#daily globe

[nocontextspiderman]

Web of Spider-Man #28 (1987) Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #38 (1979)

[nerds-yearbook]

The Black Cat (Felicia Hardy) was introduced along with April Maye, Boris Korpse, Bruno Grainger, Walter Hardy, and Emil Greco in Amazing Spider-Man 194, cover date July 1979. They were created by Marv Wolfman and Keith Pollard. ("Never Let the Black Cat Cross Your Path," Amazing Spider-Man 194, Marvel Comic Event)

[doctorstrangereview]

0246: Doctor Strange (vol. 2) #42

Cover Date: August 1980 On-Sale Date: May 13, 1980

With a wonderful, textless (except for the title logo and miscellaneous legal stuff) cover of Doc fighting a fierce looking fiery dragon, we head into Chris Claremont's second and final Doc arc. We will say farewell to the delightful Madeleine St. Germaine (who mysteriously acquires a 'de' in her name in a caption), delve deeper into the life and times of the lovely Sara Wolfe, find out more about how rich Doc is and we'll be introduced to four new sorcerers who aren't the main villains. Refreshingly, Doc does fight the dragon depicted on the cover. Yay!

Before heading into his new adventure, Doc must tie up a few loose ends from his last ordeal. Thus, we see Doc and his companion, still in her sacrificial gown, flying into Miami airport. With no plane! The delightful Madeleine needs to get back to Paris, but Doc won't be flying here there under his own steam. He must still be tuckered out from nearly being killed multiple times of the past few days. Ah well. Such is the life of a sorcerer supreme.

Naturally, Doc casts a spell on the crowd to non-consensually mess with their minds so they don't remember a dude with a giant red cape and lady in a lavender dress flying with no visible means of propulsion. As the pair heads to the gate for Maddy's flight, a mysterious recognizes Doc and we find out he's a tabloid dude.

Not much else happens here except Maddy heads to her flight, but appears to have some regrets.

This is probably the first time Doc has acknowledged this depth of feeling for a woman who isn't Clea. It's this moment that makes me wish we could see Mrs. St. Germaine return for a story or two. There's obviously more going on here that depicted, and I want to know what!

Doc arrives home and we discover that the tabloid man has set something in motion that we'll find out more of in the few issues time. In the meanwhile, Doc is under surveillance. I'm sure if he were at the height of his powers, this wouldn't be an issue.

Inside, Doc finds the unexpected. His neighbor Sara is asleep wearing Clea's tight fitting outfit, and there are pizza boxes and soda bottles all over the place. "I saved the world and all I got was this lousy house pest."

Sara eventually wakes up and Doc takes the opportunity to provide a nice dinner. He also gives Sara more fitting duds.

Once dinner is over, Doc questions Sara who recaps the events of the last couple of issues. Clea was searching for Wong. Clea was running from wraiths. Clea and Sara switched bodies so Clea could sneak past the wraiths. Clea disappeared and Sara fell asleep. There we go! All caught up. Sara wakes up and Doc lights a fire. It's a good thing. Sara was looking a bit chilly.

Sara decided to pass the time by being nosy and checking out Doc's paperwork. Apparently both he and Wong are terrible bookkeepers and Doc's finances are a mess. Doc's broke, Sara thinks. But things aren't always how they seem.

Man, I didn't know Doc was a disaster prepper with all that gold! Doc proposes to Sara! Not like that. Sara will be Doc's business manager so Wong can concentrate on cooking meals and picking up the Cloak of Levitation from the dry cleaner.

Doc has tracked down Clea's trail to a mysterious deserted house in the Adirondacks. Worried that he isn't detecting any magic stuff, Doc rides around in an adorable Jeep when he encounters someone who doesn't like to share the road with fellow drivers.

The truck manages to run Doc off the road and it goes up in a big ball of fire. His pursuers comb the area to make sure he's dead. We get a peek inside the supposedly deserted house and it's not as empty as Doc thought.

Outside, we learn Doc has managed to survive. This is not surprising for Earth's most powerful sorcerer armed with a cloak of levitation. What is surprising is the group of thugs fighting back with some mystical abilities. They're challenging for Doc, but not too challenging and Doc guesses correctly that his true foes are inside the house.

At last, we get to see the dragon fight we were promised on the cover. Gene does a lovely job of rendering the beast.

I also need to give a shout out to letterer Jim Novak who cleverly put the captions inside the dragon's flame. It's a simple effect that avoids the jarring nature caption boxes would have had here.

Doc fights the dragon for a few pages and slips away for a moment to search the house. He thinks using his astral body will be quicker and goes ghost, but this turns out to be a mistake.

His true foes have trapped him. Fortunately, Doc can still control his cloak and it flies to the quartet of other-dimension sorcerers and yanks one away. Fortunately for Doc, this breaks the spell and the pesky dragon vanishes.

Doc binds the sorcerers in the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak and searches the house. He finds no trace of Wong or Clea. What now? Let's activate this black mirror that happens to be lying around. Surely it's shady reputation won't have any effect on me! Doc proceeds and winds up in the world where Clea and Wong have gone. Sadly he wasn't prepared for his welcome.

So this is pretty good. The next two issues will be better. Chris begins by tantalizing us with Madeleine St. Germaine only to banish her to the island of obscure characters never to be seen again. I think I've made it abundantly clear multiple times that I would love to see more of her.

Chris found a clever way to add a new member of the Doc cast. Doc didn't happen to advertise for a business manager. Instead, his long term neighbor happens to stumble into multiple magic mysteries and seems to be able to handle it. That's a pretty important prerequisite for any job with Doc.

We also get to see how utterly charming Doc can be when he wants to and he can also be a bit of a flirt. If Clea is observing this it's no wonder she can get frustrated when Doc doesn't always give her the same charm.

Speaking of Clea, we only get to see her in one panel. Chris and Gene have chosen to garb her in sexy barbarian but keep her in her signature pink and similar shades. This is definitely one of her most revealing outfits. We get to see more of this in the next two issues! It's always nice to see our silver tressed sorceress being a lovely fashion plate.

What's next for our sorcerers?

[barney-bushkin]

Barney is NOT short for Barnacle. Who started that rumor?

[elzore-da-great]

Erm so I've drawn hit Marvel character Barney Bushkin in one of those bunny outfits. He's not doing anything inappropriate the outfit's just a little revealing.

[all-action-all-picture]

A Mighty Marvel Bonus Feature from Spider-Man and Hulk Weekly.

[aesthetic--mood]

Eddie Brock Venom Aesthetic

[frogoat]

The Venom/TASM Shared Universe

I realize that the MCU Spider-Man films are popular and that Sony definitely wants to try and tie their other Spidey-related films such as Venom into that cash-cow. And judging by the Morbius trailer, it’s apparent they want you to believe those films are all interconnected. But I’m not here to debate that, because I’m a little more interested in the idea of the Venom film fitting far better within the now seeminly-defunct Amazing Spider-Man film universe. 

Initially, I thought the Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Venom weren’t internally consistent with one another due to the symbiote (or science-goo, if the TASM films had continued to borrow from the Ultimate Comics, I suppose) appearing in the OSCORP vault at the conclusion of TASM2. But, no. Turns out that was only in the trailer. If you go and watch the theatrically released film itself, the moving-goo-in-a-jar is replaced by the Rhino exo-suit. Just wanted to clear that point up.

There isn’t a whole heap of actual evidence to support the idea that the Venom film and the Amazing Spider-Man films are set within the same universe, but there is a whole heap of points to consider regarding why it *could* fit, at least at this point in time. First, the Venom film was something Sony had in the works in various shapes and forms for an extremely long time, certainly overlapping with the production of the two Amazing films and being a pet project of Avi Arad well before the films were rebooted. It’s not inconceivable that early plans were for the films to interconnect, especially when looking at the various plot threads the second Amazing Spider-Man film was loaded with, all intended to expand and spin-off into a fully-fledge film universe for Sony.

With that in mind, the decision to change the Sinister Six teaser in Amazing Spider-Man 2 to remove the previously rendered suspicious black goo seen in the trailer might even strengthen the idea of the Venom movie being originally intended to tie-in to a TASM universe. Removing the symbiote from TASM2 means the origin of the character can remain consistent with his other worldly origins later seen in Venom without further explanation. Or maybe they had the Venom script locked and didn’t want to have to rework things too much. Either way, it provided the studio flexibility in storytelling potential.

Next, Amazing Spider-Man 2 establishes that Peter Parker does in fact work for the Daily Bugle via dialogue and messages back and forth with J Jonah Jameson. We don’t get a physical appearance of the character, but the acknowledgement of JJJ’s existence provides a nice piece of connective tissue to the Venom movie’s brief John Jameson appearance. John Jameson is an astronaut and the son of the Bugle’s famous brush-topped boss. For anyone who saw the Spider-Man: The Animated Series’ adaption of the Black Suit and Venom Saga, the Venom movie’s integration of John into the symbiote’s arrival on Earth will have come as no surprise. On a side note, I’ve always felt it was a missed opportunity for Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 not to have used a similar concept especially considering they had introduced John Jameson in the previous film. But I digress.

The familial link isn’t the only piece of circumstantial evidence either, as Eddie Brock mentions an incident that occurred in New York connected to his journalism career. While it’s not explicitly stated, if like me you like to speculate, you could easily connect this to Eddie’s comic origin of misidentifying the serial killer known as the Sin Eater which led to his career going down the drain. In fact, if you accept the viral marketing material for Amazing Spider-Man 2 as canon, Eddie worked for Jameson at the Daily Bugle around 2013 and 2014, even reporting on the capture of a certain Cletus Kassady. The viral Daily Bugle page also makes mention of Anne Weying defending Curt Connors, which unless I’m mistaken, also doesn’t contradict the events of Venom.  Notably, Anne refers to the this event as ‘the Daily Globe Incident’ and implies Eddie was ‘run out of New York,’ which appears to be true despite Eddie’s protests to the contrary. That said, there are around 4 years between TASM2′s setting of 2014 and Venom’s setting which seems to be 2018, at least after a few narrative time jumps.

Moving away from canon and continuity, let’s take a detour into style and presentation. As an experiment, I want you to watch the two Amazing films and the Venom movie one after the other. Now, tell me they don’t seem to have more in common in terms of visual language, narrative direction and tone. No, they aren’t identical, the 3 films are admittedly very different but in my opinion they hold much more in common with each other than they do when compared to something like the Raimi trilogy and the current MCU Spider-Man films. A good friend of mine has called the Venom movie a great 90′s superhero/antihero film and I think that’s probably the best way to describe the approach Sony took when producing the flick. By the same token, you could see broadly different visuals to the two Amazing films, despite both having the same director, and they work mostly as character pieces (or at least were intended to be before studio interference) focused on Peter and Gwen’s relationship. Heck, even Venom is arguably a character film focusing on Eddie and the Venom symbiote’s relationship! Look at goofball Eddie’s comedic moments and compare it to Peter’s physical comedy in the scene in Oscorp form TASM2 and tell me you don’t get a similar vibe.

So, even without an actual Amazing Spider-Man 3 film, maybe we did kind of get a third entry set within the same fictional universe. Or not! You decide! Unless Sony actually decides to take a risk and make their new shared universe a little more interesting by trying to bring together these and other past films, I think this is the closest we might get. It’d be a pleasant surprise if Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man showed up at the end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage.