Web of Spider-Man #58: I Am Too Autistic To Just Enjoy This Story

[@robert2430]

Big Alex Saviuk fan.

[@markshulusky6680]

I like Spiderman's underpowered villians like Grizzly, Kandaroo (another wrestler), Gobbon, et al. Fun goofballs that bring the book to a level like the one that Steve Gerber's Defenders operated on. There's something fundamentally ridiculous about a character swinging around NYC in poses suggestive (literally that) of... well, haven't YOU seen Spiderman's butt more than any other character? EVER? If Garth Ennis got his hands on the character he'd introduce a new villian, the Proctologist, tout suite (there's taint on display, for dear god's sake, with children watching!). I think this is why Spideman's stories have mostly been told with a humorous slant (I'm just remembering all the times Mary Jane called Peter "brown eyes", imagine a typo where it was written "brown EYE", the readership would go crazy saying this was proff that she knew he was Spiderman all along).

[@SonofCapwolf]

I'm about to go to bed but I want to say a) Garth Ennis did write a Spider-Man story and he introduced an awful villain who was edgy and gross (think Swarm but with spiders and necrophilia) and b) Grizzly, Gibbon and Kangaroo all team-up in Grizzly's next appearance (Spectacular Spider-Man #246). Grizzly and Gibbon become a double act in issues after that, sometimes they even help Spider-Man.

[@SonofCapwolf]

Just a head's up, I got an e-mail notification about your "Bad Bitches" comment on the Spider-Girl vid but it didn't actually post because of KZbin's auto-filters. I wanted to acknowledge it because I am going to use that for a Covers Video theme, I think. Might not feature Nekra, I can't think of any covers I have with her that are particularly good... but Moonstone, Hela, Madame Hydra, Mystique, Nebula, Madame Masque, Selene, Typhoid Mary, Umar... loads to pick from.

[@markshulusky6680]

@@SonofCapwolf Jeez-us, youtube is really dogging me these days. I got a "warning" about a comment I left (not the "Bi***es" one. Asterisks? Really? Are we seven?) but no mention of which one... a nice Gestapo/ KGB mindfuck. Can't a poor soul spread a little light? Jee-us indeed.

[@SonofCapwolf]

It's really inconsistent too. Robert (the subscriber) has gotten away with outright saying rap with an e in some comments but it won't ever let me say it. I always have to say "rap with an e" whenever talking about it because so many of my vidyas are about it. By the way, check out my reviews for the Lethal Legion miniseries from 2009, or at least #3. Nekra was a "main character" in it and they completely mischaracterise her in every way. It's also where the Mr. Hyde sodomy lore comes from.

[@markshulusky6680]

@@SonofCapwolf In Alan Moore's League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen didn't he have Mr. Hyde rap* the Invisible Man? Reminds us of a joke: Superman is flying over the city when he spots Wonder Woman naked and spread out on a rooftop. He flies down and, at super speed, has his way with her. Unaware of what happened she exclaims, "What was that?" and the Invisible Man answers, "I don't know, but it hurt like hell!"

[@robert2430]

LOL I hated the Kristy stuff and liked the main story. I enjoyed the Conway comics during this period except for the Mary Jane subplots.

[@SonofCapwolf]

The affair one is truly awful. It's like when Englehart had Crystal have an affair too. The guys they both fall for are presented as completely without any actual charm or connection to them and then the married woman is just hopelessly unable to resist this sleazy nothing person. There's no romance, there's no temptation, it's just women are unfaithful and will shag another bloke if the opportunity arises. At least Crystal's one isn't framed like a super-villain in the stories, there's one issue that ends with the actor guy monologuing about how Mary Jane will be his soon and it's like he's Doctor Doom. Actually, the main plot during that last Conway Spectacular Spider-Man issues - Knight and Fogg - was godawful too. That might be the lowest point of Conway's runs, the pairing of those two unbelievably dire plots. He deserved to stop writing the book for them. Kristy is better because it's not really dragging either Peter or MJ through the mud, it's just a silly distraction that goes in whatever direction Gerry Conway is feeling that month (remember when she was trying to "steal" Peter from MJ? That lasted about 2 issues!). She's even in the affair one and there's no pay-off to it. She sees MJ kissing that loser and then it's never mentioned again because Conway was gone by the next issue. Then a few issues of Michelinie scripting Conway plots until DeMatteis takes over (and in Web we were blessed with over a year of fill-ins from the likes of Kurt Busiek and Terry Kavanagh). I think Conway's second runs are a bit of a trick, he's got his good bits but people tend to remember those than a lot of the other stuff. There's a lot of fluff inbetween the gang wars and the Tombstones. Remember Persuader? Spider-Hulk? The Avengers team-up where the bad guy is a treasure chest?

[@robert2430]

@@SonofCapwolf Some/most of these guys are not “real” writers. They wrote in one medium, maybe two if they also did cartoons, that was aimed at one narrow demographic: young men/boys. They didn’t know how to write women or people who are different from their life experience. So they just relied upon soap opera tropes which was the primary form of female-oriented media at the time. And having watched plenty of those things growing up because I was around a lot of women who watched them I recognized the storytelling. People would have affairs, try to kill their SO, even commit rape, and the nature of the medium had them back to being protagonists in short time with little to no redemption.

[@SonofCapwolf]

Did Conway leave comics at one point to write a really lame day-time TV "Murder She Wrote" style show? I think the soap opera shit can work and has it's place but especially the writers from the 70s do not understand it at all. Their idea of soap opera is far removed from good soap opera. Come to think of it, I can't think of any writers that I'd say do soap opera that well. I guess, as sad as it is to say, the Silver Age was probably the best for approximating soap opera. Comics weren't as refined, it worked well with the writing of the time. That brand of soap opera became too broad and dumb to be done alongside comics that were getting denser and more intellectual. That's not to say it's completely irreconcilable with comics, it's just that Gerry Conway or Steve Englehart are not the people capable of doing it. Chris Claremont might be one of the better examples of soap opera. When it comes to Spider-Man, Michelinie's soap opera far eclipsed Conway (they both basically had a weird stalker try to steal MJ too). The soap opera, if anything, was the thing Michelinie did the best. DeFalco did some okay soap opera with Flash and Betty, I imagine there was to be more with MJ and Richard Fisk before PRIEST interfered. Morrison appropriated some soap opera with Cyclops/Jean/Emma/Wolverine. I can't remember their names but there was some guy and woman who wrote the 2004 X-Men School series, their (teen) soap opera was about right. Chuck Austen (makes a cameo tomorrow) had on the surface soap opera but it was the absolutely most mentally deficient soap opera of any writer. Some books work with the soap opera better (X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man) and others it seems out-of-place at best (Thor, most Avengers). ACTUALLY, I think I just clocked it - if the book has a strong identity outside of the hero (Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man) then soap opera works. If the civilian side is not as good or ironed out, then the soap opera stinks (Thor, Captain America, Avengers). This is far too long a response isn't it.

[@robert2430]

@@SonofCapwolf Father Dowling Mysteries, which was basically an American remake of Father Brown. He also did some Matlock and Jake and the Fatman but Father Dowling was the one I believe he was head writer on.

[@SonofCapwolf]

Matlock, that's great. Fucking Matlock. He wrote some Baywatch Nights and Diagnosis: Murder too. What a loser. Biggest loser in the world. "Oh, since I've conquered comics thoroughly, now I'm onto my third Diagnosis: Murder spec script".

[@robert2430]

That cover yikes