{"id":9290,"date":"2021-06-08T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T04:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=9290"},"modified":"2020-06-09T15:45:24","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T19:45:24","slug":"asm-339","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2021\/06\/08\/asm-339\/","title":{"rendered":"ASM 339"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sometimes the covers of comics in the 90s made it challenging to bring them home. My folks were largely hands off with this dumb hobby, but \u201cDIE DIE DIE DIE\u201d isn\u2019t really a sentiment that would\u2019ve been welcomed in my home. That endlessly rotating inker slot gets real crowded here in the home stretch, with contributions by Randy Emberlin, Mick Machlan, Keith Williams and even John Romita! Plus Greg Wright & Mike Rockwitz pitch in to help Bob Sharen on colors. This twice-a-month schedule always leads to deadline problems. As we get rolling, 4 of the Sinister Six are standing around Spider-Man, wondering why he\u2019s not dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026\u2026.\u201drock chill?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That is BANANAS. I totally forgot what the \u201cpoison\u201d actually did. I remembered the swerve, but not what it was. Holy crap. The premise here is that rich people will do anything to STAY addicted to cocaine???? WHAT? DOCTOR OCTOPUS CURED COCAINE ADDICTION! AND somehow found out some brand-new fakey substance would reverse his process in spite of no one, including him, having worked with it before. This is aaaaaaall the way off the rails. I wonder if I just bought this as a child. I probably did. But WOW. Whew, ok, uh, so the villains flee and Spider-Man is kept buy by Ock throwing his glass gun in the Long Island Sound, saying it can fix Sandman if Spidey can find it. He manages to get tracers on both the gun and the fleeing Ock, then goes diving for the gun. Soon, Sandman\u2019s ok, and Spidey assures the cops they were working together to stop the others as he hangs around to explain what just happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Uh-oh! Michelinie is getting really goofy with the captions here lately. Is that MJ\u2019s walkin\u2019 around outfit? Sheesh. Things ramp up fast from here. Doc Swan tells Peter they\u2019ve anayalized Doc Ock\u2019s cure and discovered it is \u201cdissolving the Ozone Layer faster than all the aerosol cans in the world!\u201d Remember the Ozone Layer? So they have to come up with a solution, and Peter just\u2026 sits down at a computer and does. Some indeterminate period of time later, he\u2019s reviewed all the research on Burundite and discovered if it\u2019s \u201cput in direct contact with Ock\u2019s cure,\u201d it will deactivate it. Ooooooohkaaaaaay. But that means he\u2019s gotta go get the Burundite (Which, we must remember, is a rock about the size of someone\u2019s head? Not a lot of it) from Ock. And also:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Won\u2019t he be surprised to learn he\u2019s brought a knife to a gun fight. In New Jersey, Spider-Man is delivered to Doc Ock\u2019s hideout by a police helicopter. Peter told them he called The Avengers to get Spider-Man, but he really called Sandman to get the location of this place. The cops offer to go in, but he says they\u2019d trip all the alarms and has to go alone. And also:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I didn\u2019t say WHOSE gun. Two stalkers at once is too many! Spidey just tells Ock the problem, but he doesn\u2019t believe it, of course. Once again, Larsen renders Ock\u2019s tentacles as an impenetrable web of metal mayhem. This could really be the root of why I think of him as so formidable. He routinely keeps Spider-Man busy without even looking when Larsen is drawing, and that\u2019s pretty cool. Unable to get through the arms, Spidey backs off, chucks a giant piece of machinery at Oc, and tries to slip past the arms while they\u2019re busy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Every good Doc Ock story has involved him being aaaaaaalmost more than Spidey can handle, but this really cranks it up, and I\u2019m all for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And also:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I mean, this is pretty ridiculous. Saved from stalker #1 by stalker #2 and right back where she started. In New Jersey, a stunned Doc Ock slowly regains his bearings, sees Spidey ignoring him completely to save the Burundite from the fire, and finally believes him about the Ozone Layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, ok. That\u2019s it for Jonathan Caesar, at least. Too many stalkers. MJ getting to save herself is nice, but there need to be other plots for her. Sadly, it\u2019s really all downhill from here. Say, this issue hasn\u2019t had a cameo from another superhero yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thor tosses the original satellite out into space and then activates the new one. Hours of waiting later, the scientists, Spidey & Thor get the news that it\u2019s working. Everyone\u2019s happy, but Spider-Man can\u2019t help but think that a terrible social problem was almost solved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And that\u2019s the game. To his credit, I can\u2019t tell which pages John Romita inked. He didn\u2019t \u201cfix\u201d any of the faces or anything, as he would\u2019ve done in a previous era. For better or worse, the future Image artists have put the last nail in the coffin of the Marvel \u201chouse style.\u201d Anything goes from now on, and soon that will be true at DC, too. We\u2019ve seen some of the grim effects of this in the mid & late 90s blocks. And speaking of which, our next post takes us back to the mid-90s, to the aftermath of Aunt May\u2019s death. Join us for more crying next time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes the covers of comics in the 90s made it challenging to bring them home. My folks were largely hands off with this dumb hobby, but \u201cDIE DIE DIE DIE\u201d isn\u2019t really…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[9,35,253,259,25,192,880,163,21,899,234,101,2,65,98],"class_list":["post-9290","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-doctor-octopus","tag-electro","tag-erik-larsen","tag-hobgoblin","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mike-machlan","tag-mysterio","tag-sandman","tag-spider-man","tag-thor","tag-vulture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290","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=9290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9359,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290\/revisions\/9359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}