What’s Going On In The Amazing Spider-Man? Mostly Green People Throwing Spider-Man Around. March – June 2018.

Yes, dear reader, this is my best effort at explaining the last several months in Stan Lee, Larry Leiber, and Alex Saviuk’s The Amazing Spider-Man. But the march of time might have foiled me. The story described here might be so far in your past it’s no use telling you about it. If I’ve written a fresh essay — and I should have one by about September 2018 — it should be on this page. Thanks for reading.

Thanks also for being interested in mathematically-themed comic strips. Those I talk about over here, at least one and sometimes several times each week. I try not to be too mean to the poor unfortunate jokes I notice.

Amazing Spider-Man

26 March – 16 June 2018.

We left the Amazing Spider-Man in a good place. By my lights. He and Peter Parker’s grumbly employer J Jonah Jameson were deep in the Everglades. The Incredible Hulk was there, engaging in a contest of big musclebound green guys in purple pants wrestling. His opponent: The Lizard, the Science-Mutated Dr Curt Connors. He’s figuring on leading an alligator uprising that overthrows humanity. Great stuff.

Spider-Man leaps into action, which yes, he does. The snarky comics-reading community loves how much Spider-Man falls unconscious and gets other people to do his work. It’s more true than it maybe should be. But he will leap in to try to reason opponents into peace. I admire his trying. J Jonah Jameson admires it too, to his disbelief. It’s a policy that gets Spidey clobbered a lot, often knocking him unconscious. But what’s a hero without courage?

Stan Lee, Larry Leiber, and Alex Saviuk’s Amazing Spider-Man for the 30th of March, 2018. I do like that Peter Parker will generally skip making the “hard” decision in a fight like this. The “hard” decision is usually to let someone else suffer. It’s a sickness of humanity that people love getting to make that decision. Parker will often go for the more inconvenient decision, such as, that both the Hulk and the Lizard have to be saved and kept from harming themselves or the other. It makes Parker’s life harder, but in admirable ways.

He tries the Hulk first, trusting that if he can calm down Bruce Banner then he can stop this green-guy swamp fight before anyone’s hurt. He clings to The Incredible Hulk, promising that the Hulk has to smash him first before he can smash The Lizard. Or — he can avoid killing anyone. Incredible sees the wisdom in this, and reverts to Bruce Banner form, to pass out in the grass. This gives The Lizard an opening to smash Spidey. But Spider-Man has a winning tactic.

He reminds The Lizard that he’s Dr Curt Connors, a man of Nice Science. Also that Nice Scientists don’t mean to go overthrowing humanity and installing a new master race of alligators. And this, too, works. The Lizard turns back into a human. A human with one lost arm, incidentally. Connors had lost it in a past Lizard-based adventure. He was scienceing that problem when he goofed and mutated himself again. He’s cool with losing the arm again, if it means he can be a human not seeking to rule the world. Well, different strokes. Also now he can kind of see why the grant committee rejected his proposal.

Stan Lee, Larry Leiber, and Alex Saviuk’s Amazing Spider-Man for the 22nd of April, 2018. Which is not to say that Peter Parker can’t be a bit of a jerk at times. Yes, there was never any doubt in a reader’s mind what he would do, but yanking Jameson’s chain like this is pretty nasty. Unrelated: are spiders known for being able to carry three of their kind with them?

Next problem: J Jonah Jameson’s looking forward to his scoop about Curt Connors being The Lizard. But Connors doesn’t want the news made public; it would devastate his son. Spider-Man doesn’t want the news public either; Peter Parker’s a friend of Connors. Jameson is able to see reason, once a couple of leftover alligators attack him and Spider-Man throws them off. And after Spidey says he’ll drop some alligators in Jameson’s office if he publishes. This undoes much of the good will that Spider-Man’s built up in Jameson’s eyes, but, you know, you can’t smash a heap of eggs without making some omelettes.

Anyway, Mary Jane Parker pops back around with the Motorboat of Wrapping Up Loose Ends. Along the way, Connors reaffirms that he doesn’t want the story getting out. Jameson reaffirms that he isn’t so much of a heel to ruin Connors’s kid’s life right now anyway. And Banner and Connors go off, figuring if they can team up to find a purple-pants Purple-Pants League of Science Mutation Stopping.

Stan Lee, Larry Leiber, and Alex Saviuk’s Amazing Spider-Man for the 10th of May, 2018. Of all the baffling and not precisely on-point references to Casablanca in pop culture, this is one of them.

Peter has a little accident where he drops his plane fare back to New York, and an impoverished mother and son find it. So he lets them keep it, and Mary Jane eats the cost of another plane ticket back. (Mary Jane had told Jameson that her husband was going back to New York, as cover for Spider-Man turning up in the Everglades. So they have to make good the cover story is why.) There’s the traditional hold-up at the airport. Peter Parker worries he’ll get asked why he wears a Spidey suit under his clothes. He never worries he’ll get asked about these tiny, explosively propelled webs of an exotic chemical mixture strapped to his wrists.

But with the 18th of May, I’m calling, the old story ends and the new one begins.

That one opens “somewhere in Manhattan” as some of your classic thugs hold guns on what they claim is FBI Agent Jimmy Woo. They get to clobbering him when a new superhero pops in. It’s someone named Iron Fist, who’s dressed in green pants, vest, yellow hood, and cool dragon chest tattoo. I trust these are all people from some other Marvel comic where it’s always 1978. Iron Fist clobbers the thugs and takes the wounded FBI Agent to Metro General hospital.

At the Daily Bugle office, managing editor Robbie Robertson happens to mention that The Kingpin is out of jail. And then the Plot TV reports this Iron Fist stuff going on. Robertson deputizes Parker to go interview the agent and write up this story. At the hospital Parker sneaks past security. He’s caught by Dr Christine Palmer. I assume she’s someone from the comic books too or else she’s getting too much of an introduction.

Stan Lee, Larry Leiber, and Alex Saviuk’s Amazing Spider-Man for the 12th of June, 2018. I’m not sure that this “IRON FOOT” thing is quite the put-down Peter Parker wants. But this may be because it’s got me excited that the Marvel Cinematic Universe might soon absorb the adventures of Kickpuncher. (It will not.)

Kicked out, Peter figures the thing to do is to make like a Minneapolis raccoon. He gets to the 14th floor and gets kicked in the face by Iron Fist. Spidey tries to sass Iron Fist about how come he’s doing all this kicking. But I’m not worried. This looks like the Ritual Fight that all superheroes must do on first meeting. They’ll be teaming up soon enough. Or will they? … Yeah, they will. I’m writing this Wednesday, but I have expectations about the rest of the week.

Next Week!

It’s back to the Prehistoric Land of Moo! And then right back out of Moo and into Revolutionary War-era Pennsylvania as I see what Jack Bender and Carole Bender have been doing with Alley Oop. No, they haven’t got to the musical number yet.