhere in Mexico, where Sabretooth is terrorizing the guys he\u2019s supposed to be working with. Cap and Silver are observing from a safe distance. Cap wonders aloud, for us, why Sabretooth is here when he\u2019s normally part of the X-Men villains the Marauders, but no answer is forthcoming. Then their informant uses a cigar to set fire to canvas covering the box they\u2019re hiding behind, blowing their cover.
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Sure, ok. Cap declares that Sabretooth has no pulse and is dead. He\u2019s furious with Silver for killing him. He must not know who he\u2019s dealing with. This feels kinda lazy. Fans will know Sabretooth is nearly unkillable. No one in the audience will fall for this, why would Captain America? They should just haul Sabretooth\u2019s body into a cell somewhere and wait for him to wake up, but instead they leave, Cap saying now their only hope is Spider-Man. Who, at that moment, is rushing a beloved art museum next to a heavily armed nut.
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Yeah, they\u2019ve somehow decided the best hiding spot for a fugitive terrorist is inside a museum being renovated? I don\u2019t\u2026 get that, but whatever. Spidey and Solo get to mixing it up with the armored goons, whose armor turns out to be inauthentically bulletproof.
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Spidey sees Weil fleeing through a skylight, but before anyone can do anything, Weil bumps into a guy doing some welding, accidentally turning his torch on its fuel tank and blowing up the escape helicopter and most of the roof, too. Spidey catches Weil as he\u2019s plummeting to his death (What about the other guy!?!?), but then Solo yells to drop him.
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I can think of at least two ways Spider-Man coulda gotten out of this, but it\u2019s just as well he doesn\u2019t have to. Solo is like an even angrier and more shortsighted Punisher.
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Gasp! Bad guys aren\u2019t supposed to win! Come back next time for the thrilling conclusion, which will also just give away the mysterious mastermind right on the cover.
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Now that\u2019s a more reasonable depiction of Sabretooth. Don\u2019t let that cover deceive you, though, the ramped up summer schedule was too much, and this issue features the fill-in art team of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[9,35,253,60,259,880,21,697,276,696,2,692,407,695],"class_list":["post-6103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-may","tag-bob-sharen","tag-captain-america","tag-david-michelinie","tag-erik-larsen","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-sabretooth","tag-silver-sable","tag-solo","tag-spider-man","tag-the-assassin-nation-plot","tag-the-life-foundation","tag-ultimatum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6103","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=6103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9315,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6103\/revisions\/9315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}