“To Judge a Nighthawk!”

The art in this is a really mixed bag. A lot of panels are very uninteresting, especially the backgrounds, and look like they’ve been crapped out really quickly. Some, though, are surprisingly bad-ass. Most of this bad-assedness seems to be coming from Esposito’s inks, which are really picking up the slack from Bingham and Sharen.

Kyle Richmond, a.k.a. Nighthawk, gets mixed up with a robot version of his dead girlfriend. It’s all some elaborate revenge plot masterminded by the actual dead girlfriend. See, everyone thought she died when Kyle was drunk driving 12 years earlier. It turns out, though, that she had just been paid off by Kyle’s dad after the accident and had been plotting this elaborate, dumb revenge ever since.

Unlike most of these issues, Nighthawk and Spider-Man don’t have a misunderstanding and fight. Instead, Spidey is just kinda helpful and they actually work together the whole time. The issue wasn’t especially good, but at least this change was refreshing. It made the whole thing a lot more readable.

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but this issue at amazon.com

A team-up with Spider-Man and the Black Widow. Comic Book DB calls this “The Fatal Attraction of the Black Widow”, but I don’t see where they got that title. The bad guy on the front cover looks like Wolverine. Is it him? Read on!

Spider-Man is patrolling and spies the Black Widow on a gig. They’re both after some arms smugglers; Spidey wants to team-up but BW doesn’t. This ends up being a fairly by-the-numbers crime story — Spidey and Widow both follow some leads and end up at the mansion of a bad guy, just in time for a huge crime convention. It turns out the big bad is not Wolverine, but the Owl. He was in Marvel Team-Up 73 with Spider-Man and Daredevil, in which he was soundly trounced. Now, he’s pissed.

Spidey is fairly often facing dudes who want to clean out all the cities gangs and take over. This isn’t much different than normal. The writing here isn’t great, but the issue is more or less enjoyable.

Oh, I don’t really like Will Meugniot’s inks. Everything just seems kinda dirty. Or maybe it’s just the printing?

BTW, part of me wonders if I should be reading Black Widow comics along with everything else. I mean, she’s a spider-related super-hero right? But then the number of comics to read would probably double, and I can’t really have that. Oh well.

Rating:

In the Hands of Bullseye

This being a Daredevil comic, I really have no idea what’s going on. The issue starts with an epilogue to (I assume) the previous issue, which I have not read. Then the story begins, and I really don’t care about most of it.

Here’s the skinny for my purposes: some crap is happening, and while it’s happening, Peter and Mary-Jane walk by in one panel. Matt Murdock is jealous of them.

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Homecoming!

This story sucked kinda. It was about one of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Vance Astro, trying to convince his younger self to not take the same path he did. While I generally like time-travel stuff, this was just boring. The Thing’s part was useless, too, which is kind of annoying since this is his book. Also, Spidey just showed up in one panel, saving a construction worker.

This guy looks like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen:

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By The Dawn’s Early Light!

Dragon Man!
Writer: Roger Stern
Co-plotters: Roger Stern, John Byrne
Penciler: John Byrne
Inker: Josef Rubinstein
Letterer: Jim Novak
Colorist: Bob Sharen
Originally published: August 1980

Death, Where Is Thy Sting?
Co-plotters: Roger Stern, John Byrne
Penciler: John Byrne
Inker: Josef Rubinstein
Letterer: Jim Novak
Colorist: B. Sharen
Originally published: September 1980

The Terror of the Taskmaster
Writer: David Michelinie
Penciler: George Perez
Inker: Jack Abel
Letterer: John Costanza
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Originally published: June 1980

Cap For President!
Story: Roger Stern
Photography: John Byrne, Josef Rubinstein
Typography: James Novak
Color: George Roussos
Originally published: October 1980

CA 247-249 tell the tale of Machinesmith, a robot master. They’re good, but Spidey never appears. There is a Spidey robot, and an off-hand mention of the real Spider-Man, but that’s it. I just read them for fun basically, but technically they shouldn’t really be in the project. Also, CA 247 and 248 should have come before M/TU 95.

Avengers 196 features a one-panel flashback of Spidey swinging on a pole — completely inconsequential. Its story about the Taskmaster was pretty good as well.

CA 250 features Spidey in one panel, considering the possibility of Captain America as president.

Rating:

All You Need is Hate

Well, we’ve once again got two ridiculous excuses for Jessica Drew to get naked. Nekra is also pretty much naked as well:

And they of course get into a huge fight — described as “tiger against tiger”, a.k.a. a catfight — in which their clothes get torn to shreds. None of this is anywhere near as bad as the crap Marv Wolfman was writing, but it’s still pretty gratuitous and stupid.

As a side note, we learn that Spider-Woman won the fight because Nekra loved her. So it wasn’t just a normal catfight, it was a hot lesbian catfight.

On the plus side, Jerry Hunt is moving to London. Are we finally rid of him? Let’s hope so.

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Verdicts

Ok, Marvels was pretty good. But all these other shitty painted books about real people are crap. Seriously, NO GOOD.

Update: this should come about one Marvel-year later than I have it.

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Ashes to Ashes!

Daredevil and still-blind Spidey beat the Masked Marauder and the Maggia, and Spidey’s sight returns. But that’s not the end!

Carrion shows up and he does indeed know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man! Taking advantage of Pete’s still sensitive eyes, Carrion quickly gains the upper hand!

This was another really good issue, but it suffered from being too split-up — the structure could have used a little bit of tightening in my opinion.

Rating:

The Blind Leading the Blind

Frank Miller?! Weird.

This was still good, but there wasn’t a lot of progress from last issue. More Carrion please!

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Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

Spider-Man is blind! O NOES! To make matters worse, he’s severely sprained his ankle.

By the way, I thought the Masked Marauder was dead. What happened there? I guess he came back at some point, despite having been disintegrated.

I feel like I should know who Carrion is, but I don’t. How does he know Pete’s secret identity? (At least I assume he does, since he was waiting in Pete’s apartment when MJ and Betty showed up.) Have I totally forgotten something in all the ordering kerfuffle I went through?

This was an awesome issue! I can’t wait to see where it’s all going.

Rating:

A Fluttering of Wings Most Foul!

Spider-Man and the Daredevil take on a bad guy named the Owl. His helicopter was very Nightowl-from-Watchmen-esque. There was nothing really special about this story, but it was entertaining enough.

I may have read this in the wrong order, as Spidey seems to be wary of cops, but in ASM 186 he was cleared of all his charges.

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…Like a Diamond in the Sky!

This issue had Thor and Iron Man fighting a giant orbiting evil computer. It was really bad. Spidey appeared in one of those “what’s happening with the rest of the world” panels.

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Double Danger at the Daily Bugle!

Alright, so the Blizzard and Electro have teamed up to blackmail the Bugle and the Globe. Luckily, Spider-Man and Daredevil are around to stop them. This issue was pretty much non-stop fighting, which I’m not the biggest fan of. It was fairly stale.

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‘Tis the Season

My Treasury Edition 13 showed up! I’m finally back on track with my reading order.

It’s Christmas time, and the Marvel superheroes are playing in the snow! This is kind of a wrapper story around some reprints of past issues. Nothing much happens, but it’s nice and cute, and fun to see everyone relaxing and having a good time.

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Excerpted material originally appeared in: Fantastic Four 44-47; Fantastic Four Annual 3; Strange Tales 161
Excerpted material by: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, Vince Colletta, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia

This issue is about Reed and Sue’s wedding and the Fantastic Four’s first meeting with the Inhumans. Spider-Man appears in one panel that I believe is new, during the big wedding fight. This was read out of order.

There are two characters that I didn’t recognize and couldn’t tag.

I like this Marvel Saga stuff, it’s really making me understand stuff more.

Rating:

KISS / Precisely as Hot as Hell! / The Andromedia Hustle! / See Latveria and Die!

“Forty pages of full-color comics. Plus never-before-published photos and features. Printed in real KISS blood.“

Everything about this is badass!

Platform shoes? Check.
Blind old man in a fur loincloth? Check.
Gene Simmons breathing fire? Check.
Teleportation? Check.
Moon-shaped spaceship? Check.
Sexy robot ladies with machine guns and robot monks with laser eyes? Check.
Outerspace alien disco? Check.

This is literally the best comic I’ve ever read.

Here are some amazing panels and things. Check out the fucking awesome fake ad for Air Latveria!

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At Last: The Decision!

A new set of Avengers is chosen. It very much resembles the existing lineup. There are lot of flashbacks, including one with Spidey. This was kind of like a crappy clips episode of a sitcom.

Why is Ben Grimm human, but wearing a Thing costume? I’ve clearly missed something there.

I probably shouldn’t have this smack dab in the middle of a cliffhanger.

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The Trial of the Wraith!

Finally the conclusion of the Wraith storyline, after that truly bizarre and misplaced Spider-Woman break. It feels good to be back to Spider-Man stuff.

Courtroom drama unfolds at the trial of Brian and Phillip DeWolf. Despite a lot of action, the issue was fairly boring. Kind of a letdown after a fairly interesting start to the arc.

This issue had an extremely weird ending, where it was revealed that the judges trying the case had telepathic and telekinetic powers, and then cut to a random scene of the Hulk bounding around the New Mexico desert.

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What is Happening?

The Daily Bugle here says April 11, 1976. Does that fit in with my current chronology? Nope. Marvel Team-Up 39 specifically mentioned that it is set in “New York in August.” What can I do about this? Well, nothing in here is really relevant to any of the Spider-Man stuff – it just involves Pete briefly showing up to ask Daredevil a question – so this issue could fit in pretty much anywhere as far as I’m concerned. I would be inclined to place it immediately before Team-Up 39.

This issue is about the Jester framing the Daredevil for murder. It’s all very convoluted and confusing, and I didn’t much like it.

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Midgard Aflame!

Loki invades Earth — specifically, Washington, DC — and, to ensure his battle is solely with Thor, he immobilizes every other super-powered individual on the planet. This includes Spider-Man, who appears in a brief cameo.

Even though I don’t really know most of the backstory, this was a thoroughly enjoyable issue. It also made me realize how much I miss John Buscema’s art. Nothing against Ross Andru or anything, but John Buscema is fantastic.

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Three Into Two Won’t Go!

This issue sees Spidey and Daredevil rescuing a damsel in distress from the Unholy Trio – Cat-Man, Bird-Man and Ape-Man.

I think one of my problems with Marvel Team-Up is that it doesn’t (usually) shed any light on the characters or any on-going story arc stuff. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s all very formulaic, and it’s pretty easy to get sick of. This issue was better than some of the more recent ones, but it still didn’t really offer anything other than a relatively well-done villain-of-the-week type story.

Mooney’s art was nice.

Rating:

Guns

Well, this is really obvious trying to recapture the glory of Marvels. Instead of the super-hero stuff told from the perspective of a regular joe reporter, we get the super-hero stuff told from the perspective of a regular joe cop. Unfortunately, it’s just not that interesting and it feels like it’s just recovering the same ground. The super-hero bit is all in the background and there’s not much of a story to it; the copy’s story line is completely unoriginal and two-dimensional. Some of the paintings are pretty good, but none of them really live up to what Alex Ross did in Marvels.

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…Then Came Ramrod!

Ok, so I’ve caught some mentions at the Daredevil and the Black Widow being together, but I don’t really know the details. Are they a couple? Why are they in San Francisco?

I’m not really into this, so here’s a couple of notes:

• Don Heck has Spider-Man walking along his web like a tightrope, exactly like Daredevil would. Did Heck forget who he was drawing? It’s not that it’s impossible that Spidey would do that, but it certainly comes across as weird. The pose doesn’t help.
  
• There was a nice mention of Pete’s ulcer, even if it was just him covering for his spider sense. Nice to see that the ulcer hasn’t been completely forgotten.
• I really hate the monologue-flashback-origin-story crutch. There are other, far less artificial ways to tell a character’s origin, but comics too often resort to this.
• Ramrod’s kind of like Wolverine, in that his skeleton has been replaced with metal. That’s kind of neat.
• Daredevil and the Black Widow are barely in this, which is really weird. You know, since it’s their book.

Very villain-of-the-weeky, nothing really special here at all.

Rating:

The Day She Died

I already wrote a review of this and it got deleted. I don’t feel like rewriting it, so here’s the summary: no good. I had high expectations after reading the other Marvels issues and after reading the Amazing Spider-Man stories this was based on. Unfortunately, this issue didn’t live up to either.

(Update: According the Chronology Project, Clark Kent is in this issue. I think I see who they’re talking about, so I’ve given this review a Superman tag.)

Rating:

But Who Will Judge the Hulk? / …Defender of the Doomed!

The World, My Jury!
Writer: Gary Friedrich
Pencillers: Dick Ayers, Herb Trimpe
Inker: John Severin
Letterer: Jean Izzo
Extra dialogue: Roy Thomas
Originally published: July 1972

Story about the hulk getting captured and subsequently tried. In issue 152 Peter appears in a non-speaking cameo to photograph the Hulk’s arrival in NYC. In 153, he runs off to become Spidey and helps capture the Hulk.

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