Doug: We hope everyone had a great weekend. Summer's awesome, isn't it? Today Osvaldo and Mike W. are back with their second installment of their review of a series they both liked. Take it away, boys!
Here is part two of
our overview/discussion of the Spider-Man/Human Torch mini-series, covering issues #3 and #4.
Spider-Man/Human
Torch #3: “Auto Motives”
Spider-Man/Human
Torch #3 (May 2005) is written by Dan Slott, penciled by Ty Templeton
with inks by Tom Palmer and Nelson. This issue starts with Peter Parker
reminiscing about some of his recent adventures. We see Punisher, Hammerhead,
and the bizarre plot of Doc Ock almost marrying Aunt May, so this must take
place after Amazing Spider-Man #132 or so (he also mentions the
Spider-Mobile, which will be the REAL star of this issue!) He swings away, and
we find out he was on the Brooklyn Bridge, talking to Gwen Stacy in the last
place he saw her alive. Later, at the Baxter Building, Johnny Storm hits on an
attractive Russian scientist (Nina Pushnikov), who's there as an intern for
Reed Richards. Unfortunately, the Russian beauty is more impressed with Peter
Parker (Reed's other intern) and Johnny's kind of jealous of Peter excelling in
yet another area: science. Reed shows them his latest invention (a gravity
localizer), but after the Russian scientist leaves, we find out she's working
for the Red Ghost, Reed's villainous Russian counterpart.
Peter
soon returns to the Baxter Building (as Spider-Man) to see Johnny about
teaching him how to drive the Spider-Mobile ... like many New Yorkers, Peter
never learned. Johnny agrees to teach him and hijinks ensue. They stop for a
break on Yancy Street, where Spidey devours some Hostess--er, sorry, I mean
MOSTESS--Fruit Pies; why do I mention the fruit pies, besides simple nostalgia?
You'll see. After the Yancy Street Gang steals their hubcaps, Spidey gets the
idea to add Reed's gravity localizer to the car so they can literally drive
each other up the wall! He claims that Peter Parker told him about it. While
working on the car back at FF headquarters, Spidey and Johnny have a
heart-to-heart talk about Crystal and Gwen. Spidey doesn't name Gwen, of course
Johnny (he still doesn’t know Peter and Spider-Man are the same person), but he
confides to that the love of his life is dead.
They
take the car out to test its new gravity-defying ability, and the Red Ghost and
his Super Apes attack, determined to get Reed's device. After a short but
entertaining fight, the Apes steal the Spider-Mobile, but Spidey manages to
distract them with--what else--some delicious Mostess Fruit Pies! They use the
gravity localizer to catch the intangible Red Ghost, but Peter is let go from
his internship, for "sharing" Reed's passcode for access to the
device with Spider-Man. The issue ends on another comedic note, with Spidey
doing donuts on the side of the Daily Bugle Building ... right outside Jonah
Jameson's office!
Osvaldo:
I think this is my favorite of the five issues. The anti-gravity car is not
that interesting, but the jokes about the Spider-Mobile and NYC traffic and an
orangutan being able to parallel park while Spider-Man can’t are funny as hell,
as is the call back to Hostess Fruit Pies. I may also be biased by the fact
that Red Ghost and his Super-Apes are among my all-time favorite villains.
Of course, their origins and the other intern/spy further jumble the
timeline here, since these events are tied to the Cold War and Soviet Russia.
M.S.
Wilson: This is my favorite issue of the mini-series as well. I have a soft
spot for the Spider Mobile because I had the toy as a kid. It’s nice to see
Carter and Lombardo again … Carter looks like Stan Lee, but is Lombardo
supposed to be Roy Thomas? I also liked the young Dan Ketch cameo (reminiscent
of the one at the end of Marvels #4); maybe this is where Ghost Rider
got the idea to drive his motorbike up walls? We see more of the jealousy
theme; this time Johnny’s jealous because Peter is a science whiz. And you’re
right about the jokes … this one has a zinger on practically every page! I also
like the quieter moments, when Spidey confides in Johnny about Gwen, and admits
that Johnny’s the only one he can talk to about that sort of thing. Strangely,
the first time I ever saw Red Ghost and his apes was in a Spidey comic (Amazing
#223, I think); I wasn’t an FF fan, so I had no idea he was one of their
villains … I just assumed he was a new Spidey baddie! The Cold War feel is
here, but it’s not overwhelming (at least not to me). Maybe Slott was trying to
evoke a general sense of the times without getting too deep into it. With
Marvel’s sliding timeline, I guess we have to assume the Red Ghost showed up after
the fall of the Soviet Union, but that he’s still a scientific rival of Reed
Richards (hence his attempts to steal Reed’s device).
Osvaldo:
Yes. The balance of madcap fun and human moments makes this issue shine in a
way that the others don’t (though the Aunt May scene in #1 is close).
Spider-Man/Human Torch
#4 – “Cat’s Paws”
Spider-Man/Human
Torch #4 (cover dated June 2005) takes place between Amazing
Spider-Man #252 and #258, since Spider-Man still has the symbiote suit he
got in Secret Wars, but doesn’t know that it is in fact a symbiote yet.
The story opens with a flashback to “A dozen years ago” (so earlier than
the events in issue #1) depicting a man trying to steal a sacred headdress/mask
from the Wakandan Embassy and setting off the alarm, thus he must flee before
getting caught.
The
next scene is captioned “A few years ago” and finds Johnny Storm waiting for
She-Hulk to arrive (recent sub for the Thing who was still on Battleworld) to
go to a costume party. Johnny is dressed as classic red and blue costumed
Spider-Man, but She-Hulk shows up in a French maid’s outfit (a few sizes too
small), and when the Torch comes on a little too strong, suggesting they “stay
in” rather than go to the party, Shulkie balks and leaves. Johnny is left
feeling like he can’t win in the ladies department. He flies off in a
huff and discovers what appears to be Peter Parker on a roof arguing with
Felicia Hardy, the Black Cat. Just moments before the two of them handed over a
webbed up Beetle to Jean DeWolfe, but fell to arguing about what to do next.
Black Cat wants Peter’s help to steal something from the Wakandan Embassy
and he refuses. Once again Johnny is blown away by the women Parker seems
to attract, but in the sleeze mode he occupies through most of this series, he
takes the opportunity of a lovers’ tiff to agree to accompany Felicia to an
event at the embassy and help her out.
That
night Peter arrives at the Wakandan Embassy to cover the event for Daily Bugle
wearing an impromptu tuxedo courtesy of the symbiote-suit’s camouflage powers
(something played for a laugh in several scenes later in the comic). He is
there when Johnny Storm and Felicia Hardy arrive together and Peter confronts
them, certain that Black Cat is just using Johnny and Johnny is too stupid
and/or horny to know better. When Johnny uses his relationship with Black
Panther to get him and Felicia a closer look at the mask in the display case,
Peter decides to try to stop them by having his alien costume replicate the
uniform the guards are wearing including a beret in order to move through the
embassy unimpeded. Unfortunately for Peter (but fortunately for good taste) the
symbiote suit cannot make Peter look black, so despite his uniform he is
spotted by the guard accompanying Johnny and Felicia. When the guard gives
chase, the two would-be thieves are left alone with the mask.
After
another failed attempt to “blend in” that leaves Peter exposed in a some kind
of traditional Wakanda tribal get-up, he transform to Spider-Man and ends up
being a great inadvertent distraction for the others while he is confronted by
T’Challa himself.
Meanwhile
the Human Torch is using his powers to suck all the heat out of the room to
mess with the heat sensors while the Black Cat disables them and put the
cameras to play a loop of an empty room, and then he uses a focus of heat to
distort the lasers around the mask itself allowing Felicia to squeeze through.
Of course, there is a gratuitous need to make her strip down to her underwear
to be able to squeeze through the laser bars. When she cuts through the glass
case the mask is in the alarm goes off, but by the time the distracted guards
and the Black Panther arrive the two thieves are long gone, but what is this?
The mask is still there! Spider-Man slips away.
Confronting
the Human Torch and the Black Cat on a nearby rooftop, Spider-Man says he
doesn’t care that they didn’t get away with their heist, he is still mad at
them. It is then that the Black Cat reveals when she really came there for, her
dad’s lucky lockpick. He was the man in the original flashback who failed to
steal the mask. He dropped it when the alarm went off and it was hidden among
the mask’s plumage. Felicia had noticed it when she saw a photo of the
mask in the paper, but Peter Parker had never given her a chance to explain
what she really wanted. It was just “more fun” to try to steal it than to use
Johnny’s connection to the Black Panther to ask for it. Torch explains
that he and the Black Cat were using both Spider-Man and Peter Parker (remember,
he still doesn’t know Peter’s identity), knowing that Peter would be there to
cover it for the paper and that he’d contact Spider-Man when he saw them, thus
causing the distraction.
While
he is explaining, he turns his back to the couple and when he turns back around
Spidey and Black Cat have reconciled and are making out. Human Torch is
outraged that Spider-Man is making time with Peter Parker’s girl, and takes
off, but not before letting Felicia know she can still call him up to go out.
M.S.
Wilson: Johnny is still having no luck with his love life, and gets jealous of
Pete and Black Cat this time, after striking out with Shulkie. The scene of
Johnny hitting on She-Hulk was weird...did he expect her to just jump him? And
the remark about Starfox seemed kind of “slut-shaming” to me. Was Slott writing
She-Hulk at this point? I think he was the one who wrote the “Starfox on
Trial” issues, so it seems a bit weird here, but I suppose it’s meant to
illustrate how bad Johnny is when it comes to women; Dorrie, Crystal, Frankie
Raye, now Shulkie … I guess he and Alicia weren’t an item yet?
Osvaldo:
Maybe Slott just wanted to avoid one of the most hated plot lines in Fantastic
Four continuity: Alicia and Johnny as lovers and then Alcia’s retconning into a
skrull! Anyway… Yes. Slott was writing a She-Hulk series at this same time,
which I mostly love and wrote about over on The Middle Spaces. The
She-Hulk/Johnny Storm interaction here was an awful choice by Slott that he
didn’t think through. Not only does it come off as slut-shaming, but when
She-Hulk says that “This’s probably my fault” I cringed and felt bad for
She-Hulk, and that is not the the reaction you want to evoke in a book with a
comedic focus. To make thing worse, when Johnny storms off (no pun intended)
the focus of the story is on his feelings. “Woe is me! I keep striking
out because I assume all women should want to sleep with me at all times!” It
just comes off as so arrogant and creepy that left a bad taste in my mouth.
This is just the kind of thing when I find in comics that I cannot ignore.
As someone who loves comics 
I think it important to address this stuff.
There were plenty of ways to handle that scene in a romantic farce kind of way
that would have gotten the character where he needed to be narratively without
reinforcing negative ideas about women’s sexuality.
M.S.
Wilson: Yeah, it seems like Slott was just using She-Hulk because she’s got the
reputation of being … uninhibited when it comes to sex, shall we say? He
probably could’ve used Tigra and gotten the same result. It does really make
Johnny look like an asshole (more than usual), so I’m not sure what Slott was
going for exactly. Is this the first time Johnny’s been attracted to her? I
mean, her regular costume isn’t exactly conservative; I hope Torchy isn’t
ogling her in the middle of a life-or-death battle with Annihilus or whoever.
I’m assuming maybe Slott was just trying to show how crappy Johnny’s luck is
when it comes to women (another reason to be jealous of Peter Parker!), but
there had to be a better way to do it than this. And if Johnny’s that crass
with women in general, maybe that’s why he’s still single!
M.S.
Wilson: Anyway, this plot is a bit strange (probably best not to scrutinize it
too closely); Pete thinks Felicia wants to steal a Wakandan tribal mask that
her father failed to get years ago, and when he refuses to help she gets Johnny
instead … classic hijinks, right? But if she'd just explained things in the
first place (I know Pete didn't give her much chance, but still) the whole mess
would've been avoided. There are a lot of plot contrivances in this one to make
it work: Pete not giving Felicia a chance to explain, Black Panther assuming
Spidey is a bad guy, and especially, Johnny assuming Black Cat is cheating on
Peter with Spidey instead of putting two and two together and realizing Pete
and Spidey are one and the same. I know Johnny's supposed to be kind of dense,
but he really comes off as being thick as a brick here. The shot of Black Cat
in her underwear was gratuitous too--I mean, she looked good, but it really
wasn't necessary to the story; it might have fit better in a story that was
originally published in the 90s.
Osvaldo:
Still, despite this, the issue still works. Slott manages to keep Black Cat as
the “bad influence” character, but instead of an actual robbery the ridiculous
aim of getting a lockpick fits with the comedic tone of the series. My favorite
part is the symbiote suit trying to help Peter “blend in.” I did like the
inclusion of Captain Jean DeWolfe at the beginning of the issue and makes me
miss her. I wrote about the “The Death of Jean DeWolfe”
story line last year, and one of my conclusion was that it was a shame she had to die
for that crappy story. Black Panther mentions that he has met up with
Spider-Man twice before at this point. Do you think this is an a reference to
two actual team-ups at this point? Knowing Slott, it must be. He must be
referring to Marvel Team-Up #20 from 1974 and #87 from 1979, but
surely they have met up other times in the intervening years? Any ideas?
M.S.
Wilson: The only other places I can think of are in some of the “group scenes”,
like The Death of Captain Marvel Graphic Novel, the Contest of
Champions, and the Hulk’s presidential pardon from Incredible Hulk
277-279; Spidey and the Panther were present at all those events, so we could
assume that they interacted in some way, even if it wasn’t specifically shown
(especially at Captain Marvel’s funeral). But maybe Slott is assuming they
didn’t and is just going by the stories as published … in which case, Panther’s
suspicion follows from their last meeting in Marvel Team-Up #87, where
he was really suspicious of Spidey if I remember correctly. In fact, that story
always bothered me; you’d think Panther would’ve known by then (or other heroes
would’ve told him) that Spidey was OK. Then again, I suppose it fits with the
later retcon of Black Panther being suspicious of everyone and joining the
Avengers just to spy on them.
Osvaldo:
By the way, if you accidentally do a search for “Spider-Man Human Torch slash”
like I did you will find a bunch of fan written stories that solve Johnny’s
love woes by putting him and Spidey in a whole other kind of relationship
(wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
We hope you’ve been enjoying our journey through Slott’s
exploration of the development of Spider-Man and Human Torch’s friendship. We
have one more issue to review, when Slott and crew handle the crappiness of
1990s Marvel Comics in the only way anyone should…by ignoring them! See you next time!
Doug: For my 49th birthday, which was 10 days ago, my in-laws got me a $20 Barnes and Noble gift card. I'm usually an Amazon kind of guy, because I feel their prices are better. But of course I took the plunge and snagged a used (although when it arrived it was as new as new can be) copy of Super-Villains Unite: The Complete Super-Villain Team-Up for $16. Thumbing through the book (which is thick -- I got a great deal) I was struck with how below-average the art was in the series. Lots of not-so-good Herb Trimpe, some really early Keith Giffen that is baaaaaad, etc. But the first appearance before the ongoing was actually in Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up #1. It featured two reprints, but the framing story was drawn by Big John Buscema. For the second G-S issue, DC guys Mike Sekowsky and Jack Abel turned in the pictures. While obviously a couple of notches below JB, it was serviceable. When the series finally began in 25c form the first issue featured George Tuska and the second Sal Buscema. So really, to get this ball rolling there was some pretty solid art. But as I said, it devolved quickly.
