It’s a special wedding issue that some of you (I suppose) are highly invested in! We have Randy and Janice getting married! We have the promise from the editor that there will be more heart and surprises than you can handle! What could go wrong? Well, join Dark Mark and find out, dear reader!
Credit Where Credit Is Due
Story Title: Special Wedding Issue!
Writer: Zeb Wells
Pencils: John Romita, Jr and Emilio Laiso with Zé Carlos
Inker: Scott Hanna and Emilio Laiso with Zé Carlos
Colorist: Marco Menyz and Bryan Valenza
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramanga
Cover Artists: John Romita, Jr, Scott Hanna, and Marco Menyz
Asst. Editor: Kaeden McGahey
Editor: Nick Lowe
Folks, I have school starting back tomorrow, so this is going to be a SPECIAL OPEN HOUSE REVIEW and by SPECIAL OPEN HOUSE REVIEW, I mean I am going to combine summary and analysis together. I managed to trick Craig into doing two reviews back to back (I pulled the old Tom Sawyer method where I acted like I really didn’t want to give up such a premium annual issue, but since we all like him ok enough, I *might* be willing to let him have it this time), so I felt that I needed to just up and do this one. Let’s get started, shall we?
First of all, in full disclosure, I woke up this morning and saw a notification on my phone that said I had just purchased something for $10.34, which turned out to be this comic. At first I was all:
but then I thought, “Maybe they are giving me a super huge gang war/wedding issue that is going to feature all sorts of bad guys behaving badly!” So I was a bit more relaxed.
So let’s go through the issue and see if my eternal optimism was well placed!
We start with Tombstone calling a special meeting of all the crime families. They are not happy to find out that this is just because none of them RSVPed for his baby girl’s wedding.
After some mild threats, they agree to come with Hammerhead being a bit saucy in his acceptance.
Later, we see a bridezilla wannabe upset that her reservation was bumped and promptly shuts her mouth when she see the Sinister Syndicate plus one mild-mannered lawyer all show up to Janice’s bachelorette party. We get some nice page-flipping side-by-sides here showing the differences between Janice’s party and Randy’s:
Of course even Chi-Town could see that one coming, but it was nice bit of juxtaposition nonetheless. Of course Randy’s party is a bust – Peter’s in charge and they let us run with that idea for a while with Peter taking the blame for all none of Randy’s friends showing up to well-wish him into martial bliss. Only, Wells turns the tables on us and we find out that Peter did call everyone in plenty of time to have a full on bacchanal only it seems that none of Randy’s friends are eager to be with him now that he is engaged to a super villain. Randy finds out as well, which makes Peter look a bit better in his eyes. But Janice’s party is completely wild and even Black Cat shows up because they invited her since she is just the coolest thing ever in the feminine criminal society.
While the rest of the girls get in costume and start ambushing some crime deal (not to be heroes, but rather to steal it all for themselves), Black Cat and Janice talk about dating a ‘good guy’. Janice says she knows Randy loves her because he always asks her to stop being a criminal, but loves her regardless.
That gets her to thinking because there is no one right now telling her to stop stealing, so she confronts Peter.
And that’s the end of that. I guess she was more upset that he didn’t like her Shocker gift than I realized. So Peter now doesn’t have Mary Jane in the picture and it’s clear that Felicia was only brought back to give us a quick love triangle and not for any character development between the two. I can only assume that this makes way for one of two triumphant returns:
Lisa Skye (Peter’s dream girl) or his one true love – Deb Whitman! Now I’m thinking, if one of these characters makes an appearance in this issue, $10 will be worth it!
Back to our featured love birds, Janice leaves her party scare the living daylights out of Randy, but then…
We don’t know what exactly is going on behind that closed door, but I imagine it is something awful like running with scissors, watching rated R movies without parental permission, or something equally as bad.
The wedding starts and Peter is all charming with Aunt May as he seats her until he starts seeing Hammerhead, Madame Masque, Betty Brant, and all the other crazy and/or crime people coming to be seated as well. It sort of makes him uneasy to be seating Aunt May so near these guys, but surely they wouldn’t try anything during a wedding, right?
So now I am thinking Oh! Red Wedding a la Game of Thrones! This is maybe where the $10 price tag will be worth it!
Please click HERE for appropriate background music for the next piece of review.
All the guests have been seated…
Randy is gazing into Janice’s eyes feeling like the luckiest man in the world…
Everyone’s all abuzz… especially Peter’s spider-sense!
Someone approaches – is it the Kingpin coming to get his territory back and maybe revenge upon the attack on his newly resurrected son, The Rose? No! It’s just some dude on a motorcycle that is about to find out what it means to upset Tombstone. I think the guy’s name is Shotgun or something. When he pulls a gun on Tombstone, Tombstone just laughs! The guy fell victim to one of the most classic blunders! The most famous of which is, ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less well-known is ‘never pull a shotgun on a man who is…”
Unfortunately, being bulletproof isn’t all that it used to be.
But don’t be sad, for just before the vile villain can finish the deed, Spidey arrives with some good old fashion quipping!
But the real question here is not who this Shotgun dude is, but who hired him? Well, we find out it was none other than Hammerhead. And he’s not done clearing the way, either.
That’s one high quality onomatopoeia right there, folks. Sure, it’s a simple BOOM!, but the sheer size of it! It’s breaking out of the panels, it’s so loud! Not only is it transparent, but check out those weighted outlines at the bottom! This is a 9 out of 10.
That explosion, by the way, was Madame Masque’s car and it was caused by Hammerhead. While it looks like no one could survive such an explosion, and Madame Masque has no real powers to resist explosions other than maybe being quite agile, it is possible she sent a clone of herself or someone in a disguise like Senator Amidala. So Hammerhead is either making his own play to be the big boss or he’s trying to pave the way for Kingpin’s return here.
Now we are talking! We’re only halfway through the issue, so let’s have an ALL OUT GANG WAR! Yep! Optimism wins out! This is going to be so worth the cover price! To get back to what will almost certainly be THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY, Wells and Romita Jr have Spidey go Ditko style:
But then, we just get Randy and Janice leaving in separate cars and this:
That’s it folks. THAT’S IT. No gang war. No massive fight with villains in tuxes. So Sinister Syndicate joining the fray. No Deb Whitman or Lisa Skye. That’s it.
Well, not quite. I did say we still had half the issue left. So what’s next?
A letter from Nick Lowe followed by some more Spider-Man adjacent stories. Lots of them. All of various degrees of crap and most of them advertising for future story lines.
Here they are:
Kamala’s Back – Spidey is so glad to see her back as an X-Man now that he shows her his identity. I guess you can’t remember the last few minutes of your death when the X-Men bring you back, because she is all surprised.
Doc Ock and the Bar with No Name – All the bad villains are excited to see Doc Ock gracing their presence. Ock decides that the reason he can’t remember something he did was because he did it whil being Peter Parker, so he decides to become the Superior Spider-Man again. By the way, Eight Ball is here and in the Moon Knight comics, he is going to be Moon Knight’s helicopter pilot. That’s series is AWESOME.
Jackpot – MJ and Paul are struggling with coping the loss of their children. Black Cat decides to help her out by giving her a new Jackpot costume designed by her with a little help from Paul.
Jessica Drew – She is on a rampage. Beats up Taskmaster to get a list of his agents. Then she starts hunting them down one by one because one of them stole her baby!
Spider-Boy – a picture was taken of him in his Waspy form (from the Spider-Verse arc, I guess). Madame Monstrosity is not amused.
Addiction Hotline – Some guy named Perry likes to get rescued and it is pissing off Torch and Spider-Man so they embarrass him.
Loosey Goosey – Holy crap! I have no idea what this is about. There’s Spidey, Doc Ock, and a goose. It was too small to read on Comixology and when I clicked it to read it panel by panel, they were not in order. Something tells me that even in order it would make no sense.
Kraven and Kafka – they have passionate sex. Yeesh! And you may think I am kidding, so here is the proof:
Finally, there is some really gross bloated guy and an ad saying that the most notorious Spider-Man story returns. There is a big 2 in the background. I’m guessing Reign? Not sure. Don’t want to know.
That’s it, guys. If you think I am giving the backup stories the short shrift, you are wrong. They are all about two-three pages and pretty much nothing happens. The Jessica Drew one looks promising and I liked how the Jessica Drew one starts in the Bar with No Name and they make a reference to the earlier Doc Ock backup in the same bar.
Extra Credit
If you were a dutiful listener, you heard the background music I took the time and effort to set up for you. What Shakespeare play does that song come from?
Final Grade
The main story was promising and pretty good up to the end. It was like someone just cut the comic off in mid story. If they had continued and we had some pay off from Hammerhead’s actions, then this may have been worth extra money. Can you imagine if we kept going and you had Peter trying to keep Aunt May safe while a full force gang war erupted around him? And Janice trying to protect Randy and Robbie, but also her dad? We could have had another ten to twelve pages of non-stop action and I would be saying, “I guess we did pay a fair price!” But as it is, we have a regular $4 B story (heck, I might even say B+ for the web slingshot) with a bunch of FCBD style snippets that we get the privilege of paying $6 for. I’m pretty angry about this.
The issue as a whole as a result of factoring in the cost per story ratio:
D-
Was It Worth More Than…
This 2024 wall calendar that features 12 different pooping pooches?
No. No it was not.
If you need some good Spider-Man content to read, save your ten bucks and visit my buddy Bill’s newest Spider-Tracer article on the Cyclone. Leave him a comment for him while you’re there!
What’s Next?
What’s next for me? A little Beowulf followed by Wuthering Heights! If you guys start bombarding Brad about starting up a Crawlspace Book Club, I can start posting Wuthering Heights chapter reviews! Oh what will that rapscallion Heathcliff get up to next? But until then, Craig’s got you covered with what will hopefully NOT contain more Queen Goblin/Kraven copulation
Two of Spider-Man’s villains are forming the deadliest team-up he’s ever had to face. But are they after Spidey? Or is he just in the way of something bigger? Patrick Gleason rejoins the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN crew for the darkest arc of ASM yet!
This issue was too long for me guys, so sorry to change up the format, but I don’t think there would be much better had I done it the other way. There is not a lot to really dig your teeth into in the main story. Yeah, Peter and Black Cat break up. Yeah, we can speculate if Hammerhead is going on his own or trying to buddy up with Kingpin. We can agonize over Randy and Janice not getting their time together. But really, those are pretty shallow in themselves. However, I do admit that I am pressed for time and even taking a short cut like I did today takes about three hours, so I am more than happy for someone to prove me wrong and open my eyes to possibilities I overlooked in the comments section.
Oh, and thanks to Chi-Town for the feature image frame. He gave this to me a while back and I lost it somehow and recently found it again.
Lisa Skye not in this issue.
‘Nuff Said!
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@Mark Alford –
“Hornacek certainly has editing rights now and could do it for me” I would never presume to edit someone else’s review. As Jack Nicholson once said, “Never rub another man’s rhubarb!”
“the review came out on Wednesday, my friend.” If the review is not already up when I go to bed on Wed night and I don’t see it until first thing Thur morning, then for me that counts as being posted on Thur.
This is the most bizarre run of any comic I’ve ever seen. Like Wells introduces an idea and then just hopes that’s enough by itself. Black Cat, MJs kids, many more come up when they are introduced than come up when they are undone.
I don’t even like these ideas but I can’t hate them because there is nothing to hate. Like hating the letter I.
Are we sure this comic isn’t actually written by that AI that’s all the craze right now?
Hey guys – normally I try to respond to everyone in turn, but this time I am swamped with the start of school, evening, meetings, and taking my son (Colby, not the Grant many of you know) to college this weekend. I did read all comments and will continue to do so when I get breaks. So, in brief while I have a minute now:
Michael’s point on Hammerhead and Shotgun are good ones. I read it initially as him lying to Masque to get her in the car so he could kill her too, but after reading what he has to say about the solicits, I see that there are two different plays going on here. So that makes this a tad more interesting. Also – thank you for the clarification on why Peter would need to reveal his identity again to her.
Weird coincidence is a regular thing in my life.
And yes, I take full responsibility for the atrocious spelling typos. I was in a rush and I doubt I’ll have time to go back and edit it at this point – though, Hornacek certainly has editing rights now and could do it for me…
Speaking of Hornacek – the review came out on Wednesday, my friend. 🙂
Glad you liked the gifs, Evan. I aim to please! No Wuthering Heights for you? How about some Brave New World or Lord of the Flies?
Chi-Town – you NEED to buy this issue! It’s the best! Trust me! Worth every penny!
Yeah, Joshua, I agree – those extra stories are just not worth the cover price. Ruined the whole experience of the issue for me.
I feel like congratulations are in order. This issue was all setup to a bunch of different upcoming stories, and I didn’t care about a single one of them. Not. A. Single. One. I can’t remember the last time I cared this little about anything from a comic this long. Zeb Wells and Nick Lowe, you truly make quite a team.
@Hornacek- according to Steve Foxe, Spider-Woman’s new series will tie into Gang War, which is why it was advertised in this issue.
@Sthenurus- The new Fantastic Four series and McKay’s Strange and Doctor Strange also revolved around the questions of “What did Reed do?” and “What did Stephen do?” The difference is that not only did we find out what Reed and Stephen did sooner than we found out what Peter did (Reed sent an entire city block full of people into the future to stop an invasion, including Franklin and Valeria; Stephen committed war crimes when he fought for the Vishanti in the War of the Seven Spheres, prompting the Vishanti to split off the war criminal part of his soul into a being called General Strange and imprison it) but Reed’s and Stephen’s actions actually had consequences throughout the series. In Wells’s case, not only did he take longer but the only reason why Peter’s actions kept being mentioned was the Fantastic Four inexplicably decided not to forgive him like they did every other hero who did similar things when lives were in danger. That pretty much sums up the difference between Wells’s run and actually competent superhero runs.
A review out on Thursday? How dare you!
“I managed to trick Craig into doing two reviews back to back” (me seeing the quality of this issue) Did you *really* trick me? Because it’s looking more like I tricked you.
So Randy and Janice didn’t actually get married, right? Does this mean we need to do all of this again? Sigh.
I get the feeling we were supposed to be sad at the Peter/Felicia breakup but I couldn’t stop laughing because it meant nothing. The only development of this relationship in this run was in the two issues *not* written by Zells. This breakup feels like either (a) Zells really wanted the two of them together but once he got it he didn’t know what to do with it, (b) early feedback was extremely negative so they course-corrected, or (c) Felicia has something else going on in another story and her being in a relationship with Peter doesn’t work with that (does she have her own book anymore? I have no idea)
I thought Shotgun looked familiar, and I think he is this guy: https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/J._R._Walker_(Earth-616). My favorite piece of info on his Wiki page is “Affiliation: Partner of Bullet”.
I didn’t do any page counting but it felt like the wedding story wasn’t long enough to fill a normal-sized issue of ASM.
The Kamala story felt like such an insult based on how we were sold the issue where she died. It’s literally Marvel telling us “none of that mattered”. And the large font whenever Kamala said “X-Men” just screamed of “effort”. Like the Peter/Felicia relationship, what was the point of Kamala in this run? Nothing.
“whil being Peter Parker” while, not whil.
“That’s series is AWESOME.” That series, not That’s series.
I should have liked the first half of the MJ story. This form of therapy was exactly what I didn’t expect in terms of actual ramifications of this happening to MJ so I was pleasantly surprised to see it addressed here. But it’s undercut by having just seen her in the annual laughing, having fun, making quips while her aunt attacked everyone. And I have the feeling that her becoming Jackpot (ugh) at the end of this story is Marvel’s way of saying “Ok, MJ is over this trauma now, becoming a superhero always cures any loss”.
Spider-Woman – again, who cares? I guess if you’re a Spider-Woman fan you do. Shouldn’t this have been in Slott’s Spider-Man book?
Spider-Boy – at least they tricked me into reading a Spider-Boy backup by not revealing it was actually about him until the final panel.
The Perry story was actually an interesting idea, but I didn’t need a backup story about it.
That Goosey story makes Fred Hembeck’s “Petey” stories look like Miller’s The Dark Knight in comparison.
“Kraven” and “Kafka” get together – why? Because they’re both clones? This feels like Zells is just picking 2 random villain names out of a hat and putting them together.
It’s like Reignnnnnnnn, on your wedding day …
Was it just me or did we get a “Prelude” and “Chapter 2” blue pages but no “Chapter 1” page? Or was that just on the digital copy? (I haven’t picked up my physical copy from my LCS yet).
Ha! You paid $10 for this! I gotta give you credit, reading bad books so our viewers don’t have to. Kudos to you. Felicia wants a relationship and not a project. Wells Peter Parker is confirmed to be such a loser, Felicia doesn’t want that stink around him. Even BC/Spidey shippers know that Felicia’s moral compass doesn’t point to Peter’s north star. It would never work. Sounds to me that this issue pack paddled and was left one cruise control. I wanted to know more about the MJ story and a friend shared spoilers. How is it remotely possible that MJ completely understands Peter’s motto now, than before? She understood it times ten after she got married to Peter. This is just lousy writing (the book, not you review) and it’s hard to stomach at times (you and book share that). I saw on twitter (or X) that there are some people that actually liked this book and thought it was worth every penny. Mark, I’m glad you have a vaccine that blocks this sickness that seems to be spreading on those who claim to be “Spider-Man” fans. Keep telling it how it is.
@Mark — Those are some quality gifs you’ve put in this review! We get Panda Cheese, and disillusioned Ralphie, which my favorite moment of that movie.
I come away from this review with two main thoughts, in this order: (a) I think “SRANT” is a pretty darn good onomatopoeia, too, and (b) Why on earth is Peter blaming himself for Randy and Janice’s relationship? At a certain point feeling guilty goes from being constructive to just becoming so egotistical as to believe that everything revolves around you, and this is pushing it a bit for me.
By the way, speaking of favorite movie moments, Vizzini’s wonderful philosophical musings come nearly exactly a half-hour into the Princess Bride. When it used to air on tv, I’d time my viewing accordingly and then turn it off.
I was reading this review at my desk at work, and I scrolled down to that Kraven/Kafka panel just as someone walked by. Gee, thanks, Marvel.
If joining the Crawlspace Book Club means reading Wuthering Heights a third time, no thank you. You and I have already discussed Heathcliff and how he relates to Norman Osborn and his sins in Gold Goblin, but I do like the idea of assessing literature for how its themes relate to Spider-man. (Incidentally, right now I’m reading the anonymously published “thriller” short stories of Louisa May Alcott. The last one I finished, “Ariel: A Legend of the Lighthouse” is based on The Tempest, and it was fantastic.)
Speaking of which, I’ve racked my brain, and without Googling do not know which play Mendelssohn’s (not to be confused with Mendel Stromm) Wedding March figures into. I will guess Much Ado about Nothing. I need that extra credit to atone for my Shawshank blunder: Hornacek had the perfect quote on which to end it (the last line of the film), and I, being dumb, and to the annoyance of all, I’m sure, didn’t pick up on the not-so-subtle cue, and now blame myself like Peter Parker blaming himself for the state of others’ relationships. I will now manfully take my dunce cap and sit in the corner.
Another great review! Now I get to read the comments.
Little spelling mistake (I think). You wrote martial bliss instead of marital bliss. Mind you both work in the context of.a gang war!
Yeah that issue was too expensive for what it was. I had the same thought you did: why weren’t all these stories part of a FCBD? It didn’t spoil anything from any stories going on at the time. And a few pages aren’t worth the price of admission.
@michael
I think the problem with Wells is as follows: too much faith in the mystery angle and the out of order storytelling; as well as a disregard for the whole “show don’t tell” principles.
I feel that if the story was done in order, and we had just a few more panel of kamala bonding with Peter and Norman (rather than telling us things like the coffee bit last issue) it would have worked better. Same with black cat. She wouldn’t have had huge stretch of time where she didn’t appear (especially if they had rolled the MJ/BC into the ASM title for the dark web “event”).
Overall this is a lot like many B to C ASM runs before: cool idea, poor execution.
That same type of calendar I found when searching for dictionaries on a website I used to buy foreign comics from, before it closed. Weird coincidence.
Can someone tell me what the point of Peter’s fling with Felicia was? The only time we’ve seen her in Wells’s issues after Peter asked her out and before this issue was the first few pages of issue 27- the scene with the Shocker. Why set up a romance between Felicia and Peter if you’re going to do nothing with it? And this is a recurring problem in this run. Kamala had almost no panel time in Wells’s issues before the issue where she was killed. And MJ’s kids had almost no panel time in Wells’s issues before issue 25, which suggested they were “chains”. We can argue about whether plots like “Peter and Felicia get back together” or “Kamala becomes part of Peter’s supporting cast” or “MJ adopts kids” are good ideas but that’s the point. Wells spent almost no time developing them before getting rid of them.
What’s currently going on with the Kingpin in the X-titles is this- the Kingpin’s wife, Typhoid Mary, is a mutant. The anti-mutant group Orchis trapped her and several other mutants in the Asgardian realm of Vanaheim. The Kingpin agreed to aid the X-Men against Orchis. Emma Frost made the Kingpin the White King of the Hellfire Club and gave him access to Krakoa’s funds. Presumably the Kingpin is going to use the money and title to go back to crime after he gets Mary back and takes revenge on Orchis.
I don’t think that Hammerhead hired Shotgun. Hammerhead said “This wasn’t my move” to Masque and then blew up her car saying “This was my move.” Hammerhead just blew up Masque’s car. The solicits for Gang War First Strike say “Who hired Shotgun” so presumably we’ll find the answer in that issue.
Re: Kamala’s memory- it’s been stated that the resurrectees usually lose anywhere from a few minutes to a few days of memories. Villains have tried to take advantage of this on multiple occasions.
Re: the Spider-Boy story- Madame Monstrosity claims that her technology was behind the creation of the Lizard and Morbius. I’m not liking this at all. We’ve seen countless flashbacks to their origins over the years and no one mentioned her. (She could be delusional, of course.)
Re: Kraven sleeping with Kafka- I think the idea is Kraven will try to get Norman’s sins out of Kafka because he loves her and somehow the sins will get trapped in Peter.
Yes, it is Reign 2.