Spider-Douchery #22: The Stupid Circus Again

The comic starts with Spider-Man threatening the Cirus Crew.  Why?  to tell them not to do anything.  And to put a tracer on the Ringleader's hat.  So, if you needed to put a tracer on them, how did you find them when they weren't doing anything?  Aren't you supposed to be the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?  Isn't threatening people who haven't done anything Batman's job?

How is it getting brighter?

Then he leaves.  Good job, doing...that thing, I guess.

The Ringmaster proposes doing exactly what got them thrown in jail last time.  For once, the flunkies all say no to that BS.

How does your hat work?  Or is that your skull?

Princess Weirdskull suggests someone else lead the group who isn't the Ringleader.  The Ringleader says that would make his name not make sense and they tell him to fuck off if he won't be a team player.

We move on to...sigh...Peter Parker in class.

If it rang minutes ago, why are all of you still here?

He meets Betty on his way home.  She apologizes for acting the way she did in the last issue.  He asks her out to dinner, but she says there's a plot point at an art museum she has to be at.

Why wasn't this panel in the issue where this is relevant?

Everyone's arting it up and the circus losers are in the next room, loudly plotting.  They smartly don't intend to steal the art, just the money made off the exhibit in the safe.  Not so smartly, they send in the clown to distract people while they loot art pieces.  If they're lucky, no one will recognize a known fugitive in a random place and get caught selling obviously stolen artwork.

If only they had someone who could hypnotize the crowd into forgetting any details of the crime or who could convince a pawn dealer the art isn't stolen after all.

Or at least if they weren't so noisy.  Jameson can ear them putzing around and he can' notice Betty crying over made up problems every day.  In fact, Jameson confronts, tries to stop, and gets injured an knocked out by the criminals before Peter even thinks of changing into Spider-Man.

Now the police are here and question everyone.  He's smart enough not to bring attention to himself by answering their questions, but then he's stuck having to walk Betty home.

Then we finally get Spider-Man doing what he should be doing.  Except the narration ruins any surprise or suspense.  Thanks, we really needed to be reminded of the whole set up we were given 7 pages ago.

Is the narrator paid by the word?

He follows his tracer to track down the Ringmaster.  All the way to the police station. Good job, Spidey.  Instead of being the Friendly Neighborhood Sider-Man and just asking him and trying to convince him to get revenge by being a good guy and walking away while the others rot in jail instead of committing crim-on-crime crime, he stalks the Ringmaster until he can steal his hat and hypnotizes the answer out of him, giving him no incentive or encouragement to turn his life around.

Then he borrows the still-hypnotized Ringmaster's phone to call about Jameson.  Apparently, hospitals told anyone anything about anyone back then.

Picture and if there was something you COULD do for Jameson, what would you be doing now?

We're halfway through the comic and we have the big fight scene.  That's the comic equivalent of leaving for lunch early and never coming back to work.

I'm not really sure what he's doing.  He just seems to be fucking around with them until Princess Python grabs his arms.  THAT shows him.

No, really, it does.  Because he can't hit a woman.

So she lets go and Spider-Man goes back to beating them up.  Nice plan, guys.

At least it wasted a few pages with Princess Python hitting on Spider-Man unsuccessfully after the fight.  He can't hit her, so he's obligated to waste time yammering at her instead.  The clown also noticed this and, smarter than the reader, left to go do something else.

Meanwhile, the Ringmaster wakes up. He runs of to...to..to be followed by undercover officer Cool  Hat.  The premise of this whole comic is 'who cares?'

Keeping with that premise, Princess Python whips out a cattle prod after Spider-Man refuses to let her unmask him while he continues to just stand there and talk to her.  Why not pull that out and defeat him before?  Why not kill him and just use it to scoot him into a room with her giant pet snake?  Why did he let her hit his wrist so his web shooter broke?  Why not use the other webshooter so he doesn't break the spine of the poor python?

The answer is:  who cares?

Python Princess runs away, The Clown tries to walk off with the paintings, and the Ringmaster beats him up and takes them.  Then the police come.  Why bother with the feud between Ringmaster and Clown?  Who cares?

Princess Python tells Spider-Man to stop manhandling her as he...follows her I guess.  Then she realizes the police are here and she's trapped.

Why not go around?  Answer: Who cares?

Spider-Man hides from the cops, but at least this time he remembers to take a picture for Jameson.

Speaking of whom, he's fine and back in his office without even a bandage.  He's calling Betty lazy for hanging out at the hospital instead of doing her job.  He technically has a point, as she's his secretary, not an actual friend or family member.  Why include the scene though?  Who cares?

I get that you're in a hurry, but why are you running?

I guess the writer had an extra page he had to fill up and instead of just telling the artist 'whatever', he wrote that mess, plus two panels of Aunt May being mad Peter was out so late.

WHAT THE HELL IS HE SWINGING ON COUNT: 3
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