Web Wielding Reviews provide my reviews on various Spider-Man comics throughout the decades, as well as perhaps a few other non-comic book things too. Hope you enjoy swinging through my thoughts on the world’s greatest super hero. P.S. I LOVE comments and questions so leave some as you pass by as well as call me on any facts I have gotten wrong.
Ultimate Super-Villains 14: The Wizard and the Sandman: "The Night I Almost Saved Silver Sable" - Tom DeFalco
Fine but also nothing special.
Sandman is confronted by a thug named Pound in a bar. He dominates Pound and learns that the Wizard has abducted Silver Sable and is holding her hostage. To free her Sandman must go with Pound to see the Wizard.
Sandman quickly gains the upper hand on Pound but when he attempts to infiltrate the Wizard’s HQ he’s captured. The Wizard explains this is retribution for reforming and becoming a mercenary.
Sable and her Wild Pack launch a counter offensive, freeing Sandman. Sable reveals she knew the Wizard was going to kidnap her and let it happen to collect the bounty on him.
Sandman burns down Wizard’s HQ attracting the attention of the authorities. The Wizard gets away and Sandman admits he should’ve known better than to outsmart him.
But, he thinks, what would be the fun in that?
I liked this story and I really appreciate the first person POV after all the other third person POV stories.
I also appreciate the emphasis upon a FORMER villain which is a great change of pace. Sandman is characterized very well here. This is to be expected as Sandman’s reform was handled almost exclusively by DeFalco.
I also really liked DeFalco’s effective justification for why the Wizard (and indeed other super villains) do what they do. After all a common critique of super hero yarns is that the villains would be far more successful working legitimately with their powers and tech. Here DeFalco argues that the folks who break super bad are just unsatisfied with life being that unchallenging.
I do feel it was a little short and could’ve done much, much more with the concept. It’s a common feeling across most of these stories but its fine for what it was.
Ultimate Super-Villains 13: Carnage: "Mayhem Party" - Robert Sheckley
It’s okay I guess.
This story takes place after ‘Venom: Carnage Unleashed’
A bunch of scientists attend a presentation. It’s presented by a scientist named Edward Ramakrishna and it concerns an experiment in criminal reform. Specifically an attempt to reform Carnage.
We flashback to when Edward assisted Charles Morrison, another scientist who had a theory about the Id, Ego and Superego. He believed he’d created special chemical agents that could directly affect these aspects of the human psyche.
His theory was mocked prompting him to prove himself by using Carnage as a test subject. His plan was lure Carnage out and expose him to an extra strong dose of one of the chemicals.
His plan involved several dangerous criminals who were being transported to a facility at Santa Rosa that hoped to study them and prevent further such crimes. The experiment was heavily publicized with the intent of capturing Carnage’s attention.
It works as Carnage infiltrates the facility and recruits his fellow killers to his cause. Namely obtaining the dangerous chemicals that Morrison warned them could turn people dangerous. Carnage finds Morrison and rubs the conscience enhancing chemical into his hair to seemingly no effect. However, he downs the ego enhancing chemical and becomes totally obsessed with himself. He opts to allow Morrison to evacuate him to a safe rom away from the crooks so he wouldn’t have to risk his ‘precious self’. Morrison takes him to a room with mirrors which capture Carnage’s attention and prompts him to demand solitude. Morrison wants to examine Carnage though earning Kasady’s ire. He’s slaughtered as Ramakrishna looks on.
A year later Ramakrishna explains that Morrison’s plan was to inflate Carnage’s ego to utterly that be became a total narcissist, the mirrored room thus becoming a prison. His own ego though led to his own death at Carnage’s hands.
The experiment is deemed inappropriate for any normal human beings but is acknowledged as a success, despite Morrison’s death.
Over time writers have realized the way to maximize (if you pardon the phrase) Carnage’s effectiveness is to cast him in a horror light. To this end he doesn’t fight super heroes but rather regular humans hopelessly outmatched who need to use their wits and resources to survive. This story whilst not exactly creepy or spooky plays to those strengths by having the protagonist be a regular human with a plan.
Fittingly his plan works but his own hubris is his undoing.
The story is simple and therefore effective but also feels like much more could’ve been done with the concept. Additionally the psychological concepts employed are pretty believable to my understanding.
Ultimate Super-Villains 09: Venom and the Absorbing Man: "The Deviant Ones" - Glenn Greenberg
Initially mundane then gets more interesting.
Crusher Creel/the Absorbing Man and Eddie Brock/Venom have agreed to participate in a prison experiment. The experiment will attach them via high tech handcuffs and attempt to effectively remove their super human powers. In exchange Brock will get cable and Creel will get conjugal visits from his wife Titania.
Brock’s bond with his symbiote has the unforeseen effect of knocking out power to the prison and so Brock and Creel make a break for it, their respective powers dampened though.
On the run they come across an old man named Walsh. Following the death of his wife Walsh lives alone in his relatively isolated home. Brock feeds Walsh a lie about him and Creel, successfully securing Walsh’s help. When Walsh leaves the pair alone Creel plots to kill the old man, which Brock is staunchly against.
However, the pair soon discover the body of Walsh’s wife before Creel is knocked unconscious by Walsh. The old man reveals he murdered his wife and begins to attack Brock. His blows damage the handcuffs enough to allow Brock to reconnect with the symbiote and defeat Walsh and free himself and Creel.
Upon recovering Creel attempts to absorb the symbiote’s power but didn’t reckon with it’s connection with Brock, being defeated and sent back to jail. Brock meanwhile hitches a ride to parts unknown, seeking out innocents to protect.
So I don’t have that much to say about this. The characterization is consistent with the comics. I don’t think it egregiously doesn’t fit into the characters’ respective chronologies (but then again I’m not Venom or Absorbing Man expert). And the twist towards the end made the story a lot more vital and interesting.
We also get an unusual pairing up of villains here but to Greenberg’s credit the pairing does work given how Absorbing Man is an unrepentant criminal and Brock has a moral code of sorts. Plus the idea of seeing how Absorbing Man’s powers might work upon the symbiote was an intriguing idea.
Unfortunately not enough was done with the concept, which is something you could apply to the over all story.
It isn’t that anyone is out of character, nor is it that the personalities of Creel and Brock couldn’t generate some interesting dialogue or conversation. It’s just that Greenberg foregoes that in favour of a pretty linear and simple cause and effect story.
What’s worse is that between Brock/Venom, Walsh and Creel there was a missed opportunity to make a story about relationships. Creel’s initial motivation for partaking in the experiment was conjugal visits with his wife Titania. Venom and Brock obviously has (an at least metaphorical) romantic relationship with the Venom symbiote and Walsh’s whole characterization revolves around his hatred of his dead wife.
So Greenberg had a golden opportunity to explore different dynamics in romantic (or pseudo-romantic) relationships. The irony being that in spite of Creel being a super criminal married to another super criminal and Brock being ‘involved’ with a literal alien parasite their relationships with their other halves are ultimately more positive and fulfilling than Walsh’s toxic relationship with his dead wife.
And yet Greenberg never does anything with this. Those relationships are purely functional.
CreelxTitania just explains Creel’s participation in the experiment and sets up a joke about his signature weapon.
BrockxVenom simply facilitates his and Creel’s escape and the consequent climax of the story
Walsh and his wife are just the antagonist and big twist of the story, nothing more.
I wouldn’t say this story isn’t worth checking out exactly (though probably moreso if you are unaware of the twist) but it’s kind of just there.
Oh and for Angelo Di Loreto’s narration, really solid. Every voice was distinct and fitted the characters and tone. Easily the best narrator out of the three ‘Ultimate’ anthology books I’ve looked at so far.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man 15: The Stalking of John Doe – by Adam-Troy Castro
A pretty good story but...
“In Manhattan, stormy nights are crazy nights.” Dr. Gwendolyn Harris is “working the second half of a fifteen-hour shift at the Emergency Psychiatric Unit of the Midtown Hospital and she’d seen more business in the past three hours than she’d expected to see all day.” The cops bring in a number of crazies including “the ranting little man who’d attempted to smuggle a gun into a Rick Jones concert, in what was an apparent attempt to become the next Mark David Chapman.” (You may recall that Rick Jones, former companion to the Hulk, Captain America, and Captain Marvel, was, at one point, a big deal rock star. If you don’t recall, Adam-Troy certainly does. Mark David Chapman, of course, is the man who killed John Lennon.) Shortly before nine PM, Bill The Security Guard motions Gwen over and tells her, “Cops just called. They’re bringing in another John Doe. One they say they don’t recommend placing in the general ward.” He elaborates, “he’s totally out of his head, strong as a moose, and…it took more than a dozen cops working tag-teams to wrestle him into a pair of straitjackets.”The police bring in the John Doe, “a wiry Caucasian male in his twenties, with short-cropped brown hair and eyes that could have been inviting were they not crazed…wearing nothing but a sodden pair of blue tights,” and it takes five of them to contain him.
Suddenly, the John Doe goes berserk, yelling, “He’s after me, he’ll track me down, it’s what he does, it’s what he knows, he’ll find my trail and get me,” and the cops are about to lose control of him when Gwen steps in to calm her patient down. The John Doe looks at her and calls her “Gwendy,” which takes Gwen by surprise. However, when he says, “You can’t be Gwendy. The Goblin killed Gwendy. I saw him kill Gwendy,” she knows he isn’t referring to her. Finally “John” tells her, “the Hunter, that dart he shot me with, it’s some kind of rare psychoactive snake venom derivative, making all the nightmares come back, I’m f-fighting it but…I can’t seem to focus my thoughts…is it really you, Gwendy? Please tell me it’s really you.” Gwen lies, saying, “It’s me,” and the John Doe kisses her wrist and begins to cry.After “John” is strapped on a bed in a “padded isolation cell,” police Sergeant Monaghan tells Gwen that her patient was rambling on about “lizards, vultures, tarantulas, pumas, cobras, rhinos, black cats, octopuses.”
He reports that the “psycho came out of that alley stripped to the waist, wired like all the crackheads you ever saw, screaming about the monsters. Attacked a whole bunch of folks lined up at the Cineplex, calling ‘em murderers and villains, tossing ‘em side to side like it was bowling night or something. Even jumped a poor far guy, calling him the Kingpin. When Stanley and I showed up, he almost tore us to pieces.” Stanley, one of the other cops, disagrees, saying, “He’s hallucinating, sure, and from the way he goes on, he sees enemies everywhere he looks, but even with his strength, even in a state of panic, he’s managed to resist doing anybody any serious harm…For what it’s worth, I think he’s telling the truth. I think he was dosed with something.”
The cops leave and Gwen prepares to examine her patient but she asks Gordy and Flack, two beefy security guards, to stand by.She finds John Doe muttering about Mary Jane, monsters, Felicia and the Hunter.” “[T]here was something about the way John Doe presented it, something about the conviction behind his words, that hit all three of them (Gwen, Gordy, Flack) at the base of the spine.” “John” again recognizes Dr. Harris as “Gwendy” and she tells him she needs to take a blood sample. “I wouldn’t even be in this mess if not for my blood!” he says, “That spider, messing up my life – take it all, why don’t you?...Call Morbius and have yourselves a kegger!” She takes the blood and his vital signs. He starts to tell her his name but changes his mind. When Flack tells him he’s safe from the Hunter, “John” laughs, “You don’t know what he is. He’s coming. And you won’t even slow him down.” Gwen takes the blood sample to Willie the lab tech to be analyzed for “alcohol, crack, PCP, all the other usual psychoactive agents – and one other thing. Snake venom.”As the night goes on, the weather gets nastier with destructive winds and flooding. Gwen is overwhelmed by psych cases entering the emergency room even as “the cops were besieged by screwball reports of a half-man, half-lion spotted on the rooftops.”
At last she gets the lab report on “John’s” blood. Negative for everything except snake venom. But also, Willie adds, “positive for another factor, that had screwed up all the tests until he compensated for it; a factor that was like nothing else he’d ever seen.” The blood is also “superoxygenated.” Gwen returns to the padded cell and finds “John” sitting up on the bed, having gotten out of his restraints. Instinctively, she enters without Gordy and Flack. She finds “John” more coherent but still crazed. He recognizes that she isn’t his Gwendy but also rambles on about the hunter, revealing that he was jumped and dosed and then fled to an alley where he removed his mask. Howling, “Oh, my God! My face! My face! You can see my face!” he covers it with his hands. Gwen tells him, “I don’t care who you are…I don’t care what you look like. I just want to help you.” Realizing, “the Hunter’s coming,” “John” gets up and opens the locked reinforced door “with one annoyed tug,” taking a “fairly large piece of wall” with it. He runs smack into Gordy and Flack but they are unable to stop him. Unexpectedly, however, “John” turns rather than flees, and “made an odd gesture with both hands: hands out, middle two fingers of each curled inward to tap the palm…He seemed genuinely astonished when nothing happened.”
This allows Gordy and Flack to tackle him. A third orderly joins them. “John” is still on the verge of getting away when Gwen yells “Stop!” and he does. Again warning her that “the Hunter’s coming,” he faints.This time, they restrain “John” with every device that they have. Gordy and Flack stand guard duty outside. Gwen worries that “John” may be speaking the truth. She knows, “if it weren’t possible to get reasonable people to believe the rantings of the insane, then a fair percentage of cult leaders and politicians would have been out of work.” But even knowing that, “she couldn’t stop thinking about the Hunter.” Later, she asks the lab tech if the John Doe could be “a paranormal.” “You mean like the Thing?” he says, “Or Captain America? Or one of those guys?” then follows with, “If he was a mutant…you’d need DNA tests for a definitive diagnosis If he was paranormal in some other nonphysical way, there’s usually not much you can do to tell.” This conversation is interrupted when Bill the Security Guard tells them, “Some crazy off the street” has entered the hospital. “Tall, muscular guy, Russian accent, wearing leopard-skin tights and a skinned lion’s head for a vest, if you can believe that…He said he was the hunter and said he’d go wherever he chose to go.
The cops who tried to detain him for questioning are now being worked on in the emergency room. So’s some poor guy in the elevator who gave him a lecture about the evils of wearing fur.” Gwen knows the Hunter has arrived. She has Bill barricade the door to the Psych Unit and tells him to prepare to shoot anyone who enters. From his cell, the John Doe starts screaming and pounding on the door, without anyone telling him about the oncoming danger. Gwen sends Gordy and Flack to help Bill. Then she hears “John” ripping the padding off the walls, in order to eliminate its blow-suffusing effects. Gwen, who knows “John” is her only hope, wishes they hadn’t assisted in weakening him. Soon after, “John” tears the door away and, weak and feverish, he confronts Gwen. He tells her he needs gauze to conceal his face from the Hunter. “His eyes were wide, pleading…and sane.” Gwen acts without hesitation, helping him to the supply room where she wraps his head. Then the Hunter arrives.“John” goes out to face him and Gwen follows soon after.
There she experiences the full force and power of the Hunter. “It would have been impossible for any living thing to look at this man and not consider itself his natural prey.” She notices that Bill, Gordy, and Flack have already been disposed of and she sees “John” “facing the Hunter in a position midway between a crouch and the confrontational stance of a boxer.” The Hunter carries “curved jaguar tusks…both dripping with something black and foul.” He lunges forward at “John” and the battle continues, their movements impossibly fast. “Then they sped up, moving with such superhuman speed that Dr. Harris found herself unable to follow it all.” After a protracted battle, the Hunter gets “John” into position for a killing blow. But Gordy “charged across the room and piled into the Hunter with every ounce of his three hundred pound musculature. Gordy had been a star quarterback in college. He’d almost made it to the pros. He didn’t even budge the Hunter.” But he does distract the Hunter long enough for “John” to disappear.Gwen feels herself lifted off the ground, “up near the ceiling…and she found herself flying back down the corridor.” She soon realizes that “John” is carrying her as he runs along the ceiling. “John” tosses her into the storage room. She sees the Hunter pass by the room and hears him catch up with “John.” She can tell that “John” has lost.
She grabs some items from the supply room and follows, only to find the Hunter “holding John Doe off the floor by his neck.” Since “one of the first things she’d ever learned was that with great power comes great responsibility,” Gwen plunges two hypos full of Thorazine into the Hunter’s neck. The Hunter knocks her across the room and growls, “Stupid woman! When I’m done with him, I’ll break..your…neck!” “John,” who still thinks of Gwen on some level as his Gwendy reacts to this. “No! Not again!” he yells and becomes an “engine of destruction.” “A new expression entered the Hunter’s eyes. Helplessness. Terror.” And eventually, the Hunter flees. “John” stops to ask Gwen if she is all right, then he follows the Hunter.In the aftermath, Gwen asks for and gets the day shift. “The fingerprints and photographs taken of the perpetrator known as John Doe quickly disappeared from the filing room at the precinct house where he’d been booked – a locked room three stories up, with a single window that did not happen to be equipped with a fire escape.” Two weeks later, Gwen finds a dozen red roses in a vase on her desk with a note taped to it.
The note reads in part, “It was one of the worst nights of my life, which is saying a lot. I’ve had some bad ones, Doctor; you’ll never know how bad. But this was one of the worst. And you were there for me. You kept me hanging on even when there was nothing to hang on to. And though part of it was your accidental resemblance to a friend long dead and gone, even that wouldn’t have been enough if not for your strength, your courage, and your compassion…Thank you.” Gwen sniffs the flowers and a spider moves from the vase to the back of her hand. “As she studied it, the little thing froze in indecision, unsure which way to run. Tsking with sympathy, she took it to a window and set it free.”
If taken wholly in isolation this wouldn’t be all that terrible. it sort o combines two typical types of super hero stories.
a) the ‘everything you believe has been a product of delusion’
And
b) the hero is locked up in an asylum
In the ways the story works it works due to ‘Gwen’ being the POV character.
But that’s also it’s weakness. I find it a little difficult to believe that a NYC resident like Dr. Harris would honestly not deduce that ‘John Doe’ is Spider-Man. Part of that is her and the other staff dismissing ‘John’ mentioning his rogue’s gallery. Surely the Goblin’s implication in Gwen’s death and ‘John’s super human strength would be enough to put two and two together.
Additionally ending the anthology with a focus upon a random new character we will never see again is kind of...well lame. In theory this could have worked as a third party observer might’ve put some grander perspective upon who Spider-Man is and what he represents.
But since Peter isn’t exactly ‘sober’ in this story it winds up being about Gwen’s gradual discovery of who her patient really is.
And it executes that well but I’m just questioning the point of it. I suppose it makes for a nice full stop for the anthology because it manages to be touches upon Spidey’s broader history. But then again...there is a particular emphasis upon Gwen.*
Again in isolation this sort of makes sense (though much moreso if this was set shortly after her death) but within the context of the anthology it’s retreading old ground. And ground trodden better before I might add (Deadly Force utilized Gwen’s death far more effectively).
Perhaps the most egregious point about the story is that it’s placed in a weird place in the book. The entire anthology is intended to move along Spidey’s timeline but this story must obviously be set before Kraven’s Last Hunt and yet the prior story must’ve been set way later than that. Essentially this should’ve been the penultimate story and the prior yarn the actual final one.
But I suspect the editors recognized that this was the much stronger story and ultimately a more fitting tale to end the anthology on.
Other than that I have little to say about this story beyond
a) The narrator finally delivered a decent performance as Spider-Man, chiefly because Peter wasn’t in his right mind and therefore wouldn’t sound himself anyway.
b) Kraven was done pretty well, in that he was scary and intimidating.
c) Maybe this story prompted Castro’s eventual Sinister Six trilogy
d) For a story called ‘Untold Tales of Spider-Man’ this story doesn’t really take advantage of the concept. This story could’ve happened at almost any time after Peter had met Felicia and before Kraven’s death and it doesn’t really explore anything new. Even the prior story had Jonah react to Alstair’s Smythe’s new body and saw him teaming up with Gargan.
Over all...it’s not a BAD story by any means but I think there are much stronger entries.
As for the anthology as a whole, it’s a mixed bag but that’s to be expected. Anthologies are rarely anything but mixed bags.
But as anthologies go I have to admit this one was superior to Ultimate Spider-Man, albeit none of the stories in this book top the best material from the USM anthology.
*That makes 3 and a half stories that emphasis Gwen and like half a story that emphasises MJ. That kinda sucks.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man 14: My Enemy, My Savior – by Eric Fein
Meh
This story’s title page features a great John Romita, Sr. illustration of J. Jonah Jameson sweating it out as he watches Spidey fighting the Scorpion on a viewscreen, with Alistair Smythe gaping at him from another screen. (We don’t know where Jonah is but will soon find out that he’s inside a spider-slayer.) That’s a good way to start.
In the story itself, J. Jonah Jameson has just won the Humanitarian of the Year Award, chosen by the citizens of New York City. After working late at the office on his acceptance speech, he climbs into his limo, heading for home. But suddenly, the limo swerves out of control, running up on the sidewalk. The driver claims he can’t release his foot from the gas and the car is not responding to his actions. When he tries to turn the ignition off, he convulses and falls unconscious. The car drives into a dead-end alley and crashes into the wall. JJJ, bloodied and dizzy, crawls out of the car. Before falling unconscious, Jonah sees “the form of a large man approaching him.”Like that scene? Here it is again from a different perspective. A man “at a control console in a dimly lit lab” watches JJJ get into his limo. He presses a button and a “spiderlike droid” attaches to the car’s rear bumper. The man pushes another button. The spider-droid shoots out “a bundle of fiber-optic tendrils.” Some of them attach to the steering column. Others bore “through the floorboard: where they grab “the driver’s right foot, attaching it to the gas pedal.” These tendrils contract, forcing the driver’s foot down on the gas. After the limo crashes, the man speaks “into a commlink,” saying, “Mr. Gargan, our prey has been subdued. Please, take the necessary action.” Those of us in the know recognize Gargan as the real name of the Scorpion. Of course, those of us who looked at Johnny’s opening illustration already know the Scorpion and Smythe are the villains in this piece.Meanwhile, Spider-Man webs his way to the Daily Bugle. He drops down into a nearby alley, changes to Peter Parker, and takes his latest pix of Spidey battling the Rhino to the city room. There he finds all sorts of frantic activity. Robbie Robertson tells him that “Jonah’s missing” and presumed kidnapped “or worse.” Kate Cushing sends Peter to the crime scene to get some photos. “I’m sure Jonah will be all right,” Peter says, “He’s a tough old goat.”Just then, JJJ wakes up, chained down on a hospital gurney in a lab. He sees “a large mechanical construct twenty feet tall and ten feet wide, surrounded by scaffolding and held up by suspension cables.” “Several smaller robots” service it. The lab’s resident reveals himself as Alistair Smythe, which makes Jonah realize that the robots are spider-slayers. Smythe tells JJJ that he has “inherited my father’s journals and his lab equipment. And I have inherited his crusade. My father’s enemies became my enemies.” And, for Jonah’s pressuring of Spencer Smythe into making more slayers, Alistair blames the publisher for his father’s death.
Then Mac Gargan joins the conversation. Smythe says he and Gargan “recently crossed paths and he explained to me how he was another victim of your crusade,” of how Jonah financed Gargan’s transformation into the Scorpion with “no thought to the psychological damage the treatments had done to Gargan.” (These guys sort of have a point.) When they learned of Jonah’s Humanitarian of the Year award, “the hypocrisy [was] too much…to swallow.” So Smythe built a giant spider-slayer designed to carry Jameson as a helpless passenger. “I’m going to arrange for you to finally be the hero you’ve spent years saying you are, by letting you destroy your favorite public enemy, Spider-Man,” Smythe tells Jonah, “Of course, there is the chance that Spider-Man will finish you off first.” With that, the Scorpion loads JJJ into the giant slayer.Some time later, Spidey is on the Daily Bugle building’s roof expecting an attack. He has received a tip from a “street source” about an event at the Bugle. “And the guy behind it was the Scorpion.” When the giant spider-slayer attacks, Spidey knows that Smythe is also involved. He grapples with the robot.
Just when he thinks he has won, the slayer jettisons four legs. One of them wraps around Spidey’s leg and administers an electrical shock. Ignoring the pain and further shocks, Spidey rips it away from his leg. Whereupon the slayer blasts a hole in the roof.Inside the slayer, JJJ winces at the destruction to his building. As the slayer burrows from floor to floor, attacking innocent people, he starts to wish that Spidey would stop the robot. “What a revelation,” says Smythe over the radio, “Rooting for your greatest enemy to succeed.” And, sure enough, Spidey yanks on some wiring and circuitry and stops the slayer, only to have a voice announce, “This mechanism will self-destruct in sixty seconds.” Hearing this, Spidey picks up the slayer, takes it to the roof, and throws it toward the East River. As soon as he does, the Scorpion attacks him. But the Scorpion also opens his big mouth, saying, “First you knock off Jameson for me, then I kick your butt.” Realizing that Jonah must be inside the slayer, Spidey puts a spider-tracer on Scorpy, snags the robot with his webbing and climbs onto its back.Even as Smythe taunts Jonah, Spidey rips the top off the slayer, climbs in and frees JJJ from his bonds.
But then the slayer lands in the river. Spidey drags Jonah, who is “unconscious and very pale” from the wreckage and brings him to shore. Just as he is about to administer mouth-to-mouth, Jonah comes to. Spidey promises to bring help and tries to web-sling away, only to find his shooters clogged up with “river muck.”The Scorpion is ready to celebrate the deaths of his greatest enemies but Smythe tells him both Spidey and JJ are still alive. “I saw you disobey my direct orders by making yourself known to Spider-Man before Jameson was dead. As a matter of fact, because of your big mouth, they’re both alive,” Smythe says, adding, “You’ve ruined everything, you thickheaded lout! I should kill you, but I have more important things to do. So just get out.” Scorpy doesn’t take well to this and attacks Smythe with a “stinger-blast.” Smythe sics his mini-slayers on Gargan. Then Spidey shows up, having followed his tracer (and he had extra web-fluid in his belt) and defeats both foes.
Rather too easily, unfortunately. As he does so, he says something that may well be the theme of this story, “Oh, here we go again, another chorus of ‘My life stinks and it’s all your fault.’ Well, let me tell you something, bug-boy, I’ve had it with you idiots. Neither one of you can admit to the fact that you’re both responsible for the shambles that your lives have become. Yeah, Jameson helped by making the offer or funding the projects. But you dopes embraced his cause all the way.”The next night, at the Humanitarian of the Year dinner, JJJ gets up and refuses the award. “It would at this point strike me as hypocritical to accept it,” he says, “having just come face to face with two villains whose origins in a small part can be traced to me.” Still, he promises to “continue to crusade against the costumed vigilantes and other superpowered crazies that they attract. Especially that menace Spider-Man, who I can assure you exacerbated the problem with Smythe and the Scorpion.” Jonah gets a standing ovation for his speech but Peter doesn’t take a photograph. He has changed to Spidey to stop “a band of heavily armed men about to break into the banquet.” And so it goes.
This story was merely okay. Pretty much every story has strived to represent an aspect of Spidey’s mythos and this story zeroes in on Jameson. What’s a bit more baffling is the story’s placement. The prior story was set in the very early 80s during O’Neil’s run on Spidey before Roger Stern. This story though could only occur after ASM #373 as that was when Spidey first encountered Smythe after he became the Ultimate Slayer.
However, given how he went into custody this makes one wonder how Jonah didn’t know about Alastair’s upgrade? I can let that go since it’s by no means the first or most egregious fo continuity errors in this anthology thus far. What’s more problematic is that we’ve jumped from like 1981 all the way to 1993. Which is doubly baffling when you consider this book was put out in 1997. For a book titles ‘Untold Tales of Spider-Man’ why would you skip over 10 years worth of material in favour of an era less than 5 years old? Surely there would be plenty of great tales to tell during the Alien Costume Saga alone, which would in turn represent the symbiotes, another iconic aspect of the Spidey mythos.
Beyond that there isn’t much to say about this story. it was kind of cool to check out Smythe and Scorpion teaming up as they are the two villains most associated with Jonah. But other than that...I mean we’ve kind of seen this before haven’t we?
It’s not that it’s poorly executed but it’s just pretty ‘same old same old’. I suppose you could say the same of ‘Livewires’ but at least that told a typical Spidey story set during an oft forgotten era with oft forgotten supporting players. This story is something we’ve seen before since the 1960s.
At the end of the day this is a story that’s skippable as far as entertainment goes but sort of necessary in terms of representing a key component of Spidey lore. From that POV it would’ve been conspicuous by it’s absence.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man 13: Arms and the Man – by Keith R.A. DeCandido
99% great!
Randall Andros, a noted writer of “celebrity life stories” (his previous book being on Tony Stark) wants his last book in his current contract to be on Dr. Otto Octavius. “[N]ot just Dr. Octopus,” as he tells his editor, “Otto Octavius. He was a respected scientist before he got his extra arms and went cuckoo. People talk about Doc Ock all the time. I want to let everyone know who Otto Octavius is.” After getting his okay, Randall decides to call his new biography, “Requiem for an Octopus: The Life of Dr. Otto Octavius.” He freely admits he “stole the title from Rod Serling.” (Serling’s teleplay is “Requiem for a Heavyweight.”) He researches Otto’s career from respected scientist to arch-criminal, leading up to his recent plan to poison the ink “that the New York Daily Bugle was printed with” (which occurs in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15, 1981. (The Continuity Guide tells us this story takes place right after that.)
His next step is to interview friends and family. He tracks down “a paternal uncle named Karl Octavius, living in Detroit, Michigan and a maternal cousin named Thomas Hargrove.” Thomas previously worked with Otto at the United States Atomic Research Center, which has since been shut down by the Department of Energy. First, he interviews former USARC employee Brian Huss who tells him about Mary Alice Anders who dated Otto “but he broke it off. Rumor has it that he got her fired, actually.” After interviewing a number of former USARC employees and getting no consensus on Octavius, Andros decides he must track down Mary Alice Anders.Soon after, Randall learns that Mary Alice (Anders) Burke and her husband Ronald “had been among the victims in a nasty car accident on the West Side Highway a month previous.
Mary Alice had survived; Ronald hadn’t.” Randall contacts the doctor at the hospital who agrees to let her know about his interest. He puts his research assistant to work tracking down Thomas Hargrove and Karl Octavius and goes to the Bugle to interview Ben Urich, Charley Snow and Jacob Conover, then J. Jonah Jameson himself (who tells him how Peter Parker once disguised himself as Spider-Man to save Betty Brant from Doc Ock). This process leads him to an old article on Octavius detailing a press conference by brain specialist Kevin Hunt who had reported that Otto had suffered brain damage. “But only three weeks ago, Hunt was interviewed on a local news program right after Octavius’s most recent capture, and he hedged a good deal more about the apparent brain damage.”Andros contacts Hunt who tells him that “while it could have been brain damage, it could also have simply been his cranial chemistry rewriting itself to accommodate these four new limbs.” He talks to Thomas Hargrove and learns little. Karl Octavius tells him, “My brother was a fat slob who married a fatter slob and they had a far slob of a kid who grew up to be a psycho chicken.” Peter Parker then contacts Randall and tells him that he not only dressed as Spider-Man against Octavius but that his Aunt once took Otto in as a boarder. Randall assesses what he has so far. “Was [Otto] insane or not? What kind of person had he been before the accident? What kind of person had he become afterward? Had he ‘become’ anything, or had he not changed?” Suddenly, these questions are in danger of remaining unanswered as the lawyers move in.
Mary Alice Burke’s lawyer tells him she is suing Otto and shouldn’t talk. The Vulture’s lawyer also tells him his client will not speak. And Octavius’ lawyer gets a court-ordered “cease and desist with my research” because it could prejudice Otto’s trial.Soon after, Randall’s editor calls to tell him that he must pick another subject for his book but that Octavius wants to talk to him. “No tape recorders, no lawyers, no notes, just a conversation.” Even with the book cancelled, Randall can’t pass this up. He goes to Ryker’s Island where he meets Dr. Octopus. After demanding to know why Randall wants to write a book about him, Otto agrees to answer some questions. In the short interview, Octopus implies that the explosion that fused him to his tentacles was no accident. When Randall brings up Otto’s mother, the criminal quickly ends the conversation.Heading home, Randall decides that “the man I had talked to was many things, but crazy just was not one of them.” He tries to get a handle on Octopus but cannot. “Maybe it wasn’t possible,” he thinks, “Maybe you had to be like him to understand him. And I did not want to be like him. The very idea made my flesh crawl.”
When Randall returns home, he finds a man in his apartment. The man pulls a gun, says, “My name’s Niner. We got a mutual acquaintance in common, Mr. Andros. Name of Otto. He wanted to send a message to people who mess around with his life,” and then shoots. Randall lies bleeding on the floor, expecting to die. But then Spider-Man shows up at his window. As Spidey explains, “My old buddy Peter Parker said you were writing a bio of Doc Ock. I came by to chat about it – and tell you to pick another subject. Looks like I’m too late.” Randall asks Spidey why he’s always fighting Octopus. Spidey replies, “[P]art of it’s a kind of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God thing. I got my powers from radiation just like he did, but it didn’t make me nuts.” Randall grabs Spidey by his costume and tells him, “Listen!...Ock’s not nuts. I talked t’him, I listened t’him. Not insane. He’s aware of actions, he just doesn’t care.” Then he passes out.Randall wakes up in the hospital, brought there by Spidey. While there, he receives roses from Spidey with a note, “Best wishes for a speedy recovery. I hope you’re wrong.” When he leaves the hospital, Randall quits biography for fiction, never writing the last book in his contract. “And when I think back over my life – a frequent occurrence since almost losing it – I come to the same conclusion: the dumbest thing I ever did was tell my editor that I wanted my next book to be on Dr. Otto Octavius, aka the super-villain Dr. Octopus.”
This story is over all really good. The points of contention lie with the fact that Otto’s murder of Captain Stacy is such a huge plot point when in reality Otto didn’t kill Captain Stacy, he died in an act of self-sacrifice. Additionally I feel the story sort of just stopped rather than ended.
Nevertheless this was a great yarn set circa the Denny O’Neil run of Spidey and a companion piece to Otto’s origin from Unlim #3. In that sense it represents Doc Ock, unquestionably an indelible aspect of the Spidey mythos.
I feel cheated a little that we didn’t get to see Mary Alice but we did get more information on her nevertheless and the story was wonderfully meta. Otto in spite of being one of the most famous Spider-Man villain ever is one of the most inconsistent of all his rogue’s. The story takes advantage of that to explore a fundamental question of his sanity.
There was a brilliant retcon used to world build in the story too, specifically in establishing Otto’s ‘brain damage’ was in reality just his mind rewiring itself to operate his arms. The story’s conclusion is likely to rub some people the wrong way as they feel Otto is very much a MAD scientist, but I think the fact that he’s in fact someone terrible as opposed to simply going bad after a bump to the had renders him far more complex and compelling.
Aside from some tiny points of contention I’d rate this quite highly within the anthology and kind of wish it was turned into a canon comic book.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man 12: Livewires – by Steve Lyons
Pretty good.
We’re back in the days when Peter Parker was a Empire State University graduate student “shortly after Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #45, August 1980” as the Continuity Guide helpfully tells us. Marcy Kane, back in the days before she was revealed as an alien, is conducting a research project for which she has gotten special permission to bring Max Dillon, Electro, from Ryker’s Island prison. Peter is there taking pictures, having been given the assignment by Barney Bushkin since this is during the time that Pete works for the Daily Globe.
Electro is on a pallet “anesthetized, swathed from head to foot in nonconductive bandages, and accompanied by four armed guards.” (Not “four-armed guards.”) When fellow grad student Philip Chang shows up, Marcy recruits him as her replacement assistant for Steve Hopkins who is running late. She tells Phil that she is intending to discover “what makes Electro’s body such an efficient storage battery,” adding, “My instruments will give us all the data we need as soon as he tries to use his powers.” She claims that “any energy he builds up will be sapped and fed back into the generators,” but we know how such safeguards usually work out in these stories.Steve Lyons then shifts the perspective over to Electro. He observes his surroundings, feels “cool air against his skin” as the nonconductive bandages are removed, tests his powers only to feel the machine counteract him, and decides to be patient. “Admittedly,” he knows, “that wasn’t his greatest virtue.” When Marcy prompts him to use his powers, he refuses, thinking all the while about how “he would fry her, crisp her skin, blacken her bones” when given the chance. He glories in Marcy’s anger when he refuses to cooperate.Soon after, Steve shows up and Marcy, still seething, refuses to let him replace Phil.
Steve cleverly disrespects Electro, goading Max into using his powers which Marcy’s machine successfully dampens. Marcy gets the electric surge she wants but still won’t let Steve back into her good graces.Later, Steve Lyons switches us to Peter’s perspective as Spidey keeps an eye on the lab from outside. It is a wet night and things seem to be going as planned so Spidey decides to get back into his Parker duds and go work in his cubicle. Entering, he runs into one of Steve Hopkins’ practical jokes, a plastic skeleton dangling in the doorway, then finds Steve himself lying beneath Phil’s desk, setting up a prank as revenge for Phil getting the experiment’s assistant position. “I’ve crosswired everything in his cubicle,” Steve tells Pete, “When he turns on his desk lamp, he’ll activate the radio. When he tries to use the fan, he’ll operate the heating instead.” Pete realizes the implications of this but is not fast enough to stop Steve from pulling his switch.
With Marcy drawing electricity from outside the lab, this prank puts too much stress on the system and the power goes out. Sensing his moment, Electro melts his way free before the back-up generator kicks in.In the darkness, Peter changes into Spidey and heads for the lab. Arriving, he finds Electro gone and six bodies laid out on the floor. He checks Marcy and Philip, finding them still alive. (He doesn’t bother to check the four guards but later says something about an ambulance for them so they appear to be alive too.) He tells Marcy that Dillon is probably not fully charged up yet or he would have killed them. Then he goes after Electro.Meanwhile, Electro, who has taken a gun off of one of the guards, dodges into a dark campus building, hoping to evade pursuit. There, he runs into Steve Hopkins. Still, too weak to use his powers, Max raises the gun, intending to get revenge for Steve’s earlier taunting. Before he can fire, the police outside order him to come out with his hands up.
Spying the police cordon, Spidey joins them and gets permission to tackle Electro alone. He confronts the villain who uses Steve as a hostage. It isn’t long, though, before Steve is shoved aside and the super-powered foes go at it. Electro gets the upper hand but Steve realizes that Dillon is, other than his electric abilities, a normal-powered man. He sneaks up behind Electro and clubs him over the head with his plastic skeleton, knocking him unconscious.In the aftermath, Steve tells a crowd of reporters, “Electro’s not as tough as people think. Last time out, he was defeated by a fire hose. I just thought, well, nobody could top that. So that’s what I used against him: ‘no body’!” Marcy tells Peter, “[Steve’s] clowning around could have gotten him killed. I did hope he might have learned a lesson from it.” “He did,” Pete tells her, “but you know Steve. I think he just unlearned it.” He smiles at the thought and thinks he sees Marcy smile too. But he’s not sure. “Perhaps he had imagined it.”
Truth be told I do not have all that much to say about this story. It is set at some point after Spec #47 as Peter and Deb Whitman have been dating and represents arguably the most unique period of time in Spidey’s life. This was when he was a grad student and working for the Daily Globe, surrounded by a whole new supporting cast of students, faculty and Globe reporters.
The most infamous of these supporting characters were the love interests Marcy Kane and Deb Whitman. Marcy is a fairly unknown but to those aware of her is forever remembered for he reveal as an alien. Deb Whitman by contrast is essentially the most famous Spidey love interest after MJ, Gwen, Black Cat, Betty Brant and Liz Allan. Whilst MJ is Spidey’s great love, Gwen his first, Black Cat his sole costumed lover, Betty Brant his first GF, Liz as Betty’s rival Deb Whitman is…kind of just the other girlfriend Peter had. Her enduring legacy is likely owed to being the least glamorous of all of Spidey’s lovers and also her adaptations into other media, minor though those were.
You might’ve noticed I’ve not spoken much about the story here and that’s because there just isn’t all that much to say in the first place.
There is nothing wrong with this story. You don’t get lost in the narration, the action and sequence of events is all very clear cut, the characterization holds up to scrutiny and the plot hits typical Spidey beats. To be honest were this a comic book it would’ve been a decent yet forgettable filler issue of Spec during this time period. There is just nothing to really write home about beyond a nice gag about Marcy’s alien origins.
That’s all I can say really. It’s a serviceable but ultimately skippable story. I’d still take it over many other entries in this book though.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man 11: Poison in the Soul – by Glenn Greenberg
Ultimately a good story
Markie Macchio and Ralphie Bernardo have visions of moving to Mexico or the Caribbean to open a bar and captain a fishing boat respectively. They rob a jewelry store in service to their dreams, only to run into Spider-Man and find themselves webbed up, awaiting the police. A stolen ring, found by Spidey in Ralphie’s pocket, reminds him that he has just asked Mary Jane to marry him and has not yet gotten an answer.
The next day, Harry Osborn calls him to tell him about Marty Schultz, who was Pete’s lab partner in a couple of ESU Freshman classes. Pete recalls that Marty called him recently and they set up a lunch date but a need for Spidey prevented the meeting. Now, Harry tells Pete that Marty is dead… a suicide who left a note saying he couldn’t get rid of the poison in his soul. Hearing this, Peter berates himself for standing Marty up. “If I hadn’t been adventuring, I could’ve been there for Marty, I could have helped him through whatever was troubling him. He’d still be alive!” But he also realizes that, if he hadn’t been Spidey that day, all of the people he rescued from a burning building would be dead. “But what about Marty?” he thinks, “Couldn’t he have been there for Marty, as well?” Pete sighs heavily. There is no answer for this.
The next day, Peter goes to Brevoort Funeral Parlor but, riddled with guilt, can’t bring himself to go inside. He wanders to the Daily Bugle where J. Jonah Jameson tells him that the Shocker has broken jail. JJJ demands “photos I can use for my front page!” Spidey finds the Shocker fighting police in the intersection of Broadway and Nineteenth Street. After a short battle, the Shocker uses his vibro-blasts on a building, sending “large chunks of rubble and broken bricks” to the street. Spidey pushes the “dozens of people standing there” to safety allowing the Shocker to blast him from behind. The rubble buries the web-slinger and the Shocker escapes, though Spidey tags him with a spider-tracer. A cop who doesn’t buy into Jameson’s editorials (“That crank?” he says, “He’s just a loudmouthed blowhard looking for attention.”) pulls Spidey from the rubble. Wondering why the Shocker didn’t stick around to finish him off, Spidey follows, searching for his spider-tracer’s signal.
Spidey locates the signal at Forest Hills Cemetery, prompting recollections of Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy…and Marty Schultz. Remembering that Marty was going to be buried in this cemetery, Spidey locates the grave and pays his respects. The guilt strikes him again and he feels “as if it’s all seeped through me, right down to the core of my soul.” Spidey thinks he understands what Marty meant by poison in the soul…”I’m sure feeling that way now”… but he decides “you took the coward’s way out, Marty…Death is never a solution, no matter what problems have to be overcome.” Suddenly, the Shocker strikes, enraged that Spidey is standing over Marty’s grave. He reveals that Marty was his kid brother and that he escaped jail because the authorities wouldn’t let him attend Marty’s funeral. The Shocker’s own guilt over letting Marty down fills him with his own “poison in the soul.” Feeling sympathy for his opponent, Spidey polishes the Shocker off quickly, then lectures him on his squandered talent and potential. “You have the chance to embrace the future,” he says, “It’s a chance your brother threw away. What’s it going to be for you, Schultz, the future… or a dead end?”
The Shocker decides to go straight after serving his sentence. Spidey lets him pay his last respects to Marty before taking him away. “I still don’t know what the poison in your soul was, Marty,” thinks Spidey, “Probably no one knows, or ever will. But what I do know is that the guilt and anguish that I felt over your death-the poison in my own soul-is gone now. I’m not sure if your brother will really be able to reform. That’s for the future to decide. But right now, at this very moment, all is right with the world, and the future looks bright. And moments like this are so rare, so few and far between, that I can’t help but cherish it.”
Several days later, Spidey stands on top of the Brooklyn Bridge. He’s been thinking about Gwen Stacy lately, particularly since MJ has turned down his marriage proposal. Part of him wishes he could live in the past and avoid the hurts like Mary Jane’s refusal but he knows he must choose the future over the past. “I’ll always love you, Gwen, and I’ll always remember you. But the future is calling, and I have to go meet it head-on. I think that’s what you would have wanted me to do.” Spidey web-slings through the city knowing, “with tomorrow, there was a chance for hope, for opportunity, and maybe, just maybe, for happiness.”
The drawbacks of this story are:
The name dropping of 90s Spidey editors
The thugs at the start getting way too much page space devoted to them considering how insignificant they were
Greenberg arguably going too far with Peter’s sense of guilt
Everything else with the story works fine, unless you want to hold it in contempt for defying canon (wouldn’t Spidey have mentioned Shocker’s attempt to reform at some point?) but by this instalment that’s rather moot.
I’ve said before how each story in this anthology both takes place during a particular era of Spidey and tries to represent a component of his (then existing) mythology.
In hindsight the prior story about Fancy Dan is probably touching upon the crime noir elements in Spidey’s mythos whilst this story is about both Peter’s sense of guilt and never say die attitude.
it uses Peter’s desire to marry MJ and the aftermath of Gwen’s death as the vehicle to explore this. Whilst listening to the story I was prepared to hold the story in contempt for giving so little attention to MJ herself as I thought Peter’s proposal was intended to be the crux of the story but in reality that wasn’t what this story was trying to be about in the first place. As such I don’t mind that being something paid so little attention.
I was also ready to call out greenberg’s handling of Peter’s guilt, the idea that he feels like Marty’s death was his fault at all and his desire to run away from the funeral was at best overwrought and at worst out of character.
Thankfully Greenberg stuck the landing and had Spidey realise (refreshingly all on his own) that Marty’s death wasn’t on him, that he was likely going to take his own life no matter what.
I can’t say for sure if this was Greenberg’s intention but I think the story illustrates what I have often said about Peter’s guilt. It’s not that he is inherently and perennially guilty but rather his kneejerk reaction to dealing with a crisis, especially death, is to assume guilt onto himself so he feels in control but deep down he doesn’t believe it/eventually he gets over it.*
As for the Shocker this is definitely one of the best Shocker stories of all time but also might be THE best in terms of characterization for him and depth.
The story also drives home a great aspect of the character that wasn’t exactly explored on panel in the 1970s, Spidey’s ‘never say die’ attitude. We never got to explore Peter’s feelings about trying to find love again after Gwen’s death but you had to figure he did it because he knew there was hope and he wasn’t one to surrender to darkness. If he was he’d have been crushed long ago.
So having Spidey have his hopes for his personal life (and retroactively Shocker’s too) crushed by MJ’s rejection but persevere in spite of it was ultimately very dramatic and spoke to the heroic nature of the character.
*A great bit of writing by Greenberg was the moment Peter acknowledged that had he been there fore Marty people might’ve died in a fire. This then led into an intriguing moment where Peter hears a voice in his mind and realizes it belongs not to himself but to ‘Spider-Man’.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man 10: The Ballad of Fancy Dan – by Ken Grobe and Steven A. Roman
...ehhhhhhhh...
Heading home from a battle with the Scorpion, Spidey comes across a bar fight and recognizes the voice of one of the participants. Entering, he finds Fancy Dan standing amidst the wreckage and unconscious bodies. He quickly webs him up and whisks him away. On the way to prison, Dan asks for Spidey’s help. “My kid’s in trouble,” he says, “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”Dan explains that his son, whom he hasn’t seen since the kid was born, is Rudolph Loyola, a teenage piano virtuoso who was recently kidnapped. He sought his Enforcer partners’ help but couldn’t locate either Montana or the Ox. Spidey agrees to rescue the boy but takes Dan to the police station. Dan warns him, “If my boy gets whacked ‘cause I wasn’t there to help him, I’m gonna find the thing you love the most… and kill it.”At the Daily Bugle, Peter learns from Ben Urich that Rudolph’s step-father is Atlantic City mobster Joseph “Baby Joe” Loyola and that his mother, Ginger, is holed up her in Fifty-Ninth Street brownstone awaiting ransom demands.
Spidey goes over to Ginger’s place where the FBI agents stationed there leer at her, grind their cigarette butts into her rug and use the kidnapping as an excuse to search for evidence to put Baby Joe in jail. Ginger goes to her room to get away from them and Spidey taps at her window. She lets him in but erupts at him when he tells her that Fancy Dan asked him to help out. She tells him that, “If he hadn’t kept running off with those idiots Ox and Montana – constantly trying to prove to me he was a tough guy – we might have had a chance at a normal life…He had a family to support, but from the way he acted, you’d think Ox and Montana were his real family. Rudy and I were an afterthought. When he was busted during one of their “enforcing” jobs…I finally decided enough was enough.”
Just then, the FBI agents break in and accost Spidey but he webs them up and goes on his way.Heading to the Queensboro Bridge, Spidey suddenly finds himself being shot at. He disarms the shooter who turns out to be an ape-like Kingpin goon named Monk. (“You take up target shooting because things were too slow at the monastery?” Spidey quips.) Monk has been instructed to bring Spidey to the Kingpin. The shooting was just to get his attention. Spidey agrees to accompany him and soon finds himself in the Kingpin’s office. There, the Kingpin tells him that Rudy was kidnapped by Best ‘O Times Casino owner Martin Severino, one of Baby Joe’s competitors. Kingpin claims not to know where Rudy is being held but tells Spidey to keep an eye “on an establishment called Howie’s Harmonies in Atlantic City tomorrow morning for a lead.” When Spidey asks why he’s helping out, the Kingpin will only say that “it’s good for business. “Next morning, Spidey stakes out Howie’s Harmonies, a rundown music shop. He spots someone with long blonde hair and wearing a trench coat heading for the shop. Snagging the figure with his webbing, he discovers him to be Fancy Dan in a wig.
Dan reveals that the Kingpin’s lawyer sprung him from jail and told him to case Howie’s Harmonies. It isn’t long before a huge man comes along and enters the music shop: the Ox. Spidey stops Dan from going off half-cocked by telling him the Ox couldn’t plan anything on his own. Dan realizes that Montana must be involved and that this is why he couldn’t locate his old partners.The Ox exits the music shop with sheet music in hand. Spidey and Dan follow him to the Star World Hotel and Casino. Once there, they surmise that Rudy is probably being held in the penthouse. Spidey climbs the building’s wall with Dan hanging onto his back. (When Spidey mentions “my girlfriend,” Dan asks, “she ever, y’know, put on the tights? Just fer fun?”) They get to the balcony and peek in to find two dozens thugs hanging around. (“It’s like a leg-breaker convention in there,” Dan says.) Amongst the goons is a Steinway piano with Rudy sitting at it. The Ox enters and hands the sheet music to the boy. “Play,” he says. Rudy plays the music Ox has picked out: “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Severino enters with Montana and they have Baby Joe brought in, badly beaten and tied-up. Rudy calls Baby Joe “Dad!” which makes Dan stiffen. Severino orders Baby Joe to sell him his casino and threatens Rudy with a gun.
Dan can’t stand it any longer and he busts in. Spidey is forced to follow. In the fight that ensues, Spidey ties up Montana but the Ox gets him in a bear hug that is slowly killing him. Spidey asks Dan for help. Dan’s loyalties are divided but he finally decides to back Spidey and attack Ox. Spidey slips free. The room’s huge chandelier falls, threatening to land on Baby Joe and Rudy but Spidey rescues them. Ox and Dan end up fighting with Dan taking his partner down. After the police arrive, Dan gets mushy about being a family man and flirts with the idea of a “fresh start” but when Rudy comes over to thank him, Dan discovers that his son thinks his real dad is Baby Joe. Acting tough again, Dan proclaims that “Fresh starts are fer chumps,” but his shoulders sag when he says it.
Afterward, Spidey visits the Kingpin to accuse him of manipulating the whole thing. With Severino in prison and Baby Joe deciding to retire to Florida, there is a power vacuum in the Atlantic City casino scene that the Kingpin is more than happy to fill. “What, exactly, is the problem?” the Kingpin asks Spidey. “Look at the outcome…An evil man is being punished, a good man has found peace, and a man somewhere between the two…Well, it’s a pity Mr. Brito wasted all that time and energy on a boy who will always think of another man as his real father…As you might say, Spider-Man, the good guys won and the bad guys lost…can even you find fault in that?” The wall-crawler leaves but, “The question continued to haunt Spider-Man long into the night.”In a rundown motel room, Fancy Dan plans to find work as muscle for some super-criminal before getting Ox and Montana sprung from jail and re-forming the Enforcers. “Tomorrow would be a fresh start. Dan buried his face in the lumpy pillow, waiting for the night to end. The morning was long in coming.”
I didn’t really like this one.
What’s curious about that fact is that I didn’t think the story was bad at all. it doesn’t contradict any continuity I know of and doesn’t write anyone out of character. Nor does it take Spidey into any territory that would be out of his wheelhouse like if he was in space or something.
This is a crime story, a crime noir arguably, and one that humanizes one of the participants, Fancy Dan. This is interesting to me considering Fancy Dan is arguably the least notable of the Enforcers. The Ox is strong, Montana a Texan and Fancy Dan is just a martial artist.
He really doesn’t stand out as much next to the other two and in this he gets more characterization than either of them put together.
And yet...I found this dull and forgettable.
I think the reason for this is that it was neither about Spider-Man himself nor about a significant figure in his life. Giving insight into the Lizard, Norman, Doc Ock, Aunt May, Mary Jane, etc carries weight because they are major characters who’ve cropped up throughout Spidey history.
The Enforcers are C-listers at best and notable just the muscle for whoever the actual villain is, be it the Big Man, the Kingpin , the Green Goblin, etc. They are essentially just henchmen who happen to be memorable. And noticably, they are memorable as a set of three not individually. They might be a team from the POV of readers’ emotional investment they are functionally 1 unit.
So making a story where 100% of the emotional meat lies with 1/3 of that unit is unlikely to draw much interest even if it is pulled off with technical competency.
That’s why i feel bad for disliking this story. There was really nothing wrong with it it just put the focus on a character I don’t care much about and I suspect most people feel the same way.
As such the story is just kind of there and forgettable. Which is ironic since we could say much the same of Len Wein’s run on ASM and this story fits best within that time period. But not because of anything specific in the tale. Merely because I know the time period of the last story (the Conway run) and the next story (the Wolfman run) and therefore this has to represent Wein’s run by default.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man 09: Deadly Force – by Richard Lee Byers
Pretty flawless honestly.
Spider-Man is still deep in mourning after the death of Gwen Stacy three weeks before. In the time since, a killed dubbed “the Rooftop Ripper” has murdered blonde women by carrying them to the tops of buildings and torturing them before tearing them apart with superhuman strength. With the Ripper’s victims reminding him of Gwen, Spidey is determined to bring the killer down. Spotting a figure climbing a building, Spidey pursues. When he gets to the roof, he finds the Ripper, a large man in a ski mask, waiting for him. Not intimidated at all, the Ripper tells Spidey he’s been anxious to have some “fun” with him. He goads Spidey by telling him he’s killed once tonight, then describes a bit of the gruesome details, finishing by promising to kill again if Spidey doesn’t stop him. Spidey leaps to the attack and the Ripper pummels him into unconsciousness.Spidey awakens hours later to find himself “cradled in someone’s arms.” He soon realizes the arms belong to another Ripper victim. He tears himself free. “Now he could see every ragged gash and mutilation.
It looked as if the Ripper had carried away pieces of her as souvenirs.” Spidey remembers that the Ripper promised to kill again that evening if he wasn’t stopped. Anguished, Spidey departs. “But no matter how fast he swung through the city, he couldn’t leave the sight and feel of her behind, any more than he could forget the sight and feel of Gwen’s inert body dangling in his arms.”Later, an emotionally damaged Peter wanders the Empire State University campus. He doesn’t know how he’s going to stop the stronger, psychopathic Ripper.
Then he realizes that he fought the Ripper “the way he fought everyone, taking care not to do any permanent damage.” He decides he must go all out, use “every iota of his strength from the first second.” But can he use deadly force when it “violated everything he believed in?” Still, he considers, “If he’d eliminated Dr. Octopus in one of their early encounters, the deranged scientist would never have gone on to cause the death of Gwen’s dad. If he’d killed the Green Goblin, Gwen herself would still be alive.” He decides that the Ripper is “viler than any of them” and mulls over the fact that, “Cops used deadly force when lives were at stake. Why shouldn’t a super-hero?” But he still can’t decide whether he can justify it enough to do it.Later, Spidey talks to the police at the scene of another Ripper murder and finds out they have no clues.
As Peter, he goes to the Daily Bugle. There he sees Jonah Jameson’s latest headline: “Is Spider-Man the Ripper?” If hits him like a blow but he can’t get angry because “he couldn’t shake the ghastly feeling that even though the accusation was completely false, on another level it was entirely valid. Spider-Man was to blame for at least the most recent murders…because he’d failed to stop the Ripper when given the opportunity.” This decides him. When next encountering the Ripper, he plans to use deadly force. That night, “desperate for a rematch,” Spidey hears a woman scream and comes upon a ski-masked figure grappling with her. Using full power, he shatters the man’s shoulder and kicks him in the face before realizing his opponent is not the Ripper but a teen-aged purse snatcher. Soon after, Spidey watches as an ambulance takes the teen away and realizes he was lucky he didn’t kill him.
This incident reminds him that the only thing that keeps him from becoming the menace JJJ thinks he is, is his personal code of honor. He knows that he cannot try to kill the Ripper even if that puts him back where he started. Thinking about it, he realizes that he was tired and hungry in his last Ripper battle, as well as enraged and emotionally vulnerable. He vows to be better prepared next time.Not long after, Spidey witnesses the Ripper abduct another blonde woman and he follows him to the rooftop. Centering himself, Spidey uses his webbing, speed, and reflexes to separate the Ripper from his intended victim, unmask him (“…revealing a boyish face with apple cheeks and a snub nose, the face of a baseball player in a Norman Rockwell painting”), frustrate him, and enrage him.
Then he goes on the offensive, pummeling the Ripper so severely that the killer tries to escape by throwing his victim off the roof. Reminded of his failure with Gwen, Spidey leaps down and rescues the woman, before catching up with the Ripper and knocking him out cold.In the aftermath, as the police take the Ripper away, Spidey wishes he could have caught the Ripper sooner, wishes he could have saved all his victims, wishes he could have saved Gwen. “But at least he tried. And he knew now that he would always strive to preserve life and never take it, even when facing an enemy as twisted and evil as the Ripper…Spider-Man was a hero, now and forever, and the knowledge eased his sorrow at least a bit.”
This is definitely one of the strongest stories in the anthology and a contender for the best one, or at least my favourite.
There are several reasons for that:
Unlike the other stories this one fits pretty relatively seamlessly into canon to the point where you could adapt it and not have to No. prize too much. The main continuity violation is the fact that Spidey by this time period had taken life before technically (the Finisher in ASM Annual #5) and had attempted to violently murder someone before (the Goblin in ASM #122). However, you could argue that the former was self-defence and the latter was a matter of revenge, which is not the same thing as flirting with becoming the Punisher out of principle
The story is incredibly believable in context as part of the Peter’s grieving process
The action set pieces are very clearly conveyed considering this is prose and we can’t actually see what is happening
The story expands upon a gap in time that not only has plenty of breathing room but is about a subject that’s frankly a lot more compelling than Doctor Bromwell or how Aunt May felt about Peter moving out or friggin Ant-Man. By making this story hinge upon Peter’s internal struggle and deal with a very specific MAJOR event in his life the audience is just naturally more emotionally invested.
The story strikes a balance between exploring the aftermath of a very specific life event for Peter but also a much broader conceit of the super hero genre
The story also keeps a tight focus with the story totally driven by what is going on with the Ripper and only using supporting players that serve that central narrative. Obviously we all love the supporting cast and the subplots they bring to the table, but for short stories like this I think a tight focus is ultimately a better option.
The weakest components of this story is the Ripper himself. We never learn how he got his powers, why he has a fetish for gruesomely killing blonde women and he’s sort of just…functional. He’s sort of like Doomsday in the ‘Death of Superman’ story. Everything about him revolves around a very specific purpose for one story.
I didn’t dislike him personally though, but taking a step back I can see why he is kind of a weak point in the story and why violently murdering blondes is probably on the nose for a Spidey story. For me personally though I wasn’t bothered.
I guess when you have a topic as serious as ‘should super heroes kill’ you do naturally invite violence into the story and having blonde women murdered from great heights makes Spidey’s consideration of excessive force totally believable.
But the story does a good job refuting this often discussed ideology that I despise from certain Spider-Man fans. It makes the astute point that if Spidey can beat the Rhino and other guys out of his weight class there is really very little reason for him to kill.
However, the perennial con of all these stories rears it’s head again. The narrator is just miscast for this anthology and that was never more true than with this tale. This story demands Spidey sound threatening and serious. The vocal performance just makes him sound WAY too soft.
Nevertheless, overall a solid story I’d recommend checking out.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man 08: The Liar – by Ann Nocenti
I enjoyed this story a lot but objectively it’s very mixed.
Peter Parker watches off and on as a spider spends the day making a web. Later he watches as she waits patiently for a moth to be trapped, feeding on it. "How could I have anything in common with her?" Peter thinks. He both admires and shudders at the spider's "round-the-clock surveillance." And the web itself: "Her beautifully constructed home is also a death trap...The spider's elegantly poised web is a lie." Peter jumps up and destroys the web, then feels guilt about it, knowing the spider will just create another. "She can't help it. Lie or die."As Peter starts to leave, he receives a visit from Aunt May. She tells him that Empire State University contacted her because he missed several days of classes. She also asks if he washed something red at her house. Peter was gone for three days, confronting the Red Skull in Algiers and he washed his mask at May's place but he lies to her, telling her the school made a mistake and that the red came from a nosebleed.
At ESU, Ms. O'Grady, Peter's advisor, tells him that she talked to Aunt May about his absences and that May didn't seem to know about that. Peter tells her that May's memory isn't what it used to be. Ms. O'Grady tells him she's sorry to hear that. Peter thinks, "A big one. The two this morning to Aunt May were little enough, but this lie is a big one." Ann elaborates, "The little fibs are like annoying black moths, fluttering at the edges of his consciousness; shadows that flit about and dog his heels, they haunt him when he least expects it. The big ones are like rocks tied to his feet, that he has to drag with him wherever he goes."
Through the course of the day, Peter promises May he'll join her at 4PM to help with groceries and makes a date with Mary Jane over a fudge sundae at 6PM. Now he tells Gwen he'll join her for a 5PM revival showing of her favorite film, "Casablanca." "How," asks Ann, "will he pull this off?"
Not long after lying to his history prof to explain being late for the class, Peter is at the market with May. It is a warm day but he sees a man in the parking lot in a wool cap. Lying to Aunt May about needing to make a phone call, he leaves her in the market and changes to Spider-Man. He re-enters the market just as the thief pulls a gun and tries to rob the place. Spidey easily takes care of him. The store manager gratefully offers him "a cart of food, on the house." Spidey takes a look at May and says, "Hey, I just ate. But it looks like this poor woman got the worst fright. Maybe you could take care of her?" Which makes him look like an altruist when he's actually just helping out his relative. Back home, Aunt May tells the story to Peter for the third time. Peter notes that the story never changes. She tells it straight, never embellishing. She is grateful to Spider-Man but notes that his manners are terrible. "I just wanted to thank him properly. But he just turned his back on me!" When Peter tells her he has to meet Gwen at the movies, she comments that she thought he was meeting Mary Jane. "Oh yeah. Did I say Gwen? I meant Mary Jane," says Pete as the lies mount up.
At Casablanca, Pete enjoys sitting next to Gwen. "She's like a warm bed you don't want to get out of in the morning," he thinks. But he still needs to meet Mary Jane. So, telling Gwen he has to go to the bathroom, he slips away. He joins MJ for ice cream during which she almost lets her "party mask" slip when she refers to her repressive father. Peter notices a large bird in the sky and realizes it is the Vulture. Coming up with yet another ridiculous lie ("I promised this guy, I'd help him move his birds...he's got a pet shop, and he's got a big delivery of birds.") Peter promises MJ he'll be back in 20 minutes. MJ doesn't seem to mind. In fact, Peter thinks that she is acting as if she expected this. But he doesn't think about it long. He has to change into his Spidey duds and tackle the Vulture.
Unfortunately, the Vulture has recruited four partners and provided them with wings. The five Vultures beat him up, carry him into the air and drop him over the river, too far away from any buildings on which Spidey can web-swing. As he falls, he realizes his identity will be revealed after his death. "They'll all know what a liar I was. A lowlife fibster with a devil's tongue. A mendacious arachnid. A lousy deceitful cock-and-bull jerk. A two-faced stinker." Then he passes out.
While unconscious, he dreams about his Mom and Dad, telling him conflicting stories about their impending trip; the trip that leads to their deaths. "I was three years old when I noticed the first little lies," he thinks, "By the time I was six, nothing quite added up...All those lies. I guess they thought they were protecting me. Benevolent lying. I know all about it."He awakens seventeen feet above the water. There is a tug boat right below him and he webs the smokestack, saving himself, ending up in the river, then climbing up onto the tug. The tug's captain, Gallager, tells him he saw him falling and swung around to help. As they sail back to port, Spidey notices how capable Gallager is and he envies his straightforward life. "What do you think of liars?" Spidey asks him. Gallager replies that it depends on what kind of lying, adding that he lies all day. "Every time I give an order," he says, "it's to save the ship but risk the man. ..They trust me and I send them to risk death with every command...Well then, a few lies along the way aren't really lies, are they? Not if you bring all your men home alive." Spidey thinks about this as Gallager docks his tug.
He gets back to MJ who asks him if he had a nice swim. "What swim?" he asks, then he notices that his bookbag, containing his costume, has created a puddle on the ground. MJ, playing along, kicks at the puddle and says, "Rained while you were gone."From there, Pete returns to the movies, tells Gwen he couldn't find their seats in the dark and watched the rest of the movie from the back. "What a perfect ending," Gwen says. "Yeah," Peter replies, "I love happy endings." "Gwen looks at him queerly, then smiles. They walk on silently for a while. Soon, it begins to rain."
Let me say up top, this is the best Spider-Man story of Ann Nocenti’s career.
This is owed to the prose, dialogue and over all narrative being fairly straightforward and not told as through you’d skipped a beat. Everyone sounds like a normal person ( for a super hero story) and there are no weird lines making you ask ‘who talks like this?’
I should also point out the subject matter of this story is something Nocenti has explored in her other Spider work as well as her famous Daredevil run, chiefly through her most enduring creation, Typhoid Mary.
The theme of the story, as the title implies, is lying. Lying is practically systemic in super hero stories as characters maintain their secret identities.
It’s an interesting idea to expand upon that idea and examine the psychological ramifications of lying upon the individual and the impact it might have on their interpersonal relationships. For example could lying about your identity cause you to become a habitual liar about other things? Could this seep into that age old human story of the unfaithful lover?
That’s what Nocenti explored in her Daredevil run when she had Matt Murdock (ironically, or appropriately depending upon your POV, a lawyer and Catholic) cheat on Karen page with Typhoid’s alter ego; she was in fact lying to him at the same time and having an affair with the Kingpin at the same time.
In her ‘Return to Mad Dog Ward’ storyline in the 1990s Peter lied to MJ and Aunt May in such a way that MJ mistakenly believed he was cheating on him and considered running off with someone else.
In an even earlier story she did, a back-up from Web of Spider-Man Annual #2, she had Peter endure a nightmare where he was haunted by the fact he lied all the time.
Personally I think her focus upon the subject, especially in regards to cheating, raises some uncomfortable questions about her personal life, but I’m not interested in that right now.
The problem with all those stories and this one as far as Spidey is concerned is that she…goes way too far.
The fact is lying can and does take a toll on Spidey but it doesn’t open him up to lying as second nature about anything. He lies to protect his identity and anything else he lies about is just what any of us might lie about in the course of our lives. He hasn’t got ‘a problem’. And the idea it’s rooted in his parents being spies is pretty ridiculous and a massive reach.
I think what’s most problematic about this story in regards to the theme is that Peter would absolutely NEVER knowingly cheat on a woman. He’s just not that kind of person and yet here he is on 2 dates with MJ and Gwen at once like it’s a sitcom or Superman IV: the Quest for Peace.
In terms of Spider-Man’s personality and characterization this is just more evidence that Nocenti simply never grasped the character. Which is a shame given how she has written more Spider-Man stories than any female author ever; though Houser might’ve overtaken her by this point.
Her idea that Peter’s ‘problem with lying’ stems from his parents is also kind of contradicted by various stories that establish Peter was just too young to even remember his parents. This in particular includes ASM Annual #5 which she references in this story. I’m not going to hold that against this story too much because honestly no one keeps Peter’s parents consistent.*
Other continuity hiccups include when the annual happens in relation to Peter meeting Captain Stacy and MJ’s job as a go-go dancer.
However, this book has by now long established that these stories are not meant to fit into 616 canon but more a generalized idea of Spidey’s canon. If you try putting this story into strict continuity Peter was firmly interested in Gwen over MJ and the Betty/Veronica choice he had had been resolved for a good while.
This story though is meant more to touch upon the Betty/Veronica aspect of the Romita era and admittedly 2 dates at once seems like a typical Archie story. If you accept this as just a general AU version of Peter and don’t try to compare him to his canon characterization this is a perfectly legitimate idea. By extension the psychological complexity of this story works if you treat take this story in isolation or in isolation of the anthology as a whole.
Nocenti DOES to her credit explore the theme very well, the scenes with his parents and their lies resonates very well and speaks honestly to childhood hurts.
The hints that MJ knows Peter’s identity and her own family history are done very well. They are subtle, romantic and in fact so good I WISH there was a story that played with the idea. Although it does contradict later stories because Peter clearly suspects MJ is aware of his secret but ignores it.
It’s ironic actually that those scenes ultimately make this more an MJ story than a Gwen/MJ story in spite of that being the point of the narrative. Nocenti just charcaterizees her very well and even does Gwen a service. She is very much the early days Romita Gwen and there is a wonderful passage comparing the two and likening MJ to the sun and Gwen to the moon. I never thought of that kind of dichotomy but (before she became a water works) it’s a brilliant observation of the two women. She also does a great job of capturing the flirtatious nature of Silver Age MJ.
However, where this story falters (evene when taken unto itself) is in Noenti likening spider webs to ‘lies’ and the scenes on the boat.
For the former she is just over reaching. ‘What a tangled web we weave when we first choose to lie and deceive’. It’s a famous phrase but it isn’t actually saying a spiders web is akin to a lie. It’s saying the ACT of lying is like the ACT of spinning a tangled web. An insect isn’t metaphorically ‘caught in a lie’ when it’s ensnared in a spider’s web. Yet that’s what Nocenti goes for at the start of the story.
And the stuff on the boat is just…I don’t know what it means. The lies Peter engages in in are simply not comparable to the lies the boat captain engages in. Even if you lean hard on the idea of Peter lying about his identity for the greater good, what has that got to do with lying to MJ and Gwen?
Regardless, I think this story is mostly well told for what it is and I very much enjoyed it in spite of the mischaracterization.
*Personally though I defer to Stan’s stories that state he was too young to remember them.
Untold Tales of Spider-Man 07: Moving Day – by John S. Drew
Pretty good.
May Parker looks at the packed boxes in her bedroom and feels a great sadness. Even though she wants to move in with Anna Watson, she knows how much she will miss Peter and she's reminded of her late husband, Ben. "The move made his absence all the more obvious and painful." She shows Peter the last family portrait they all took before Ben's murder. Peter tells her the moving van is waiting outside. (But this isn't a moving van for May's stuff, since, after all, she's only moving next door. This is a moving van for Peter's stuff as he joins Harry in a Manhattan apartment.) Harry Osborn, Mary Jane Watson, and Gwen Stacy are waiting outside. The truck driver, Joe, tells them he has another job after this one and needs to get moving. So, Pete tells May she's riding in the truck with Joe while he, Harry, MJ, and Gwen take the subway.As the truck heads toward the 59th Street Bridge, Joe regales May with stories, like the time he walked out on New York's master builder Robert Moses (the man behind the Triborough Bridge, West Side Highway, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and so on). May barely listens. She's lost in memories of her house: when she and Ben signed the papers, when Peter came to live with them, Peter's first Christmas there when Ben bought him a bike, which Peter took apart and put back together again.The traffic comes to a standstill. May's memories proceed up to the night Ben was killed which so wounded her that she never went near Ben's armchair and was never able to open the window through which the Burglar came through again. Joe spies a super-hero battle taking place by the Chrysler Building and hopes it involves Daredevil. "I like Daredevil," he explains. Joe turns on the radio to find out what's what and learns that Spider-Man is fighting Mysterio. May is not thrilled. "Criminals like this Mysterio or the Sandman are captured by the Avengers and the Fantastic Four," she says, "Why is Spider-Man so special?" Joe doesn't know but he thinks, "Spidey's all right." As the battle continues, May can stand no more. She turns off the radio, much to Joe's exasperation. "I can't listen to this anymore," she says, "It's horrible! And to think that Peter is moving into all this! It's bad enough that he takes pictures of Spider-Man to make a living!" Joe is thrilled to learn that Peter takes Spidey photos. Then he tells May about his sister Veronica who wanted to be a trucker even though everyone told her it was not a woman's job. This gets May's back up. "If she's good at driving a truck and fancies it, what's to stop her?" she says. Joe thinks so too. He's joining up with his sister in another month. May doesn't think this all applies to Peter because Norman Osborn will be paying the apartment rent and Peter won't need the money. But Joe says, "Some people work just 'cause they like it."Suddenly the battle travels in their direction and Spider-Man lands on the hood of Joe's truck. Spidey looks in at May. She thinks there is something almost familiar about him. When Mysterio gets the upper hand, planning to throw Spidey off the bridge, Joe rushes out of his truck and attacks the villain. Hardly fazed, Mysterio grabs Joe, until Spidey wades in again. Mysterio disappears and Spidey shakes Joe's hand. As they continue into the city, May worries that Joe could have gotten himself killed. Joe tells her that "we all have to do what we can to help in this world." May realizes that "Peter is just like his Uncle" and would have stepped in like Joe did to help Spider-Man. This is why she's so worried about him but she also realizes that it is time to loosen the apron strings a little.May and Joe arrive at the Manhattan apartment and Peter is there to meet them. Harry, Gwen, and MJ show up and wonder where Pete disappeared to when the subways were halted for the fight. Peter "admits" that he snuck out and took pictures of the battle. May starts to lecture him, until Joe interrupts. Taking Joe's hint, she backs off.That night back at her house, May looks in Peter's empty room. She pulls out the picture of Ben and sheds a tear. "I'm trying, Ben," she says, "but it's so hard." Anna Watson pops in to tell her that it's time for dinner over at her house. May puts Ben's picture back in the crate it's in, then changes her mind, and takes it along with her.
As has become a pattern with this anthology every story moves a little bit forward on Spidey’s timeline. Unlike the other stories this story firmly occurs in the early Romita era. However it does somewhat contradict details. It you consult ASM #46 the events of this story just don’t slot in very well. But as I’ve also pointed out this book is less about presenting canonical tales but more stories that take a generalized view of the character.
In other words we know Peter moved out of Ben and May’s home eventually. The specifics aren’t what this story is about it’s about taking that fact and making a story out of it.
It’s a pretty decent story too. Nothing fancy and it does sort of touch upon similar ground that the prior tory touched upon. What makes this work is that it’s entirely from Aunt May’s POV. This book has also been touching upon corners of the Spider-Man mythos and I suppose this short story was the chance to do that with Aunt May. The other stories have used her, even made her critical to the plot, but they were Peter’s story and this is truly her story.
Its poignant because it also touches upon a realistic event in many people’s lives, moving away from home. What was novel was that it put the emphasis upon the parent not the young person growing up. Your child leaving the nest is for sure an often painful experience for parents make no mistake. This perfectly captures that experience.
I also liked the cab driver. A nice, simple, down to Earth character that fits well into Spidey’s world.
I suppose I prefer other stories in this anthology but it works for what it is.
P.S. The timeline is also off in regards to Mysterio. It claims he appeared months ago but circa ASM it actually would’ve been years.
Basically it was a the most easily watchable of the Netflix shows. Partially that’s because it’s more of a straightforward action series and doesn’t try to dive as deep into the minds and emotions of the characters (the key word being ‘try’ in Iron Fist’s case) and partially because it’s only 8 episodes.
And frankly it proves what I’ve always felt about the Netflix Marvel shows. 13 episodes is too much. These 8 episodes maybe were a little padded but on balance I never felt like we were treading water.
It wasn’t perfect. The most annoying thing for me was that all the problems with Finn Jones as Iron Fist were imported into this, as was the stupid relationship between him and Colleen Wing. In fact those problems get magnified when Misty Knight is RIGHT THERE and Danny is more or less slotted into the 'hotheaded youth’ member of the group which is…wrong for Iron Fist, really, really wrong.
Apart from that an a few other nitpicks the biggest complaint I have is that these Netflix shows seem way less embracing of the source material and way happier to arbitrarily change shit or have 'references’ rather than do the stuff from the material. I mean c'mon I respect that you can’t give Elektra a skin revealing costume but why withhold the bandanna and keep pushing this black sky bullshit with her? I swear I still don’t understand why she’s so special. She’s an even better martial artist and physical fighter than every other member of the Hand to the point where she can solo large groups of people.
Okay…and? Why is this worthy of her being the centre of a prophecy where she is Evil ninja Anti-Christ or whatever?
Overall I enjoyed it. Alongside Guardians Vol 2 it’s been easily the strongest MCU output this year but honestly that’s not been very impressive, especially compared to 2016. I’m hoping Ragnarok will blow everything out of the water but as is Phase 3 of the MCU peaked with Civil War and then never rose above most things in Phases 1-2.
P.S. for what it’s worth Wonder Woman and Logan have both been easily the best comic book films/TV shows this year. I don’t even mean that as an insult to those movies they were both amazing but in all seriousness their competition has been mediocre at best.
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