Writer: David Michelinie
Pencils: Todd McFarlane
Inks: Bob McLeod
Lettering: Rick Parker & (#299) Ken Lopez
I've always found it weird when a TV series recasts a particular role.
Not so much when there's an explanation for it in the storyline, like plastic surgery or something, but when they just replace the actor, period.
I find I can accept that the new performer is playing the same part, but I can't accept that the other characters haven't noticed the enormous change.
The fictional person may suddenly have a different height, a different build, a different voice, and, oh yes, a completely different face to yesterday.
Their wardrobe now contains clothes in a different size. Even pre-existing photographs of the person are seen to have strangely morphed to reflect the individual's new features, as though they have always looked like this.
I can't help but infer that some unseen force has not just subtly changed their appearance and the length of the fabrics that they wear, but silently seeped back through their entire life history too.
Sometimes even the series' opening credits will have been refilmed with the new actor performing the same actions and pose as their predecessor.
A few years ago there was a rather brilliant season-opener of Due South, in which Constable Fraser spent much of the episode building-up a whole portfolio of why this complete stranger could not possibly be his cop partner Ray Vecchio. It was the only way he could express his exasperation to his apparently oblivious colleagues.
But I guess it goes back to the theatre. When an actor falls ill half-way through a performance, then the understudy takes over and the audience graciously suspends their disbelief to help them do their job.
Of course, thankfully, nothing like that can ever happen in a comicbook.
Unless there's a new artist.
Fig. 1: Peter Parker and his new new wife, Mary Jane.
Author David Michelinie may enjoy removing Spider-Man from his everyday life (in this story he goes to New Jersey), but swapping his wife for another one is messing with his head too much.
Curse you, Mephisto!Labels: comics
Script: James Owsley
Pencils: Steve Geiger
Inks: Keith Williams
Lettering: Rick Parker
Color: Gregory Wright
This issue of Spider-Man is a superhero-action-comedy-thriller-slasher-whodunnit set in a fairground and guest-starring Dakota North.
Anything else? Hey, they only had 23 pages, y'know!
Steve Geiger's layouts carry all the intensity of a tightly-edited movie, cramming pages 18 and 19 with eight whole panels each, and page 21 with twelve! With so much action, it's almost like reading a storyboard.
I must admit that I didn't see the ending coming, although in fairness, despite being a 23-pager, it does finish very abruptly.Labels: comics
Writer: Peter David
Pencils: Sal Buscema
Sin-Eater - the guy who murdered Spider-Man's friend Jean DeWolff - is back, but only in everyone's imaginations.
Specifically, in Spider-Man's.
When Sin-Eater's alter ego Stan Carter is actually released from prison, an incensed Spider-Man breaks into his home to threaten him. There he finds that the repentant Stan is now a decrepit shell of a man. He stutters compulsively, cannot stand unaided, and is also half-deaf, protesting that he cannot lip-read Spider-Man through his mask.
Speaking up, our webbed hero demands to know what on Earth has been done to Stan.
It turns out that, after his arrest, Stan got beaten up. Pretty severely. By you, Spider-Man.
Oh... yeah...
As you can see, Stan is the other person for whom Sin-Eater lives-on in the imagination.
In addition to all the injuries that Spider-Man inflicted, Stan has now developed a schizophrenic second personality, creating a fascinating juxtaposition of viewpoints.
Throughout these three issues, the good Stan argues and fights with Sin-Eater in his mind.
Also throughout these three issues, Spider-Man repeatedly threatens the defenceless Stan, for Stan is still Sin-Eater in Spider-Man's imagination.
The really crazy irony is that, although they're both wrong, they're also both right.
Stan's personality has repented of his crimes, but his second personality hasn't.
Spider-Man is clearly wrong to threaten a defenceless man who he has crippled, but he is right that Stan is still secretly the Sin-Eater.
Clearly there cannot be a satisfactory resolution this conflict, because Stan's innocence/guilt is not an either/or value, but a both/also one.
It turns on its head the idea of a jury finding Stan, or anyone, simply either guilty or not guilty. In this story, there are gradients to both Stan's and Spider-Man's respective guilts, as indeed there are to even Stan's identity. Good and evil are not mutually exclusive - they come together, in different amounts.
I guess that's why we also have to have judges.Labels: comics
Just for a change, these people are not zombies.
They are not possessed, they share no group-consciousness, and they are the same people on the inside as they appear to be on the outside. They just happen to stand like this - motionless, silent and staring - for a over a minute because they each individually choose to.
(a couple of them do get fleeting lines of dialogue)
Well, that's a relief.
Broadcast in the week following Halloween, The Eternity Trap is a well-written, well-directed and well-played science-fiction ghost story, but without much of an ending. As usual, Sarah handily builds a machine which just undoes everything that's happened so far.
Sarah: "The accelerator was synchronised with Darkening's energies. When the magnetic field destroyed him, it must have overloaded sending Professor Rivers back."
Clyde: "Well what about all the others?"
Sarah: "They wanted to be released. [At] least their nightmare is over. Well I can't leave Darkening's device as it is. Have to take care of it, permanently." (PRESSES A BUTTON ON HER LIPSTICK WHICH DESTROYS IT)
Rani: "What about Lord Marchwood and his children? Do you think they found each other?"
Sarah: "I don't know."
Yep, that wraps up everything. Including whatever Professor Rivers remembers.
In continuity news, as well as the return of Rivers from the Pharos Institute, K-9, Luke and Mr Smith take the episode off, while Sarah doesn't seem to remember The Ghosts Of N-Space, which I think is a bit of a shame.
Sarah's successful conversion of Toby's belief in ghosts into a belief in aliens seems, well, a little closed-minded, as does her blind faith in science. A better ending would have been for them both to have learnt something from each other.
Still, there are funny moments in this, even if the incessant music does still try its darndest to stop them.Labels: doctor-who, tv
Original concept by Scott Adams and John Byrne
Script: Bill Mantlo
Breakdowns: Mark Gruenwald
Inks: John Romita
Lettering: Joe Rosen
The very first issue of a quarterly series of 12 comics, closely tying-into a quarterly series of 12 computer games, both of which would sadly conclude with #3, when said games-company went bust.
Given the originality of Questprobe's concept, I think that's a real shame.
I can't comment on the contents of any of the games, having never played them, but the comics function pretty well even in isolation.
This opening chapter brings us the plight of Durgan, an alien whose pacifist planet is facing annihilation at the hands of the approaching Black Fleet. Durgan finds himself grimly trying to decide which is the greater wrong - to fight the invaders, or to let his people be killed by them?
Durgan: "There MUST be some way to resist such destruction without renouncing the very pacifism that is the soul of our race! But, no... if we fight, we lose our souls, yet if we don't fight, we lose our lives!"
The dichotomy is almost too much for him, but at least he has one. Everyone else on his world appears resigned to just doing nothing, though fortunately not to the point of fighting him over it.
Ultimately he sets out to, it seems, duplicate the powers of various super-beings on Earth in order to literally give his people a fighting chance.
And so we come to gamma-irradiated giant of the cover.
Hold on, does the rampaging Hulk really count as a 'hero'? Well, in this one he does. Anyone really familiar with the character will know that while ol' green-skin does tend to get rather annoyed with people a lot, he usually has some sort of reason.
At the other end of his temper, towards the close of this story, he spots four rafters drowning, and immediately dives-in to save them, even despite it requiring his defeat at the Chief Examiner's hands.
Yep, hero.
There's another nice moment after the Hulk has entered a high-up cave and transformed back into Dr. Robert Bruce Banner again. Knowing nothing of his location, Dr. Banner innocently sprints out of the cave only to find himself suddenly dropping into a dizzying freefall.
I guess that sort of thing must happen to him a lot...
Anyway, although there looks to be a different Marvel hero appearing every issue, this is no perpetually repeating format being set-up here. There's clearly a big mystery all set to be unravelled over the course of the next three years, although part of me is glad that I don't have 11 more issues ahead after all.
Nothing personal, I just didn't have a need to know this puzzle's solution before I picked-up Questprobe #1, and it would be a bit consumerist of me to obediently develop that.
I guess I'm not the sort of reader who would have rushed-out to buy each computer game either:
Still, a nice comic, and very nicely written.
Available here.
Review of Questprobe #2 Featuring Spider-Man here.
Review of Questprobe #3 Featuring The Human Torch And The Thing here.
Review of Marvel Fanfare #33 here.Labels: comics
Writer: David Michelinie
Pencils: Alex Saviuk
This is the story in which Peter's boss - Joe Robertson - offers him a piece of "fatherly advice" that sounds like Peter is facing Simon Cowell on Photog Idol:
Joe: "Peter, you seem to have a chronic difficulty making a living as a freelance photographer, so maybe... well... maybe you should consider some other line of work."
Joe is perfectly happy to keep on employing Peter, he just also happens to think that Pete is incompetent at it. There's a tear in Peter's eye afterwards, probably because he knows it's true. Being Spider-Man doesn't half mess-up your time-management.
Later on, he's swinging around the city looking for something he can photograph and sell the pictures of, when he hears someone scream.
Spider-Man: (THINKS)"A scream! Music to my ears! Lord, that sounds callous!"
Not half so callous as the rest of this fairly traditional two-parter from 1987, in which Doctor Octopus threatens to kill everyone in New York using biological weapons. The base from where he will carry out this unthinkable act of terrorism is inside one of these two buildings:
'Bacillus', as you know, is a synonym for 'anthrax'.
Ohhhhh, dear, this one hasn't aged so well.
Still, we can feel encouraged from the way this all pans out for Doc Ock. Spider-Man pretends to lose the battle, (perhaps having learnt from his recent defeat at Kraven's hands) so that once the Doc is triumphant, he and his army no longer have any need to threaten the city.
Ever so slightly more heartening, when some other terrorists come along in planes and level the WTC a few years later in Amazing Spider-Man #477, Doctor Octopus seems appropriately appalled by the whole thing.
After all, even terrorists can choose to reform.Labels: comics
Labels: comics
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Pencils: Cyndy Martin
Inks: (WOSM#33) Steve Leialoha / (ASM#295) Kyle Baker / (PPTSSM#133) Joe Rubinstein
One could be forgiven for thinking that 1987 would be a good year for Peter Parker.
I have to admit that after his honeymoon in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #7, I expected him to get home to a slew of stories surrounding his newlywedded life with Mrs. Mary Jane Watson-Parker.
Instead he was promptly buried alive for two weeks, before now getting shot and admitted to a mental institution for thinking that he's Spider-Man. Before you ask, he's pumped so full of drugs that his powers, and much of his memory, are useless. He's not so much the anti-hero in this, as the un-hero.
They really should have taken these nine cross-series issues and run them all in The Oppressive Spider-Man.
If Kraven's Last Hunt had been originally commisioned to run in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, then this story looks to have been conceived for Web Of Spider-Man, given how once more isolated Parker is from his usual world.
Far from his usual fighting to keep his identity secret, here he can tell anyone that he's Spider-Man without being believed. Here he's not generally considered on his own merits, but on those of the other people around him. That doesn't sound fair in any context.
It would be really nice if Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz from Amazing Spider-Man had put-together the next three issues, but alas.
Sheesh, unless we get to see Peter settling down to his new life with MJ soon, Mephisto won't need to erase the marriage from everyone's memories in issue #545.
I gotta tell you, at this stage in Spider-history, it already doesn't seem to have happened.Labels: comics
Writer: J M DeMatteis
Artists: Mike Zeck & Bob McLeod
Lettering: Rick Parker
Colors: Janet Jackson, (WOS#31) Bob Sharen, (WOS#31) Mike Zeck
It's Spider-Man's darkest hour, erm, fortnight.
Well, he does spend it buried alive six feet under.
Heck, he's not even in part two, and part three only features one panel of his hand at the end!
J M DeMatteis' take on the world of Spider-Man takes the emphasis firmly off of the man and onto the spider. The result is an unpleasant playground, and yet these six issues also form the most perfect Spider-Man tale I've ever read.
Throughout, the entire creative team fires on all cylinders. DeMatteis' script delves deep into the characters' psyches, making little sense at times, but with so much conviction that I'm persuaded that this must be my own shortcoming.
Mike Zeck's pencils and Bob McLeod's inking amalgamate to conjure up some truly disturbing imagery. Perhaps the most extreme panels come in the first part on pages 10 and 11, when a naked Kraven stands up to his waist in spiders, cramming them into his mouth until the blood seeps out through his teeth. Later issues feature spiders swarming together to form a giant one to attack him as, the decomposing ghost of Ned Leeds, and Peter Parker heaving himself out of the bloody corpse of a giant dead spider.
Marvel UK were never going to reprint this with Fraggle Rock as a back-up strip.
Well, maybe they would have allowed-through the advert-strip on the back that featured Earth's heroes teaming-up with Meatloaf over a charity record in aid of the Special Olympics, but they would probably have rewritten Meatloaf's name as 'Jimmy Nail' or something.
Rick Parker also puts his heart and soul into the lettering, renewing the font depending upon who is currently speaking. Janet Jackson likewise colour-codes the narration-boxes to further clarify each unseen protagonist.
The overall combined effect of all this is rather like that of watching a highly stylised indie movie, (with a nice advert afterwards) complete with jump-cuts, parallel editing and sound-effects that you can hear really clearly. Several pages in the first issue end by wordlessly cutting to a gravedigger in the rain, with the single onomatope "SHUK".
Also, part three contains a brief interlude in which Mary Jane visits Joe Robertson, and I found the relief of these two pages reminiscent of watching something directed by David Lynch. Amidst all this grim chaos, a scene that actually read like a regular issue was compellingly peaceful. Lynch taunts you like that sometimes. (I was reading all six parts through in a single sitting)
Yet despite all my raving on about what a brilliant assault on the senses this whole thing seemed between 4-5am this morning, the sad truth is that when I bought these issues at age 16, they heavily contributed to my stopping reading Marvel Comics.
I was already tip-toeing through storylines to avoid learning the events of Secret Wars II out of sequence, but I distinctly recall part four page seven, because that was the point at which I gave up in boredom.
Peter Parker was having a trippy nightmare about crawling naked and bloodstained through a long dark tunnel. However this made no sense to me at that age, and wasn't the remotest bit fun. I believed that a dream-sequence should be ridiculous and silly, just like Peter David had been writing them.
Judging from subsequent letters-pages, I wasn't alone in my overall disappointment.
I do think that the thing that Marvel really got wrong about this story though, was the way in which it was published.
This whole super-polished odyssey had been commissioned for printing in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, which in recent years had been cutting-out an identity as the place for Spider-Man's darker, more adult adventures. Great.
Alas, when Jim Salicrup took over the editorial reins from Jim Owsley, the decision was taken to instead strip this six-parter across all three Spider-titles, for two months.
Hence the reading order, instead of being simply:
Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #131-136
became:
Web Of Spider-Man #31
The Amazing Spider-Man #293
Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #131
Web Of Spider-Man #32
The Amazing Spider-Man #294
Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #132
I've no idea what the reasoning behind this decision was. Maybe they worried that readers wouldn't understand Spider-Man's death in one title while continuing with his adventures in the other two, but Marvel-buyers were well-used to reading several asynchronous storylines simultaneously. Maybe they were concerned about getting one title stuck in a potentially unpopular rut for six entire months, and losing regular readers, but again, there were two other ongoing Spidey-titles to catch them.
Instead, the readership of all three monthlies got a bit shaken.
I guess it probably worked better in the US, where the three series were each published in different weeks of the month. This enabled the entire six-part story to be bought and followed almost like a weekly comic.
Here in the UK however, we would receive each whole month of Marvel publications in our shops on the same day. Waiting for that particular day every four weeks when a huge doorstep of comics would materialise on the newsagent's shelf in an elastic band was probably a bigger deal, and the damage of the comics therein not delivering on our hopes therefore maybe greater.
Perhaps this really should have been a six-part stand-alone limited series? Only enthusiasts bought those. And, let's be honest, only enthusiasts would really have been interested in reading this.
Still, aside from messing-up the subsequent collected-edition reprints of those three monthly series, that's all fairly irrelevant today.
I don't generally like miserable, gritty horror-stories, but even I am overwhelmed by the sheer quality of these half-a-dozen mags. Spider-Man doesn't even win in it - Kraven actually beats him. How breaking-the-mould is that?
Like I said above, I think it's Spider-Man's most perfect story, but I'm so glad it wasn't like this every issue.
I would never have read that.Labels: comics
Plot: (ASMA#21) Jim Shooter
Writer: (ASM#290-292, ASMA#21) David Michelinie, (PPTSSMA#7) James C Owsley
Pencils / Layouts: (ASM#290-291) John Romita, JR., (ASM#292) Alex Savilik, (ASMA#21) Paul Ryan, (PPTSSMA#7) Alan C Kupperberg
Inks / Finishes: (ASM#290-292, ASMA#21) Vince Colletta, (PPTSSMA#7) Jim C Fern & Al C Milgrom
Over the last 50 years, there have been just three really pivotal Spider-Man comics:
1. The first one - Amazing Fantasy #15. Pivotal because of the amount of money that Marvel has since saved by reprinting it through the decades.
2. The Amazing Spider-Man #121 - the death of Gwen Stacy. I don't think I've ever actually read that one, but boy do I know how it all goes down. Well, most of the way.
3. Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 - Peter Parker's wedding to Mary Jane Watson.
Of the three, the turkey is the one that should have been the most polished.
It's probably not the creative team of the day's fault though.
The preceding couple of years had seen regular author Tom DeFalco building so much trust into Peter and MJ's closening friendship, that their relationship had been naturally chugging along and developing at its own pace. Sure, things like love, engagement and marriage were easy to foresee for these two somewhere down the road, but I don't think anyone expected those three things to all happen to them within the space of the same fortnight.
Had these life-events been explored over a longer term, then not only would we have had the chance to root for Peter and MJ, but we might also have had the opportunity to savour and enjoy this happy period in their lives. As it is, even they didn't get much chance to enjoy it.
Alas, in 1987 the word had came through that the Spider-Man comic-strip running in the newspapers would be featuring the webslinger getting wedded that year. Suddenly, to keep the Spider-canon intact, the comicbooks had to do some very, very quick catching-up...
It didn't help that DeFalco's tenure on the magazine had concluded shortly before this rather major plot-development. Incoming author David Michelinie is a fine writer, and here continues his successful ploy from his run on Web. That of isolating Spider-Man from his natural NY habitat, in this instance by packing him off to Pittsburgh for two issues to meet MJ's estranged family. Good call.
However there's just no masking that with someone else now scripting their speech-balloons, the traditional rapport between Peter and MJ rather suddenly flattens, giving way to dialogue that makes them sound more like just any old generic young couple. With that emotional distance replacing the warm banter that we've come to expect of Pete and MJ, their impending rush-wedding feels like a huge mistake, and a hard one to fathom the motivation for.
Thanks to some confused plotting, poor Aunt May only learns of her beloved nephew's engagement after Pete's colleagues at the Daily Bugle have all thrown a party for him. Talk about being the last to find out.
Having earlier been denied seeing Peter's reaction to MJ's acceptance of his proposal, even the street-ceremony itself only enables us to witness a mere four panels of the actual service, while the reception also lets us attend for just another four. I'd argue that this series' main strength lies in its huge and well-realised cast of supporting characters, however most of them are just not present here, or even mentioned.
What of all those other girls who Peter could potentially have got something going with? His sunset-sharing neighbour Bambi, his challenging colleague Joy Mercado, and of course his ex Felicia Hardy - how did this go down with any of them?
For the final issue - The Honeymoon - James C Owsley takes over the scripting reins, and we finally get a good chance to pause and soak-up the newlyweds' 36-page French holiday.
The comedy and the characterisation are back in evidence here, particularly with Pete's simmering anger throughout. When, in the restaurant at the end, he finally loses his temper with would-be employer Thomas Fireheart, while all of Mary Jane's friends are cheering him on, there's a real sense that everything is going to be all right from now on after all.
Which, debatably, for about 20 years it was.
Still, I'll say this for the newspaper strip that indirectly caused this enormous five-issue fumble back in 1987:
At least in that series they're still married!
:)Labels: comics
Script: Peter David
Breakdowns: Rick Buckler (#119)
Finishes: Bob McLeod (#119)
Penciler: Dwayne Turner (#123)
Inker: Art Nichols (#123)
Artist: Alan Kupperberg (#128-129)
Letterer: Rick Parker
Colorist: D Martin (#119), Nel Yomtov (#123), Bob Sharen (#128), Julianna Ferriter (#129)
Taking a whopping eleven months to tell a four-part story (yay for filler-issues, apparently) this is the tale of the Black Cat's collaboration with the Foreigner to ruin her ex-boyfriend Spider-Man.
Foreigner: "My name is Rafael Sabitini. But I'm better known simply as 'Foreigner.'"
Spider-Man: "Foreigner, huh? Gee, I have all your albums."
It's the Foreigner's first chance to really shine in the series, and he comes across as almost as much of a magician as an assassin, repeatedly making misdirection his weapon of choice.
For example, over several years, we are told, he has been employing some 24 different people to impersonate Police Chief Chris Keating. Also, even with the power to hypnotise his opponent (another magician-trait), the Foreigner seems keen for Spider-Man to retain the memory of having lost his fight to a teleporter.
Between this guy, Puma and Silver Sable, Spidey seems to currently be attracting villains who like to play everything cool.
Meanwhile, perhaps due to the dizzying rotation of artists, the Black Cat gets a hideous new look, appropriately transforming her image from that of a kitten to a cat.
Before:
After:
Wha' haaappened???
She later puts on a pointy mask, but that really doesn't help any. *shiver*
In fact, throughout her return to the pages of Peter Parker (begun back in #112), Felicia Hardy gets through several different looks, the last of which is just a bikini and sunglasses, possibly because by that point she has little else left. *shiver* (she's outdoors at the time)
Anyhow, her plan to exact revenge upon her ex ultimately fails, mainly because her feelings of betrayal by him eventually become outweighed by her feelings of attraction. I haven't called that 'love' for a whole heap of reasons, but mainly because she's only ever seemed to like Spider-Man for the good feelings she gets from him. Those seem to be more feelings for her own well-being, so perhaps in retrospect it's not such a bad thing that she left the series when she did. (a few weeks later, Peter suddenly married Mary-Jane)
Elsewhere in these issues, there are some nice crossovers with the ongoing storyline of sister-mag The Amazing Spider-Man, particularly in #129 when Flash Thompson escapes from hospital to try and snap Betty out of her denial over her husband's recent death. (ironically also engineered by the Foreigner) I read these issues where they seem to take place among that other series, and it was easy to forget which title I was in.
Finally, a word about science in the Marvel universe:
It's way ahead of ours.
Sometimes I forget this. For example, on the cover of #128 above you can see Silver Sable's men attacking Spidey from some giant floating discs. It gives the impression that this issue is going to be set in the year 3000 or something. No, just 1987 as usual.
But hey, rarely is a Marvel cover accurately representative of the pages that it enfolds. For example, if you take another close look at that same artwork above, you'll also see that Spider-Man is firing a web from the TOP of his right wrist.
Yep, apparently his alien costume is back too.Labels: comics
Story: Len Kaminski
Pencils: Alan Kupperberg
Inks: Kupperberg and co.
Letters: Rick Parker
Colors: Nelson Yomtov
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Ed. In Chief: Jim Shooter
Although it guest-stars the Lizard, under the surface this seems to be something of a Hulk story.
Dr Curt Connors is still periodically transforming into the green scaly reptile for which he is more famous. He's recently realised that his lizard-form is a manifestation of his own rage, which he is seeking to control. Spider-Man ponders the paradox of not being able to seriously harm the lizard, because there is a real human being inside.
I can hear that lonely piano music now...
At this stage in his journey, Dr Connors is even able to assume the lizard form while retaining his own mind, similar to a recent (now completed) turn of Dr Bruce "Hulk" Banner's. Connors still finds himself struggling to keep all his anger capped though, which is difficult, given that his estranged wife and young son are being threatened with murder by the Owl.
In the final scene, Spider-Man has to decide whether to leap in and try to save the villain from getting mauled by the Lizard, or step back and trust that Dr Connors will be able to keep his fury in check. Spidey knows that it's not just the Owl's life that's riding on this, but also any potential healing of the Connors' marriage. Martha and Billy are also looking on, hoping against hope to witness Curt's higher will succeeding over his lower.
Fortunately for everyone, it does.
The final panels don't paint an easy picture, but a believable and encouraging one. Martha still takes Billy and leaves Curt on his own, but there is now at last the possibility for some reconciliation and forgiveness in the future.Labels: comics
Writer: Danny Fingeroth
Penciler: (#125) Jim Mooney, (#126) Alan Kupperberg
Inkers: (#125) Vince Colletta, Art Nichols and co.
Letterer: Rick Parker
Colors: (#125) Bob Sharen, (#126) George Roussos
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Editor In Chief: Jim Shooter
It's Spider-Woman! She's as good as Spider-Man! Honestly!
Riiight.
Whether or not Spider-Woman started out as just a female rip-off of Spider-Man, by the mid-1980s she'd arguably developed an original identity of her own.
On the one hand, inside the costume she wasn't even Jessica Drew anymore.
By 1987 we were onto the second Spider-Woman - Julia Carpenter. She was a single mum on the run from the law, while trying to earn a government pardon by going on top secret missions for them. (a bit like Alias Smith And Jones, or the final series of The A-Team)
However the US government, as everyone knows, is corrupt, and was determined to milk her desire to see her daughter again for as many missions as they could blackmail out of her.
If this super-heroine wasn't a tragic enough character already, although she generally appeared quite small and friendly, on occasion she could also look unintentionally terrifying.
That hair must prove really cumbersome in a battle. What if she gets into a fight with another girl who pulls it? I think Spider-Woman should wear a hairnet.
Still, on the other hand, despite all these attempts to make her so different to Spider-Man, one just can't help but notice that black costume she's wearing above. Although in the storyline it was retconned into having inspired Spider-Man's one, the inescapable truth is that, production-wise, it was published six months after his.
I guess it didn't help that she also could stick to walls and weave webs.
In fact, and now I feel like I'm just being cruel, the woman with the ripped-off name wearing the ripped-off costume and displaying the ripped-off powers didn't even have her own comic.
Her entire two-year storyline was lived-out in guest-appearances in other heroes' series. If you were into this new Spider-Woman, then chasing-down all her episodes was a bit like trying to watch any US TV series on BBC-1. The next part could show up anytime.
So despite Marvel's best attempts, in 1987 Spider-Woman was still a somewhat half-hearted character.
For which we all liked her anyway. She was brilliant. Precisely because of all of the above.
In fact, this two-parter in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man fairly sets the scene for her very own long-awaited upcoming mini-series.
More than anything else, it's clear that she's driven by her love for her daughter, and this is nicely juxtaposed here with the villain's (Dirk Garthwaite - The Wrecker) relationship with his mum.
When he learns that she's passed-away without ever having heard that he was considering going straight, it absolutely destroys him. Although not quite the same thing, the similarity with Julia's continued passivity to her bosses is that they have both been letting their respective situations remain unresolved for too long. A tricky thing to maintain across several different titles.
As you may have gathered above, I think that author Danny Fingeroth does a first-rate job of wringing-out the angst here.
It is, however, a shame that the plot also depends upon the Wrecker accidentally dropping his diary on a rooftop, and Peter Parker coming-into a completely unforeshadowed $2,000 at the end. Just skip that last page and a half.
Finally, three words about the artwork.
1. Does the Wrecker look just a tad like David Hasselhoff to you?
2. And is this doctor's name meant to be McCoy?
3. The covers. They're exceptional. Or they were in the UK anyway.
Normally the regular US distribution of Marvel Comics featured a bar code added into the bottom left-hand corner of each cover:
However when shipped to specialist comic shops and overseas, including to here in the UK via distributor Comag, these white boxes would instead be filled with a black-and-white image of a potentially appropriate Marvel character. For example, Spider-Man in his black costume got particularly well-used, regardless of his outfit or even appearance in the issue:
However just occasionally, as with these two issues, the cover artists (Bob Hall and Al Milgrom) got a bit inventive. Faced with only being able to print a monochrome image in that box, just look at how creatively they got round it...
Genius.Labels: comics
"I don't give a hollow sneeze in Hades what the boss is doing! That ice-blooded shyster's seeing me NOW!"
- Lee Camino, Chairman of Sterling Motors
Story: Dwight Jon Zimmerman
Art: Dave Simons
Lettering: Rick Parker
Colors: Marie Severin (good choice of colorist for Headhunter)
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Editor In Chief: Jim Shooter (poor choice of Editor In Chief for Headhunter)
Headhunter hunts heads. If Headhunter hunted a hundred heads an hour, how many heads would Headhunter have hunted? (repeat ten times quickly)
Surprise surprise, this month Headhunter hunts Spider-Man's head.
My natural disinterest in the lopping-off of a person's noggin aside, I have to admire the way in which he goes about this.
Spider-Man is lured into a room. Here he's deafened by feedback. Then his web-shooters are wrecked by naval jelly (phosphoric acid). Then he's blinded by magnesium. Most spider-villains require super-powers of some kind, but not H Edward Hunter. He defeats Spider-Man by going shopping.
I hope he doesn't read the labels too closely though. In the occassionally surreal world of artist Dave Simons, those containers might say just about anything. Just look at what he's sneakily written on the picketers' placards outside the New York courthouse... (I'm assuming it was him)
"UAW LOCALS ON STRIKE"
"STERLING MOTORS UNFAIR"
"BURMA SHAVE"
"QWERTY"
"IATSE" (The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes)
"WE WANT STUFF"
Was he trying to get a whole poem up there?Labels: comics
Story & pencils: Larry Leiber
Inks: Vince Colletta
Lettering: Rick Parker
Color: Julianna Ferriter
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Editor In Chief: Jim Shooter
I always find it a bit of a surprise when aliens show up in the Marvel Universe.
I mean, with all that creativity being channeled into the lives of the terrestial characters, what possible originality can a being from space bring to proceedings? Super powers? Advanced technology? They're just not going to impress anyone.
Well actually they might. Despite all the routine bizarreness of Earth 616, Spider-Man still has trouble finding a cop who will believe him.
Anyway, the races at war around the planet Cygnorion seem to have been designed with a deliberate campiness to them. Green skin, cloaks, the ability to take over humans and turn them into zombies, you name it. On the opening page, even the narration seems to be sniggering to itself.
Alien on screen: "I will transport the Cosmultigizer* to you at once!"
Narration box: Cosmic multi-energizer.
Said Cosmultigizer, or Cosmultigiser (sheesh aliens, if you're gonna all speak in our language then please learn it) is basically a superweapon. It winds up on Earth, and there's a bit of a runaround between several parties after it, including the guy in a black costume that's based upon an alien one.
When, at the end, Spider-Man is dubiously giving-up the weapon to an intergalactic peace-merchant called Vaalu, he stops to ask a fairly reasonable question. The somewhat inspired answer that he receives floors him a bit.
Spider-Man: "Wait -- how can I be sure that you're not as evil as Xanja -- that you won't wreak havoc with this thing?"
Vaalu: "You can't! But tell me... do you really want to keep the ultimate cosmic weapon on this world of nuclear stockpiles, terrorist organizations, international crime cartels, pervasive drugs, and every other corruption conceived by the human mind?!"
Spider-Man: "You've made your point!"Labels: comics
Writer: Roger Stern
Artists: John and Sal Buscema
Letterer: John Workman
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Don Daley
Editor In Chief: Jim Shooter
Heroes all!
Special thanks to Peter Sanderson (#300)
Four issues chronicling Ben Grimm coming to terms with the engagement of his ex-girlfriend Alicia Masters to fellow teammate Johnny Storm.
Perhaps hurried on by the looming issue #300, the creators don't give anybody much time to make this transition. Not that anyone's motivation is flawed as a result, just that a lead character's wedding is a pretty big milestone, and one that I would have expected them to explore a bit more. Issue #300 - the wedding itself - isn't even a double-issue, although the strip does enjoy a whole two extra pages.
With that hugely-trumpeted collectors' edition, they also finally got the stapling sorted out. My copies of issues #297 and #298 have been nailed at a slight angle, while #297-299 all boast covers with margins. At 40p a pop, this is clearly absolutely outrageous.
The actual contents of issue #299 are a delight though. There are no villains, aliens or threats to anyone's survival, it's just everyday life in the FF. Better yet, in the mighty Marvel tradition of storytelling, it also manages to pack-in several flashbacks, an extensive guest-appearance by the amazing Spider-Man, and the pivotal opening of the group's new headquarters - 4 Freedoms Plaza. (presumably located opposite 3 Freedoms Plaza)
For a story-arc about about a super hero's engagement, how refreshingly mundane, and therefore escapist.Labels: comics
Script: Roger McKenzie
Penciler: Greg LaRocque
Inker: Art Nichols
Letterer: Rick Parker
Colorist: Bob Sharen
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Editor In Chief: Jim Shooter
Unkind as it may sound, there is little that is exciting about a fill-in issue.
You wait a whole month to find out what will happen next to your favourite characters, only to get a completely self-contained story in which no-one remembers any of the things about themselves that you can.
It's a huge irony that these issues were written with the intention that they would be able to conceivably follow on from any issue. Alas, as real life rarely operates in this bubble-like fashion, these stories have the opposite effect, adding to the disbelief that you have to suspend. Even worse, you know throughout that the final page is going to neatly resolve everything, rendering any threat contained within the preceding 21 pages ineffective.
In the mid-1980s, did Marvel just keep a stack of spare stories sitting forgotten on a shelf somewhere, ready to print the top one off the pile whenever the talent couldn't make their deadline?
If so, then I guess this one may have been at the bottom. Not because it's bad or anything (quite the reverse), but just because it seems it had been waiting there for a while.
In the story, Spider-Man's back in his red-and-blue costume again, which had been destroyed six months earlier in Web Of Spider-Man #17. His apartment hasn't burnt-down yet (which had happened a year previously in Web Of Spider-Man #11), as evidenced by the lifesize Indian dummy next to his door. Joe Robertson is once more City Editor at the Daily Bugle, a job from which he had been promoted well over two years before in Amazing Spider-Man #251.
And the villain Doctor Octopus? On page three Spider-Man refers to the "last time" they'd met, which the narration-box helpfully informs us was now all the way back in... Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15??? (at time of publication, #21 was due out presently)
Now please don't misunderstand me. This is a good all-round satisfying story, if a one-off tale is your thing. However I guess it was even more satisfying if you were the kind of reader who longed for the older, more melodramatic, way of doing things.
Yes, it seems this had been sitting on that shelf for so long, that even the style of these comics had noticably changed.
The Bugle has a Science Editor by the name of "Isabel Bunsen", who I don't think ever appeared again. (I like to think that she was related to the famous muppet) Doc Ock gets away with secretly building an atomic reactor underneath Manhattan. The whole thing ends with a 60-second countdown to detonation, which they manage to avert, but only after the clock has reached "1".
In short, this is the sort of comicbook that inspired the Austin Powers movies, and who among us can fault it for that?
Labels: comics
Plotter: Jim Shooter
Script: Stan Lee
Pencils: Barry Windsor-Smith, Kerry Gammill, Ron Frenz, Al Milgrom, John Buscema, Marc Silvestri, Jerry Ordway
Inks: Barry Windsor-Smith, Vince Colletta, Bob Wiacek, Klaus Janson, Steve Leialoha, Joe Rubenstein, Joe Sinnott
Letterer: John Workman
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Mike Carlin
Editor In Chief: Jim Shooter
In 1986, Fantastic Four's 25th anniversary edition should have been something extra-special, yet somehow it wasn't.
I guess it's because the title had grown so much in the two-and-a-half decades since its launch in 1961. I mean growth is a usually good thing, right? Of course it is, but this double-sized spectacular celebrated by returning to the comic's roots. In other words, it's very much in the style of the way things began, before all that gradual improvement took place.
For a start, it's scripted by the original author - the ever-tremendous Stan Lee. (who, granted, has no room for improvement) Pages four to nine are a lengthy flashback to the very first issue. Pages 11-13 feature Mr Fantastic firing the FF's signal-flare again.
Then the various team-members all once more drop whatever they're doing to rush back from their real-lives. The reason turns out to be one which no-one notices wasn't really that urgent after all, again just like in that very first origin story. (reprint reviewed here)
Even the villain is a rematch against the Mole Man, although this time the guts of the tale is forgiveness. (and fighting) While all the main players have something to let be, it's ironically Ben Grimm - the Thing - who has the most to forgive. I say ironic because he's the one who's suffered the most at others' hands down the years, although I suppose that's inherent where forgiveness is concerned. Maybe it's not ironic at all.
All the same, I was kind of hoping for something of the inventiveness of more recent issues.
Still, final note should go to the final notes, which are on the inside-back cover and written by Jim Shooter and the still astounding Stan Lee. Stan particularly has something to say of relevance to those of us reading this issue 23 years later in 2009...
"I loved writing it. I hope you'll love reading it. If you do, I humbly share and accept your plaudits and accolades. But if you don't, blame it on Jim! He could'a hired Irving Forbrush!
And hey, better mark your calendar now before you forget. I'll be looking for you at our next big anniversary - the 50th!"
That's... just over a year away in 2011. So, does that mean that the one and only Stan Lee is about to write another issue of the perpetually-publishing Fantastic Four?
Now that would be fantastic!Labels: comics
Script: Peter David
Pencilers: Rich Buckler, Malcolm Davis
Inkers: Mike Esposito, Bob McLeod, Art Nichols
Brendan Doyle, who's as Irish as poetry, discovers third-hand that his ex-girlfriend has given birth to his wee baby son, boyo. (really - his accent slides around all over the regions)
Fortunately we don't see the domestic barney that arises, just its consequences, specifically that the baby gets bundled out of the window and into hiding in an alleyway. Once Child Welfare has got involved, it seems that neither parent has much chance of getting the lad back again. The mum has too much of a history with the Vice Squad, while the da' gives his occupation as 'soldier of fortune'.
All this sets the scene for a big fight through various hospital sections between Spider-Man and Brendan's costumed alter-ego - The Mauler.
It's only when the cops show up and Doyle finds himself using his own son as a human shield that he realises what he's come to - that he's putting his own needs ahead of his beloved kid's.
As ever in a Peter David script, there are funny quips in this from everyone, right down to random passers-by.
The artwork does its job too, although these two panels (from pages 15-16) don't quite follow on from each other, do they?
1. The body on the table changes from a man to a woman.
2. The first panel contains a functioning electrocardiograph, while the second states the room to be "the autopsy lab". (lucky they got interrupted when they did)
3. In the second panel, a bracket appears beside the cadaver's head.
4. The two hospital employees' sleeves get longer.
Any more?Labels: comics
Story: Peter David
Art: John Romita Sr., John Buscema, Bob McLeod, Alan Kupperberg, Keith Williams, Mark Texeira
Lettering: Jack Fury
This issue is about a bank robbery, told in flashback from three different people's perspectives.
Mary Jane's version has character after character pausing to stop and tell her how beautiful she is. She also portrays J Jonah Jameson in a good light to soften him up in preparation for Peter's imminent request for a pay-rise.
Then, JJJ's commentary predictably casts himself as the hero and Spider-Man as a menace.
My problem with both of these two accounts is that the embellishments are just too exaggerated. MJ must surely be aware of how obviously she's making it up. JJJ must surely be aware of the same thing. Neither of them can possibly think that Robbie is sitting there believing them.
That a group of people will swear to contradictory accounts of the same event is well-known, but really, no-one gets it this wrong. Had the differences in their stories been more subtle, then they might just have been misremembering without being aware of it.
I can't go too hard on the plot for that though. Partly because showing the same story from several different perspectives wasn't such a common plot-device back in 1986, but mostly because this is a comedy.
Finally, Peter Parker's words on the incident directly contradict many of the pictures that accompany them, suggesting that although Peter's words are not reliable either, the artwork is.
Alas, the key word there is 'suggesting'. By the end of this issue, I couldn't be sure of anything that I'd seen on these flashback-pages, which somewhat rendered my purchase of the comic pointless.
I do think that there was the potential for a good story here, but ironically author Peter David - who is one of my favourite Spidey-writers - has left me uncertain as to exactly what it was.Labels: comics
Script: Bob Layton
Pencils: Jim Fern
The Hobgoblin is dead, killed in the climax to recent storylines in other Spider-titles.
So what better time than now to print a one-off caper in which Spider-Man battles the Hobgoblin?
Answer: any time.
A narration-box on the opening splash-page offers all the explanation that the editor seems able to be confident of:
This issue takes place before the events in Amazing Spider-Man #289
Thanks. That's great. But when before??
There are a few pointers. It's sometime after baby Osborn's hospital-stay of Amazing Spider-Man #265, and sometime before the Hobgoblin's death. (circa the above noted #289) Given Spidey's silence on the subject, it's probably before Flash Thompson's framing as Hobby too. (ASM#276)
Oh yes, and there's one other subtle clue:
The Hobgoblin ends the strip with a sling on his left arm, a cast on his right leg, a neck-brace and confined to a wheelchair.
Humm, now let's see, in which earlier issues did we also see Hobgoblin so attired? Oh that's right, in none of them.
So, given all the athletic fights that Hobby and Spidey have routinely engaged-in, exactly when would this story best fit?
I guess the answer is, as long as possible before one of those battles. Y'know, to give the Hobgoblin the maximum amount of time in which to so fully heal.
Encouragingly, both science and magic are somewhat advanced in the Marvel Universe, so the treatment of which the Hobgoblin speaks in this issue might not require that long to take effect.
However, before we start spreading our comics collections all over the floor, ASM#289 throws us another retroactive curveball.
It asserts that the Hobgoblin's secret identity all along has been Peter's colleague at the Daily Bugle Ned Leeds, who has generally been seen to be in reasonable health too. Spare a thought then, for Ned's poor unsuspecting wife Betty. She must have really wondered about those weeks when her increasingly-estranged husband refused to even stand-up.
One promising time-frame is just before Secret Wars II #7, in which Mephisto rounds-up several Marvel villains offering a different deal to each of them in exchange for their group-attack on the Beyonder. Though we see Hobby's involvement, we are not privy to the terms of his employment. Maybe it was for the restoration of his health after receiving these injuries. Those covenants were all reversed at the end of that issue though.
I haven't reached a definitive answer to this question, I guess because, without any official word that I am aware of from the writer or editor, it will always be a subjective one. However without pouring-over all the issues, I think I'd plump for straight after the above-mentioned ASM#265.
There were quite a few one-off stories getting published around that point, which suggests to me a longer period of time passing in the narrative. I know the Osborn kid looks a bit too old to be a newborn in this, but thanks to varying artists, I reckon that fluctuations in physical age are an accepted convention of the comicbook format.
Otherwise this is a perfectly decent story with clear artwork and an unusually manipulated hero. Hobby's dialogue is sheer pantomime, which could be fine, but for the character's much greater depth in his other appearances. Maybe he's just happy from taking all those painkillers. Or maybe it's all just a prank.
Or maybe it's a completely different Hobgoblin from Spidey's future...Labels: comics
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