Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #253
Cover Date: Jun 84
Title:
Credits:
Tom DeFalco - Writer
Rick Leonardi - Penciler
Bill Anderson - Inker

Review/plot:
Peter gets an unusual assignment from the Bugle to cover a football game, but it's not his specialty and he's kind of inept at it. But it turns out that the star player is throwing games for a new criminal mastermind called the Rose, and Spider-Man has to protect him when he tries to break the arrangement.

We learn while Spidey is fighting the Rose that his new costume actually filters out the gas from the grenades the Rose is throwing.

Also this issue, Peter finally works up the nerve to tell Aunt May that he's dropped out of grad school. It doesn't go over well.

The Rose will much later turn out to be Richard Fisk, the Kingpin's son. Since Fisk earlier also went by the name The Schemer, i'm using my Henry Pym rule here and using his civilian name to track him in the Characters Appearing section. So, you know, spoiler alert.

Nice fill-in art by Rick Leonardi, if you don't mind it being a little cartoony.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Rose

Chronological Placement Considerations: Events in this issue (namely, the fact that Peter was able to get a photo assignment) are referenced in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #91. But later in this issue Peter is already suspicious of the Black Cat, wondering what she is hiding from him, which could only happen after Peter Parker #91. So basically the issues are happening concurrently (when a narration caption says "Later...", they mean it).

References:

• Peter quit grad school in Amazing Spider-Man #243.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Tales #267

aunt may got so upset it warped peters head in that second panel up there.

Interesting to note that at this point, DeFalco didn't intend for the Rose to be Richard Fisk or Roderick Kingsley. In fact, DeFalco didn't have a secret identity in mind for the Rose. He was just intended to be a middle-management crime-boss and DeFalco thought the mask and name seemed more interesting than some random guy, kind of like Nick Lewis when he became the Crime-Master.

It wasn't until later when readers started wondering about the Rose's "secret identity" that DeFalco initially decided to make him Roderick Kingsley, until he was let go and Jim Owsley made him Richard Fisk.

Yeah, when you read this issue, it's really tough to see how it made sense to try to retrofit Kingsley. As the Rose says in one of the panels you included, he doesn't WISH to engage in physical combat... but he shows that he's entirely capable of it (elsewhere in the issue, he displays some martial arts training IIRC). This doesn't work for what we knew of Kingsley at all. For the Hobgoblin, you can see that Stern was actually showing Kingsley's transformation into a guy who could go toe-to-toe with Spider-Man (in their first meeting, he just tries to get away and then he's behind the scenes when "the Hobgoblin" returns again only to be unmasked as Lefty Donovan. Kingsley is only somewhat comfortable taking on Spider after he subjects himself to the goblin formula... and the issue where he does that also states that he stayed in too long and may have caused himself some brain damage. Perhaps just enough to overcome whatever fear he has of Spider-Man).

I don't really like the Richard Fisk reveal either, but at least he made more sense than Kingsley would have. Frankly, I wish they just would have gone with De Falco's original plan... simply have him be a mid-level guy who adopted the mask for some plausible deniability in case one of his goons ever ratted him out. They could have still created a good backstory for him without needing to make him a previously-known character.