Friday, December 4, 2020

Spider Man in the 1990s... Part 1.

 


Spider-Man is my favorite superhero. He's been my favorite since I got his comics in my Christmas stocking in 1993. I loved him and quickly had to find as much as I could about him and his adventures. I read as many Spider-Man comics as I could. I loved his sense of responsibility and his silly jokes. I loved the bad guys he fought. They were all cool as hell. As a kid I was ride or die with Spidey. I've always wanted to read every Spider-Man comic from 1962 to the present day. I've read a great deal of them but not everything. This is why this post is here, It's for me to discuss the stuff I'm reading now. Which is 90s stuff so expect The Clone Saga stuff to show up here.



Well It's time to discuss Maximum Carnage. I always thought Venom was cool but Carnage was a bit too much, I mean his first story was pretty good and I can't help but love the story where he takes over the Silver Surfer, but Carnage hasn't had many good stories and this is one of those many pissy stories involving Carnage. This story is just fight....hero or villain joins up....fight....hero or villain joins up....fight....people in new york start going crazy....fight....fucking NIGHTWATCH, the Spawn ripoff shows up (seriously I'm surprised McFarlane never sued them... even if Spawn himself sucked ass) this story feels like it goes nowhere and then Deathlok and Iron Fist's company literally creates a beam and he Care Bear stares the bad guys. This whole story felt like a chore for the writers and feels like a chore to read. And it was all you had to read for like 2 months? 3? I don't know. The art is pretty good I must admit, I really like the cover up there. Carnage had a pretty funny joke about the Wonder Years when trying to dig up his mother. I liked the scenes at Harry Osborns funeral and the scenes with Peter's dad...(we will get to them later). Otherwise this was a pretty dreadful and not entertaining little story. Go with Absoulte Carnage from a few years ago if you want a big carnage event that's way more fun to read then this piss shit. Not Recommended. D+


This story, Trial by Jury is much better. Okay, so Venom killed a guy named Hugh alllllllll the way back in Amazing Spider-Man #315, one of his earliest appearances too! Now Hugh's father and friends have become The Jury and they are after Spider-Man for bringing the Alien Symboite to earth in the first place. This is a pretty good 3 parter that doesn't rush itself out. The first part is Spider-Man fighting them and then getting caught. Then in part 2 it's an actual trial of sorts! Then in part 3 Spidey actually teams up with the guys and they try to get a weapon that will blow up Venom... Spider-Man realizes thats murder and he's against that even with a monster like Venom, so he fights the Jury and kicks their asses. They also have some sub plot stuff like with MJ and her smoking (she ends up giving it up after seeing Nick Katzenburg dying of lung cancer in the hospital) and the really stupid subplot of Peter's real mom and dad coming back. The art by Mark Bagley was really great too. Nothing that will top the best Spider-Man stories ever list but gets a solid B from me. Recommended. B


It's time for a controversial in your face comic opinion, and we all know how well comic book fans take controversial opinions... badly. Don't step out of line in the comic community or you will get....angry twitter messages... OK, since no one actually reads this crap (or at least comments on it) My controversial opinion is........I like the Peter Parker Parents storyline from Spider-Man. I'm not too keen on the ending really but I liked them being in the comics, I liked the mystery, I liked them having  different thoughts and feelings from Ben and May Parker. I thought it would have been neat to have them survive this and keep going on. I believe they first appeared somewhere in issue 360? I could be wrong and I'm too lazy to check but I dunno, I liked them. This story where they finally are revealed as robots is kinda dumb. As I said earlier I wish it was some kind of weird blackmail plot or something else and they could have been  saved to be in other stories. I guess my feeling is it's a decent enough story with a lukewarm ending? Yeah let's go with that.  Lifetheft starts out with the Vulture, one of my favorite Spider-Man bad guys escaping from prison. I always loved that guy and I love how Mark Bagley draws him. He comes across the JUVINATOR and takes Spider-Man's youth away from him. He gets it back because the JUVEINATOR works better on Artificial Life, you know. Like Robots that Peter Parker's parents apparently are, and he finds that out AFTER he tells them who he is. Spidey ya dope you should have listened to Aunt May. He finds the Chameleon's lair (yeah he's in on it too!) and he fights his dad robot until it's destroyed and the Vulture takes his mom's robot's life. Yeah, it's a bit silly even for a comic book. Hell it's a bit silly for a guy who loves silly comic books. Maybe I just wish the characters have kept going on and not been robots who died. Still the first two parts are actually fun and I enjoyed them, so I guess I'm going to give Lifetheft a Sorta-Recommend. C+




It's now for the epilogue to the Peter Parker's parents story. Spider-Man is trying to find the Chameleon for his part within the story, and he's fucking pissed! Spider Man is not playing around this time. He's going to find the Chameleon and he's going to shove his foot right up his ass. The Chameleon is trying to bide his time and keep Spider-Man away from him (like sending goons after him, running from hideout to hideout until he ends up as Kraven's house seeing as they had a relationship before Kraven died) but Spider-Man catches up to him and woahie, It's a bad day for the Chameleon who gets the shit beat out of and webbed up for the police. The only real problem with this story is that at the end it turns out that the Green Goblin (Harry Osborn) was behind the whole thing and there was a file "SPIDER-MAN FOR YOUR EYES ONLY" and I don't see how the Chameleon wouldn't have watched that video, but despite that I had fun reading this one. I'd Recommend it. B


Well, I talked about four stories, so I guess it's time to end it up now. I think we will try to talk about some of the stories that happen right before the CLONE SAGA pops up!


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