{"id":88,"date":"2021-01-15T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T04:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=88"},"modified":"2020-07-05T01:33:25","modified_gmt":"2020-07-05T05:33:25","slug":"asm-an-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2021\/01\/15\/asm-an-15\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM Annual 15"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s another annual, this one by Denny O\u2019Neil, Frank Miller & Klaus Janson. So, Miller & Janson are currently doing Daredevil monthly, for editor Denny O\u2019Neil. But Miller and sometimes Janson are also doing at least one, sometimes 3 covers a month for the Spider-Man office, Miller drew the 1980 ASM annual, and he wrote the 1981 Marvel Team-Up annual. He\u2019s like an honorary member of the Spidey team. And now he\u2019s back!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This issue is broken into chapters, with a shot of a Daily Bugle front page starting each one, which is a fun little gimmick. Miller presaging Venom there.That thing is being watched by The Punisher! That thing is\u2026 a show where a dude is demonstrating \u201cthe Dim Mak Death Touch.\u201d Uh, ok?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that\u2019s a death touch of a different kind. Peter Parker rushes off to do his thing, and within moments, Spider-Man is face to face with his old frenemy, The Punisher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What if Spidey hadn\u2019t missed? No way Frank woulda survived that! But Punisher’s move at the bottom is maybe the most impressive thing I\u2019ve ever seen him do. Punisher says he\u2019s studied Spider-Man, like he does anyone he might have to fight, and he could kill him, but doesn\u2019t want to. Spidey dives back into the fray, and Punisher finally manages to shoot him. Spidey freaks out and yells “I’m gonna die!” before Punisher says it was just one of his \u201cmercy bullets,\u201d as usual. Spidey kinda overreacted. I mean, I would think the difference between this and the real thing is something you could feel. Not that I wanna know. Anyway, Punisher then tosses a gas bomb at Spider-Man and escapes. Then Spider-Man remembers the dude said he had to reverse the death touch in 3 days, or the young woman would die. And Punisher killed that guy, so as she’s loaded into an ambulance, Spidey rushes off to try to find a solution. And while he does that, Ben Urich calls in his story…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tell ’em, Pete! Meanwhile, at the coroner\u2019s office, an employee tries to steal the ring off the dead man\u2019s finger, pricks himself on it, and collapses. That’s what you get, dude. The Punisher has snuck in there, too, and thinks this confirms his suspicions. He’s about to just cut the whole finger off to get the ring, but there’s some menacing tentacles creeping up behind him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That’s a rough beating for ol’ Frank. Meanwhile:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Miller & Janson are fully Miller & Janson, at this point. Miller\u2019s previous appearances on this blog didn\u2019t quite feel like the guy who drew Daredevil, but this sure is. The fake monk tells Spidey about the drugged ring, so he swings off to see if it\u2019s still at the morgue, just in time to see a press conference about the body being stolen. And Ben Urich has also gone to the morgue, so…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The next day, the fake monk\u2019s brother is at the docks, where he was instructed to drop the his canister of the drug from the ring in the ocean. Punisher shows up, and dives into the water just in time to see some familiar metal tentacles pulling the canister into a hatch on a submarine. The same one from last time? Doesn\u2019t look like it, but who knows? Inside, Doc Ock has called the mayor (Very much Ed Koch), and announced his intention to poison millions of New Yorkers. As Punisher creeps up on him from behind, Ock dispatches him without even acknowledging his presence, still on the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is a much more intimidating Doc Ock than last time we saw him. He tells Punisher he\u2019ll be dead soon, and then Spider-Man comes crashing through the wall. Ock simply tells him Punisher is poisoned and dying, knowing Spidey will try to save him instead of giving chase, and leaves. There follows a fun sequence where the drug-addled Punisher wakes up and attacks Spider-Man, with a surprising result\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Everyone’s stunting on Punisher this issue. Spidey saves him, and then calls in his story to The Bugle. Not often Peter has a story, but…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Having gotten the word out, Spidey then saves the girl from the demonstration, too. And swinging away from her hospital room, he realizes just how Doc Ock will poison 5 million people. Even as JJJ is at the Bugle, watching the presses, contemplating how his paper keeps 5 million people informed. Well. There you go. Guess who shows up?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey battles Ock through the press room as JJJ says he\u2019ll see him hanged. Spidey makes a point\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026and the battle continues. JJJ inevitably gets pulled into the fray, Doc Ock rips through tomorrow\u2019s Bugles (And Klaus Janson tosses in this random headline about fellow star inker Terry Austin: \u201cTerry Austin arrainged! Posts bail\u201d), and then…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then he knocks him right out. Elsewhere, the Punisher wakes up webbed to a post at the docks, and breaks the post to escape. But he only gets a couple steps before the cops find him. He gives up immediately, of course. This was back when Punisher was still as much of a novelty that, having been introduced as a sort-of-villain, you couldn\u2019t be sure what he might do, so there\u2019s a tense moment, but it passes, and he lets himself be arrested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cheese amighty! Fun story! Too bad no one told us how Doc Ock survived his death last time we saw him, but it probably would\u2019ve been lame, anyway. Really tightly plotted issue. You can really feel how innovative Frank Miller\u2019s pages were comparing this to\u2026 the vast majority of the comics we\u2019ve seen here recently. His layouts were dynamic and different. Like a lot of his peers, he was changing the look and language of modern superhero comics, permanently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the issue is bonus material, starting with the one mentioned on the cover, Spider-Man rating the power levels of the Marvel heroes. I\u2019ve actually seen this passed around tumblr many times, maybe you have, too. It\u2019s brought to us by Mark Gruenwald & Bob Layton. And by having it be Spider-Man\u2019s opinion, not Mark\u2019s, they can sidestep the inevitable fan complaints that characters are rated wrong (Although if I trust anyone at Marvel to have studied this topic enough to give a definitive answer, it\u2019s continuity guru Mark Gruenwald). The ranks are Super-heavyweights, Heavyweights, Super-mediumweights, Mediumweights, and regular people, from Hulk to Captain America. Even some of the characters disagree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then there\u2019s a floor plan of Peter\u2019s apartment, saying the one in last year\u2019s annual was wrong, and this one is the correction, and then a continuation of the 70s super-villain gallery from the Spectacular annual. Good stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s another annual, this one by Denny O\u2019Neil, Frank Miller & Klaus Janson. So, Miller & Janson are currently doing Daredevil monthly, for editor Denny O\u2019Neil. But Miller and sometimes Janson are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[9,225,113,367,209,25,197,13,26,435,686,171,2],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-annual","tag-ben-urich","tag-bob-layton","tag-denny-oneil","tag-doctor-octopus","tag-frank-miller","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-joe-robertson","tag-klaus-janson","tag-mark-gruenwald","tag-punisher","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","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=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10101,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/10101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}