Well, we've seen the Chameleon, The Vulture, the Tinkerer, Doc Ock, Sandman, Doctor Doom, and The Lizard. We've got loads more villains to get to, so let's dive right into Spider-Man versus...The Vulture?
That can't be right. We've only introduced five villains and some loser who hung out with the dumbest looking aliens ever. So...The Vulture again?
Yup. The Vulture again.
Hey, don't blame me, blame old time fans who wrote in to see him again. Yup, nothing about Peter acting like a normal person or even a hero, but tons of letters expressed how much they liked a teenager fighting a senior citizen in pajamas.
After boasting that this comic will be the greatest in its age, nearly a page is wasted in exposition. This exposition is proven to be even more useless as the next panel is The Vulture in prison and complaining about how Spider-Man defeated him. Isn't that all the info we really need?
But I'm not the one writing the story am I? No, if I were, I wouldn't have The Vulture think to the audience the he's building a new flight device in prison shop class. He even tests it in his cell (again, wouldn't that panel do the same work as the exposition panel?). Apparently no one pays much attention to anything in prisons, not even prisoners. The next day The Vulture just flies away. Yes, she just flies over the fence of the prison in front of everyone and the guards don't even complain, they just state the obvious. At least the guards were polite enough not to waste a whole panel telling us what happened in another. For a moment there I was afraid a pattern was developing and I'd have to sit through a whole comic of filler exposition.
Meanwhile a game of Hate Each Other's Guts between Peter and Flash is interrupted when Flash's mini VCR announcing The Vulture has just escaped, and that everything you've read up until now was a waste of time. Peter uses the old 'I need to go to the nurse's office's trick to get out of gym class and heads out. Flash notices he's faked being ill way too often and has to be playing hooky when ever Spider-Man is needed. I'd say this is unusual, but Flash only pays attention to three people: Peter, Spider-Man, and Liz. And she's been replaced by a cardboard cutout this class. Score one for the guy cast as a douche, but always one-upped by the main character who is supposed to be a hero. Maybe I should have skipped several decades and read his comics.
So, Peter goes all the way home in the middle of a school day. To add to his bad decision making skills, he waits a entire twenty minutes for the street to clear, only to miss a family of three and a census taker. Thankfully, only the kid notices, and the two parents call him a liar. Therapists must have been rich back then.
Now The Vulture is in full pajama mode. He's not going to fuck around with a news helicopter either; he's got stuff to do...like robbing a bank at gunpoint. On the ground. Then again, the clerk is as dumb as a rock and not only leaves the windows of the store wide open, but doesn't put together the flying villain came through them (that he can walk through the front door as there's nothing wrong with his legs). Some people really shouldn't own stores.
 |
| "I forgot how hands work"--Artist |
Why wast time on so many idiots when it could just be exposition over the radio again and not skip to the fight between Spider-Man and The Vulture? Because the writer was paid by the page, but only had a five-page script to work with. That's my bet. Speaking of idiots and wasting more time than necessary, The Vulture pretends to fall and let Spider-Man think his Deus Ex Machina still works and then get to smacking him around when he's distracted. Oh, and Spider-Man got a great photo with his crotch camera while The Vulture was goofing off. That can't be awkward. Just to drive the point home about how much these characters waste both our time and that of all the other characters they can find, a crowd shows up below to interrupt Spider-Man getting beaten up to say Spider-Man's getting beaten up.
 |
| It's so horrible, they don't notice they're faces melting |
Spider-Man gets beaten up pretty badly, at least considering he's never needed a bandage before. He missed snagging anything with his webbing twice, so he took a tumble and The Vulture left him for...dead? Unconscious? Boring? Let's go with boring. While The Vulture floats that everyone in the city will be too shocked he took out Spider-Man, the hero tests his arms and is pretty sure he's got somewhere between a bad sprain to a hairline fracture. Instead of going to a drug store and grabbing a first aid kit or sling or even a camping store and getting a trauma kit, Peter heads home to waste several more panels hiding 'hilariously' on the ceiling from Aunt May. That 'hilariously' is in quotes because the situation is only funny to a Martian with barely any grasp on English. Or humor.
Still playing hooky and never having actually thrown the ball in gym class, he gets dressed and pretends to have hurt himself there and asks her to take him to the doctor. Because he has to waste other people's time as well. She scolds him for interacting with anything more dangerous than oxygen molecules, and frankly he deserves it. Same with the ridicule he gets in school when he goes back. Betty scolds him too, and when he makes another bad joke by telling the truth, she's amused at how bad it is.
The comic continues to waste our time still, but at least the humor gets a lot better. After cleaning his costume while hiding at the exact same hideout as last time, The Vulture bursts in on Peter and Jameson arguing over the price of his shitty photography and tries to rob Jameson. Of course Peter can't rescue Jameson, especially with his injury, but he really doesn't need to. Jameson refuses to give The Vulture anything but a screaming match and the two are on equal terms as far as throwing hot air at each other goes.
Peter goes into a conveniently empty room--hey Jameson, if your so concerned about money, stop renting out space you don't need--and goes out the window, along the side of the building, and into through the window where The Vulture and Jameson are still arguing, as if he's some Looney Tunes character. And then the comic is pretty much over as The Vulture flies off through various part of the newspaper publishing building and out the window and Spider-Man chases after him. The dialogue is hammier than a pig farm, and it wobbles you're supposed to put on Benny Him music while you read.
That's it. Except for all the pages that are still needed to waster our time, the comic is over. The Vulture decides to just do what he did last time and try to drop Spider-Man from extremely high up where he can't snag webbing on anything to stop his fall. Spider-Man sprays webbing in The Vulture's face, repeats his parachute gag from his first comic, snags webbing on a building anyway, and he and Jameson yell at each other before Spider-Man gets annoyed and webs up Jameson's mouth, causing him to panic over lack of air. While he takes comfort in another human being nearly dying from asphyxiation, he and Betty spend a page hitting on each other and starting a creepy romance as Peter is underage still.
 |
| "I still don't know how hands work!"--Artist |
 |
| "Will you throw me under the bus or will a villain throw me off a bridge?" |
Even for these panels.
Someone got their fetish all over my Spider-Man.
 |
| Click here |
It's Marvel's favorite and most useless vampire. It's Morbius in the Marvel Rebooted Universe.
The MRU could always use more readers and writers.
____________________________________
Looking for more? Check out my other works and my store.
If you'd like to help keep these projects going! Check out my Patreon and contribute. Chooses from speedier blogs to a prize bag and a charity dinner!
No comments:
Post a Comment