{"id":8150,"date":"2021-02-15T00:00:39","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T04:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=8150"},"modified":"2020-08-09T13:49:29","modified_gmt":"2020-08-09T17:49:29","slug":"mtu-133","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2021\/02\/15\/mtu-133\/","title":{"rendered":"MTU 133"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First of all, I cannot imagine how last issue\u2019s story could lead to Spidey and the FF fighting Dr. Doom who has apparently kidnapped Franklin, and second of all, the title of this issue spoils the mystery villain of last issue, so we\u2019re off to a rollicking start on this one. Reed is still ready to go get revenge on whoever caused last issue here at the beginning of \u201cThe World According To\u2026 Faustus!\u201d, but he pauses to recap last issue for Spider-Man like he wasn\u2019t there first. Then he tells Spidey to stay out of it, that he has to do this alone, and gets in his fantasticar and flies away. All the while, last issue\u2019s mystery villain comments on Reed\u2019s behavior, thanks to listening devices planted in The Baxter Building (How?), before being revealed on page 4:
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Dang, Doc. A happy home life ya got there. Meanwhile, Reed has reached Faustus\u2019 \u201cFenhoff Institute,\u201d where Larry went for treatment, and discovers Spider-Man stowed away on his trip. He tells Reed that\u2019s what friends are for, and we\u2019re back in it.
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Johnny is deranged with pain and takes awhile to even recognize Reed. He says he was kidnapped while out on a date and woke up strapped to an operating table, were people were doing \u201cdisgusting\u2026 hideous\u2026 terrible things\u201d to him (He looks ok given that) before telling Reed that the whole rest of the FF gang, including little Franklin, is trapped in the institute. Reed goes smashing through the front door, caution to the wind, but finds nothing inside. Spidey helps Johnny in behind him and soon they find The Thing, chained upside down from the ceiling and unconscious. He\u2019s too weak to stand when Spider-Man sets him free. Reed tells Spidey to take care of the boys while he rushes off to find his wife & child. Dr. Faustus is loving this, but Anna is only angrier with him, and recaps his own backstory at him. Exposition is so awkward in most old comics. I did not know his backstory, how he fled with his parents from the Nazi invasion of his native Austria and grew up in London. That makes his frequent partnership with The Red Skull a whole different kind of messed up. At any rate, he thinks he plans for Reed will guarantee him a sweet spot in The Secret Empire, and swears on his parents\u2019 grave that he won\u2019t fail, so\u2026 that won\u2019t end well. Meanwhile, Spidey & the boys catch up with Reed, obviously not content to just sit there.
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For a long time, the official line on Spider-Man was he could make ANY part of his body stick to walls at will, not just his hands and feet. I\u2019ve never seen anyone actually aggressively use that before, though, and it is hilarious. Wow. Anyway, Sue is all messed up, probably drugged, and then Dr. Doom shows up with Franklin in tow, and by now it\u2019s awfully clear that Faustus is just messing with everyone.
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Well, there you go. Faustus then turns on some kinda thing, I dunno, it makes the room look like a Ditko dimension, and with everyone thus disoriented, the flying thingies from the cover show up to start shootin\u2019. And the whole gang of heroes goes down!
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Wh.. what? Why was Spider-Man part of this plan?? How would he have time to add a Spider-Man to this ridiculously complex nonsense of pointless, DeMatteis-style anguish at such short notice?? And why not kill Reed? How would just making him have a crappy day impress the evil overlords he\u2019s trying to impress more than killing one of the world\u2019s most beloved heroes?? Ugh, ridiculous. At least they had a better explanation for Spider-Man sticking to the ceiling with his back, I guess. Whatever, I\u2019m not into this one, Faustus crows about his victory and Anna tells him he\u2019s failed yet again, which seems\u2026 not true\u2026 but then Reed wakes up and heats the crap out of him, just like that. Reed says as soon as he interacted with the Sue robot, he knew it wasn\u2019t her, and has just been playing along until he got an opening. Faustus has since turned off the device that was giving Reed headaches, so he\u2019s ate full power as he easily mops up.
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I thought Faustus\u2019s Mom looked a lot like this Anna, and I owe Sal Buscema an apology for thinking he did a bad job on that. People who call their parents by their first names are weird. Dr. Faustus is weird. Spider-Man wasn\u2019t even really in this. I feel ripped off. Blah. No blast from the past letter in the back of this one. I guess that could only go on so long.
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First of all, I cannot imagine how last issue\u2019s story could lead to Spidey and the FF fighting Dr. Doom who has apparently kidnapped Franklin, and second of all, the title of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[253,839,288,125,71,52,37,2],"class_list":["post-8150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-bob-sharen","tag-dr-faustus","tag-fantastic-four","tag-jm-dematteis","tag-marvel-team-up","tag-mike-esposito","tag-sal-buscema","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150","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=8150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8159,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150\/revisions\/8159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}