Amazing Spider-Man #48

[cyberghostface]

 

Comments

[numeronone]

"This is a very wearying piece. It's unpleasant to read...unrewarding."

-- Orson Welles

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Sounds like Marvel's MO for Spider-Man since OMD.

[numeronone]

Also, No-Prize: whatever silly mad science goo turned Ben into an angry memory monster apparently permanently dyed his hair blonde too, because otherwise it should have just returned to its' natural brunette ages ago, right...?

[cainofdreaming]

Winkler device -- fries brains and dyes your hair in one convenient package.

[nyadnar17]

I think you are are underselling it. It doesn't just dye your hair it, permanently changes the color. One treatment is all you need for life.

So what if there are a few...side effects?

[numeronone]

So that's how it got its name!

[blues32]

"Janine...I still can't see my own face."

"Oh, right. We should probably see a telepath about that."

"Yes, a telepath. If only we knew one."

[numeronone]

Benefit of the doubt: Jean is currently Schrodinger-ing.

Ripping away said benefit: there's...so many others. Even Madelyne has telepathy, right?

[cainofdreaming]

Or Spidey could just ask Dr. Strange for help. Magic can simulate telepathy well enough (at least in Strange's case, dunno if I'd trust some other magicians with it). Or he could get in contact with Clan Destine and ask for Cuckoo to help, I think they still owe him one for looking after the kids that one time.

[zachbeacon]

Emma Frost and Cable are also both massive Spider-Man fans who would be happy to help...though I think Peter is obvious to that.

[blues32]

In fairness, Emma hides any and all respect she has for Spider-Man under mounds of annoyance.

[zachbeacon]

Just now noticing the typo. Should be "oblivious"

Yeah, Peter has no idea how highly telepaths and people from the future think of him.

[zachbeacon]

If only Peter was also buddies with a powerful telepath.

Though if Janine gets Maddie and Peter recruits Nate ... that's an uncomfortable reunion for a bunch of reasons.

Or maybe they just bond over Krakoa's messed-up resurrection politics.

[cainofdreaming]

They should invite Johnny and have a communal shower, to make it a real reunion.

[zachbeacon]

I wasn't aware that Johnny had a Summers connection (except through Franklin).

I'm sure he wants to be invited to the celebratory orgy, though. Just think, TWO Peters. Er, I mean "hot superpowered ladies". Because he's totally not in love with Spider-Man and is completely straight.

[cainofdreaming]

Oh, Nate met with the FF pretty early in his career after arriving in the 616. And, like everyone they meet, was invited to the communal shower with Johnny (don't remember if others attended that time).

[zachbeacon]

So did they actually acknowledge that Betty used to date both of them or was she stuffed in a closet the whole time the secret identify stuff was going on? Seems like they're very willing to use Ben's name in mixed company so I'd really expect more of a reaction from her there. Classy of the others to not out Peter, though.

Not saying she has a type but ...

[tcampbell1000]

There's not much Ben-Betty interaction in this story and Ben doesn't actually get Peter's memories back, so there's no reason for it to come up. There's more comparison between Betty and Eve.

[zachbeacon]

You'd think she'd have some things to say about what the Beyond Corporation did to Ben.

Especially after what was done to Ned.

[tcampbell1000]

She does compare them somewhat! It's more in the spirit of "Don't lose yourself trying to keep your boyf from losing HIMSELF," but it's probably the best part of the issue.

[tcampbell1000]

I will always appreciate it when a superhero comic pauses its endless loop of concepts and characters created in the 1960s and 1970s to say, "But remember, too much nostalgia is BAD, actually." Good luck to Janine and Ben: leave the past in the past, chase that future, start fresh! Honestly, not having any social-media accounts is probably a plus these days. Just don't answer any employment ads from Orchis!

I have mixed feelings about bad therapists in comics. There are an awful lot of them, and the representation of good ones has gotten better, but with Harley Quinn doing a burlesque dance across the good guy-bad guy line and Doc Samson flitting between feral and suicidal, it's still not great. That said, I have had close friends fall prey to genuinely screwed-up therapists (they're fine, but they wouldn't have been fine if they'd kept using them), so I can't say the concept is unrelatable. And abusing her license is as close as Ashley Kafka has gotten to being interesting since well before she died. So there's that.

I'm still not sold on her, though. She wants someone else to know her pain...the pain of being altered in two or three ridiculously complicated storylines to the point where it'd take three full wiki paragraphs just to describe her whole deal. That's called "being a Marvel character!" GET IN LINE! Yours isn't even the most convoluted backstory held by a character in this comic who uses the words "Queen" and "Goblin" as a name!

Wells struggles to make her history add up to some kind of motivation, but that motive just seems to be making other people hurt because the world hurt her. And that kind of pay-it-forward essentially makes her no different from two-thirds of all the villains ever created, except most of them have more interesting gimmicks or psychologies to layer on top of the lizard-brain sadism. (Hell, even the Lizard does.)

Also, could someone explain what the heck is going on with the Spider-Man/Winkler Device connection? Did Peter use it after all (in some story I missed)? If so, why doesn't he remember using it? Why does Ben think that it means trouble for Peter? Why was Ben getting useful information out of it at all when Kafka was trying to use it to goblinize him? Some of these questions might be questions I'm supposed to be asking, but it's a fine line between the intriguing kind of confusion and the annoying kind. Especially since I want to believe these three antagonists will be sunsetted for a while, but we're unlikely to get any answer without them.

Unless the Winkler Device starts talking. Hey, stranger things have happened. Any chance it could sound like the Fonz if it does?

[zachbeacon]

I maintain that Kafka's incompetence caused more deaths when she was a good guy than she could hope to achieve as a supervillain.

But yeah, the evil shrink is a trope that seems all over the place in comics. Moonstone is very much on my mind thanks to the recent Thunderbolts posts.

I feel like the Winkler Device has gone from obscure Silver Age reference to plot device thanks to Spencer using it as a retcon machine. It has really jumped the shark.

[superfangirl1]

Kafka saying she brainwashed Kingsley into brainwashing Leeds?

The brainwasher got brainwashed into brainwashing the brainwashed. Lol

[shakalooloo]

SOMEONE ELSE TO HOLD MY PAIN

Most romantic line of the year.