Amazing Spider-Man #82

[cyberghostface]

 

So long story short, there's a monster in the hospital feeding off patients and Peter is its next target.







The monster is incinerated.

Comments

[lucean]

Really neat little story.

Tangentially related, after watching the new Spider-Man movie, it did really hit me how deeply Mary Jane is ingrained in the Spider-Man mythology and how much meaning her mere name has there. Not spoiling anything related to that, but rather my point is that it is odd how she has reached that point despite it at times feeling like the editorial was actively trying to fight against it.

[crabby_lioness]

That's because at times the editorial WAS deeply trying to fight against it.

MJ ending up with Peter was entirely accidental, but no matter how hard the editorial staff tries, and sometimes they have tried really REALLY hard, no one ever had the chemistry with Peter like Mary Jane Watson-Parker.

[phantomfo]

MJ tends to have a very stubborn optimism that helps balance Peter's pessimism and "Parker luck." It balances the relationship in a way that none of his others really did.

[janegray]

The only times I've ever seen editorial fight so hard against something that readers and writers alike loved with all their heart was with Didio's obsessive hatred for Cassandra and Stephanie.

Which really goes to show that "money talks" is bullshit. The people in charge are absolutely going to sabotage profitable things to carry out their little personal vendettas.

[lucean]

A little bit of a sidenote, but Didio didn't have obsessive hate for Stephanie, actually he was a self-proclaimed. That's actually one of the reasons it got so incredibly messy.

Stephanie dying during War Games was a decision made before Didio rose to power, but because he was a fan of hers, he did actually manage them to change the build that Steph became Robin for a couple of months before the event started. Except they had already started the setup which massively derailed everything leading up to that event. To make things worse, once he came to power, he had them do War Crimes which truly something.

While I'm not going to defend what was done with Cass during Didio's reign, which was so many levels of messed up, if you looked at the broader decisions they made, I don't think it was obsessive hatred unless you think they also obsessively hated Wally. Instead it was the seeming view that the original characters were the best and this idea that Batgirl needed to be Babs.

[janegray]

Sorry, but I find Didio claiming to be a Steph fan about as convincing as Norman Osborn claiming to be Peter's friend.

[lucean]

I'm not saying what you should believe or not, just that there is evidence to it no matter how much it not might fit your perspective.

I mean let's put it like this. Exactly why do you think Didio obsessively hates Steph?

[neverwherehere]

Yeah, at this point, trying to keep Peter and MJ apart is like trying to convince the audience that Superman and Lois Lane shouldn't be a couple.

MJ wasn't even Peter's original love interest; she was just a party girl meant to complicate Peter's love life. But the two just had this dynamic to them that was impossible to ignore.

Editorial tried to break them up over and over again but it never stuck. Even the events of One More Day and giving Peter other love interests didn't work.

The moment MJ chose to stay with Peter instead of leaving when they were both mourning Gwen Stacy? That was the moment the trajectory of their relationship headed towards Superman/Lois Lane status.

[lucean]

Well, to be fair, DC has tried to split up Supes and Lois more than once.

Although my favorite was when they proclaimed it was to allow them storytelling from the perspective of an untangled Superman and then within a few months they were proclaiming how Superman and Wonder Woman was the greatest of love stories. In retrospect it was kind of funny.

[bruinsfan]

I always wondered what the deal behind that was. Did the people in charge smash their Super Friends action figures together as kids and pretend they were kissing, or what?

[chalicother]

It confused me for awhile,but when I remember that Mary Jane used to be or is a model.

It does kinda of hurt the aspect of Peter Parker being the every day man or relatable character status.
Look at the struggling every day man , Peter Parker who is married to Mary Jane,the ...model...

The issue with that is that I feel current day Spiderman is not really that character anymore, at least in the comics. So it doesn't really matter anymore. Spiderman is now a guy who can get doctorate, ran a company, and is consider one of the most intelligent people in the Marvel Universe.


While I think most Animations or movies , don't mention, highlight, or out right change that aspect of Mary Jane's character.
I think the last time the Tobey Spiderman movies , made Mary Jane a starving actress trying to get into Broadway.

I still think Mary Jane is Spiderman's best love interest ( and this is coming from someone who wanted him to get with Black Cat as kid watching the old Animated Series and still gets intrigued by it).

[blues32]

He lost his doctorate and his company. Mostly because the one who earned those things was someone else in his body.

[beyondthefringe]

But when you think about it logically, Peter Parker is intelligent, funny, down-to-Earth, well-built, loyal, and considerate. He's come a long way from the angry, socially inept loner of his teen years. (That he's also flighty, irresponsible, perpetually late/absent, and often broke is also a set of factors... but if, like Mary Jane, you KNOW why he's all of those things...)

Yeah, Mary Jane is a model. But in our world, smart, funny, attractive guys get women all the time. Even models. The reason their relationship can work is because she sees all of Peter's good qualities, and knows WHY he's all of the bad ones. Theirs is a relationship built on years of friendship and mutual understanding.

This is why relationships where the other person doesn't know Peter is Spider-Man never work out for long, because they see the excuses and lies, the flightiness, the failure to achieve, the absences, and think "what a loser." MJ sees him and understands what he's sacrificed out of responsibility and thinks "what a hero." (And this is why relationships with people in the same line of work--Felicia, Mockingbird, Silver Sable--don't work, because they don't have the same connection to -Peter- as opposed to Spider-Man...)

(The reason Peter can't succeed in his personal life is because he always gives it up out of a sense of heroism and responsibility and ethics, because he can't give up being Spider-Man and what he can do in that role. Never mind what he could do as a businessman or dedicated inventor or teacher--as we've seen, those roles always get derailed by the part of him that needs to put on the webs and go punch goblins, and -that- of course stems from his teenage insecurities and that's another talk entirely...)

And of course Peter doesn't see "MJ the one-time super-model and soap actress," he sees "the girl I've known since we were teenagers who loves me even though I don't deserve it." And hey, just because someone -was- or even -is- famous, doesn't necessarily mean that the fame and fortune last forever. I think MJ's career, while decades-long to us, was only a few years in Marvel time, and she's already at the "Celebrity Big Brother/Dancing With the Stars) level of "famous five minutes ago" recognition...

Now, could Peter make it work with Gwen, -if- she knew his secret -and- hadn't died when they were still so young? Maybe. That often seems to be the counterpoint to MJ-as-endgame. It's hard to know, especially with so much time passed since her first death... I'd like to think so, but she came along too early in his career and maturation, and died too soon and became another fundamental building block in who Peter Parker has grown into being.

[janegray]

Thing is, the "Parker Luck" is SO ridiculously over the top that you pretty much need to give Peter something really cool, like an awesome wife, to counter-balance it.

Because, quite frankly, even as a struggling person, I find nothing relatable about a guy who only ever gets shit and shit and more shit piled onto him without ever ever ever getting a break.

People is a noble guy who works himself to the bone for the greater good, and only ever gets spat on for his trouble. He is a genius yet gets stuck in poorly-paid job where he gets constantly yelled at and treated like a moron, he has a loving family but she is perennially at risk of dropping dead any minute and her medical bills are a Sword of Damocles that keeps him up at night, he had great friends but they all dropped likes flies or otherwise were horribly traumatised, he gets the everloving hell beaten out of him on practically a weekly basis, and his list of traumas is so extensive that at this point the lack of a PTSD is the most unrealistic aspect of his character.

That's not relatable, that's depressing.

So yeah, his being married to Mary Jane was precisely what kept him relatable to me, because it's what kept him "struggling" rather than "might as well jump off a bridge..."

[lbd_nytetrayn]

"Get out of my head, Charles!"

Seriously, that's pretty much what I've been saying since One More Day.

[tinygaylaura]

0_0

how did the Parasite cross over to the Marvel universe

[iamrman]

Ha. I was thinking that too. I was like, 'Rudy, wtf?!'

[tinygaylaura]

HIDE YOUR AUNT MAY PETER

[iamrman]

May can handle herself. Remember that time she straight up poisoned the Chameleon?

May: Who, me. A doddery old woman?

Chameleon: x_x

[tinygaylaura]

Not only did she poison him she made him think he was going to die just to freak him the fuck out

You can see why Otto Octavius fell for her

[donnblake]

I mean, it might have started because he was interested in her huge tracts of land, but under the facade of that gentle doting aunt ticks the steel-trap mind of a ruthless doting aunt.

[shakalooloo]

He knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

[tinygaylaura]

Torval Freeman: You know I'm something of a scientist myself

[starwolf_oakley]

At least this is different from "Peter gets the common cold and loses his spider-powers." Which was done rather often in the old days.

[blues32]

It's usually more of a flu than a cold...which makes a bit more sense since weakness is a symptom of the flu. I remember this OLD issue where the villain was Man Mountain Marko. He was taking horse steroids and had grown to Hulk size. Throughout the whole comic, Peter had a cold. It didn't take his powers away, but it did slow him down and weaken him a little. And he was sneezing in that mask. He beats Marko because his symptoms finally started fading during the fight.

[janegray]

Both the art and the story here are excellent!

[tinygaylaura]

I wonder if it was inspired by the Buffy episode where she's laid up in the hospital and there's some kind of ghoul snacking on people in it

[janegray]

Honestly, I doubt it. Monsters preying on the helpless (injured/disabled) is a fairly old idea.

Plus, the whole point of that episode was that it made victims look crazy because only they could see the monster.

...That was actually genuinely disturbing. A lot of the "horror" in Buffy was tame stuff (which is a good thing, because otherwise my cowardly self would never have been allowed to see it). But the idea of being gaslighted while you are at your most vulnerable so that even your closest loved ones just shake their heads and abandon you to a horrible death while convinced that you are just being difficult for no reason... that was genuinely upsetting.

[tinygaylaura]

That's one of the three episodes that properly scared me

The others being the skin eating demon and Hush

[janegray]

Agreed on the skin eating demon. That poor kid :(((

Hush however never scared me, because I was too busy being absolutely effin' BAFFLED.

I grew up in a town with a high crime rate, and my parents in particular grew up in Italy's crime capital. Safety precautions were drilled into my head since I was a toddler.

So I was utterly and completely bewildered that somebody would just open the door in the middle of the night at some unidentified knocking. And then he has the gall to be surprised when he gets jumped??? If by some chance you are ever woken up in the middle of the night by knocking on your door, you have to 1)carefully check that the reinforced door is double locked, and make sure the metal chain is in place too, 2)check through the peephole to see who it is, 3)if they aren't people you know and trust, ask loudly what's the problem while holding a phone in your hand in case you need to call for help. If you can't be loud for some reason, too bad, the door stays closed, whatever it is can wait until morning when people are around.

Then again, I was also utterly baffled when I went on vacation in America and people who lived on ground level kept their windows open at night.

[tinygaylaura]

I am a suspicious sort and I have anxiety so I found that baffling as well

I answer my door when I'm expecting a visitor, a parcel or take out

Other than that I don't care if your hammering away on it screaming its life and death if I don't open the door, you'd bette try the next door down my good dude because I ain't opening it

And I'm definitey not opening the door to any Slenderman looking motherfuckers

Also what the hell who leaves a ground floor window open that's how you got robbed

[blues32]

Same idea was used in "Bubba Ho-Tep" starring Bruce Campbell as an aged Elvis Presley and Ossie Davis as a guy who swore up and down that he was JFK and his skin had been dyed black. It had a mummy in a cowboy hat sucking the souls out of people in a nursing home.

[fiddlingfrog]

Okay, that is an incredible cover from Art Adams.