{"id":9080,"date":"2021-05-17T00:00:49","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T04:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=9080"},"modified":"2020-08-17T17:19:26","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T21:19:26","slug":"asm-333","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2021\/05\/17\/asm-333\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 333"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don\u2019t remember the circumstances of my acquiring it, but my childhood copy of this one has no cover. I got a new one during The Great Ebay Hysteria of 2018, so let\u2019s check it out. \u201cAmerica\u2019s Favorite Non-Mutant Superhero\u201d makes a lot more sense. That was certainly true in 1990, and most other times since 1962. But anyway, this one starts with Peter at Aunt May\u2019s house, wondering where Venom is, not knowing Venom is literally right outside. Peter recaps the deal as Aunt May makes some hot chocolate. He told her MJ is doing \u201cgirl stuff\u201d tonight, so he came over to do \u201cnephew stuff,\u201d whatever that means, and then as soon as May is back in the kitchen, Venom taps Peter on the shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is only the 3rd Venom story, and yet the concept already feels stale. His only mission in life, his only INTEREST in life, is killing someone we know he\u2019ll never kill. Yeah, you know the other villains will always lose, too, but they will fail to rob a bank, take over the NY underworld, blow up the moon, whatever. Once in awhile they even succeed. There\u2019s variety. Venom just wants to kill Spider-Man. He knows Peter\u2019s secret and doesn\u2019t set off his danger sense, which gives him a unique relationship to our hero, but to what end? This is story #3 and they\u2019ve already recycled him menacingly showing up at Aunt May\u2019s house twice. He\u2019s even pre-arranging a fight again and setting the same ground rules as ASM 317<\/a>. There\u2019s nowhere to go with this guy. Venom is boring. The next day, Peter tries to get MJ to agree to leave town on vacation without telling her about Venom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Down on his luck Peter Parker can\u2019t just have money, so steps had to be taken. Stone recaps what he told Caesar over the radio last issue about following Venom before they get around to telling us what Styx\u2019s deal is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He\u2019s a \u201cliving cancer\u201d now. A slight tweak could\u2019ve tied his origin to that of Cloak & Dagger. Stone implies a shared history is why he keeps the guy around, and then Caesar tells him to go back to Venom\u2019s tunnel and wait for something to happen. Meanwhile, Peter goes to see Flash Thompson, hoping to get some advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Michelinie making Flash a sage for Peter is a weird choice, but it kinda works for me. Soon, we see Styx & Stone camped out waiting for something to happen when they see Spider-Man sneak into Venom\u2019s tunnels. When he gets there, he finds Venom sitting on some boxes, recapping his origin, hoping to distract Spidey while he sends some of the symbiote at him across the floor, but it doesn\u2019t work, and the fight starts. And then what will become the traditional Venom truly makes his first appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He\u2019s gone from just really bulky to Hulk-size, the dumb tongue is out, and he wants to eat brains. Venom is unfortunately complete. It\u2019s Styx & Stone, of course. Though he doesn\u2019t know it, Stone\u2019s sonic cannon is much more deadly to Venom than Spider-Man, so that shakes things up pretty quickly. He\u2019s taken down for a page as Stone deploys gas Then the mercenaries split up to take on the 2 spider-people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I liked that Rodney joke as a kid, and I still like it today. Venom crushes Stone\u2019s big dumb cannons and a dazed Spidey can\u2019t move fast enough to stop Styx from running over and touching the symbiote, which seems to melt to the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Would that it was, Spidey. Would that it was. As the box says, the next ASM begins a 6-part Sinister Six extravaganza, but there\u2019s a bunch of other business to take care of first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t remember the circumstances of my acquiring it, but my childhood copy of this one has no cover. I got a new one during The Great Ebay Hysteria of 2018, so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[9,35,253,259,880,12,279,21,164,2,344,409],"class_list":["post-9080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-amazing-spider-man","tag-aunt-may","tag-bob-sharen","tag-david-michelinie","tag-erik-larsen","tag-flash-thompson","tag-jonathan-caesar","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-nathan-lubensky","tag-spider-man","tag-styx-stone","tag-venom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9080","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=9080"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10705,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9080\/revisions\/10705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}