Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #303
Cover Date: Aug 88
Title: "Dock savage"
Credits:
David Michelinie - Writer
Todd McFarlane - Penciler
Todd McFarlane - Inker
Glenn Herdling - Assistant Editor
Jim Salicrup - Editor

Review/plot:
Nice opening splash from Todd McFarlane:

Peter Parker is debating what to do about his recent job offer. The problem is that the job is in Kansas, and Mary Jane doesn't want to move there.

Meanwhile, Silver Sable wants someone more subtle than her operative Sandman to handle recon work for her job hunting down Franz Kraus, the son of a Nazi that her organization put in prison a while back, and who attacked her recently. She puts an ad in the Daily Bugle, but Peter gets to see it before it even hits print.

Spider-Man shows up at the Symkarian embassy.

During his recon, Spider-Man discovers that Kraus and his Neo-Nazi brethren are planning a drug deal that he thinks will give them enough money to form their own country.

Despite hearing about the high tech weapons they have, Silver Sable and Sandman decide to go in after the Nazis, and Spider-Man goes along.

Of course he does! What kind of super-hero debates fighting Nazis?!

I haven't been too thrilled with McFarlane's off-model Sandman in civilian form, but his sandy form is pretty good.

And of course his Spidey poses are great.

And here's Silver Sable kicking ass.

Throughout this issue Mary Jane has been wondering "Do I really love Peter that much", to move to Kansas with him, but when it's all over, she decides that she does. The O'Henry twist is that Peter has decided he doesn't want to go to Kansas after all, and instead he's going to go back to school and get an advanced degree. So that's the good news. The bad news is that someone seems to have figured out Peter's secret ID.

As TCP notes in the comments, this will turn out to be something a lot less sinister, though.

The feint towards the Kansas job is a little weird, and the Neo-Nazi plot seems a little extraneous (the original idea was that Kraus was mad that Silver Sable put her father in jail, but failing at that he's now working on forming his own Nazi country? Maybe one thing at a time, dude!). But it's nice to see Silver Sable and Sandman again, even if the plotting is a bit thin.

Speaking of thin plotting, it's announced in the lettercol that Amazing Spider-Man is going to a bi-weekly status for the summer. I guess three Spider-Man series times twelve issues a year just wasn't enough.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Takes place after Captain America #344. Joe Robertson is on "hospital leave", placing this after Spectacular Spider-Man #139.

References:

• Silver Sable has been hunting Franz Kraus since Amazing Spider-Man #301.
  
• We overhear David Letterman telling a joke about Ronald Reagan "making an asp of himself", which is a reference to Captain America #344.
  
• The Bugle article Spider-Man is reading in the Symkarian embassy refers to the events of Hulk #337. No telling when Clay Quartermain actually gave the interview.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Spider-Man Legends vol. 1: Todd McFarlane Book 1 TPB

I never bought the idea of the Nazis starting their own country. Israel had around 650,000 Jews when it became independent. Where was Kraus going to get hundreds of thousands of Nazis?
"What kind of super-hero debates fighting Nazis?!"
Just wait until the Assassin Nation Saga, fnord. Peter actaully seriously considers taking a bribe from the Red Skull to let him start a war between two countries.

There were a number of soon-to-be-dispossessed white supremacists and fascists lurking Earth around this time. In South Africa, in fairly strong Klan activity and a rising racist skinhead movement. David Duke was ascendant, 1988 being the year of his first presidential run. Militant Rightists were beginning to really loom as a threat in the Late Reagan Era, and they were often making a lot of noise about "international" connections.

So extending comic book logic to that real world in '88... supervillains in 616 have started countries on a lesser basis!

(Meant to use a semicolon, not a comma, between the clause about South Africa and the one about the Klan. I meant to say there was white supremacist/neo-Nazi activity in multiple places, not that the Klan and skinheads were in South Africa. Felt the need to clarify!)

I often forget, in my dislike of Macfarlane art, just how mundane and poor the scripts that Michelnie was cranking out were. sadly, brainless stuff from a talented writer.

Michelenie is a talented scripter and knows his craft, but the quality of his solo work and that done with a collaborator like Layton on Iron Man shows he needs an idea man as a partner. Some of Michelenie's later work on ASM is very good, but mainly it's this pedestrian stuff. It's actually surprising Michelenie's run will be so long.

I guess the shadowy figures at the end are supposed to be the book executives from the next issue, though I don't think it's ever made explicit.

For me, Spectacular became the best book in the spidey stable at this time. Conway had his faults but the stories were more interesting than Michelinie's fluff. Then of course DeMatteis turned in the best Goblin saga since the early hobgoblin days.

And our pal Sal was crushing it.

In retrospect I agree that Spectacular was the pick of the litter but to the 10 year old me reading these books at the time Amazing was the best.Mcfarlane was my favorite artist and Buscema and Saviuk looked so drab in comparison.Now though I think overall Mcfarlane is the worst of the three.Saviuk is underrated and he does draw some beautiful ladies.

Maybe the "Dock Savage" pun is too obvious to comment on, but it brought a smile to my face.