Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1994-12-01 00:02:11 |
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Amazing Spider-Man #394
Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #394
Cover Date: Oct 94
Title: "Break-down!"
Credits:
J.M. DeMatteis - Writer
Mark Bagley - Penciler
Larry Mahlstedt - Inker
Danny Fingeroth - Editor
Review/plot:
Spider-Man runs around inside Ravencroft for a bit and eventually gets captured by Judas Traveller. I said last issue that Traveller's plan felt a bit like the set-up for Knightfall, but the story doesn't even have Spider-Man fighting the villains of Ravencroft (yet). I really don't know what Spider-Man is supposed to be doing before Traveller catches him.
But Traveller realizes that there's another Spider-Man, so he has Chakra contact the Spider-clone (who was visiting Aunt May in the hospital and making friends with Dr. Julia Caputo). There's not much to talk about, except for the introduction of a new barely-introduced villain called Scrier.
It's also reinforced that the new Peter Parker thinks that he's the clone.
And i guess i should also mention that Traveller briefly turns Edward Wheelan back into his Vermin form. But Traveller then determines that there's no evil in Wheelan, so he turns him back.
Also in this issue, Mary Jane leaves town to visit her sister Gayle.
Quality Rating: D
Historical Significance Rating: 2 - first Scrier
Chronological Placement Considerations: This is Power and Responsibility part two. It continues in Spider-Man #51.
References: N/A
Crossover: Power and Responsibility
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
Oh, Lord...Scrier....a vapid mystery that every single writer has handled differently, to the point that now I think the official line is that he was some kind of cosmic being, but there;'s also a cult of insane people who dress up as him and eventually fell in line behind Norman Osborn.
It strikes me that Judas Traveller, Scrier, and the lost are like the worst impulses of all the current Spider-writers bundled together: the nadir of DeMatteis's pseudo-psychological mysticism, Mackie's directionless mystery plotting, Kavanagh's penchant for giving XTreme 90z names to characters in lieu of personalities or distinctive gimmicks, and DeFalco's retro bombast.
Ugh.
What happened was that Traveler was letting Peter walk through the asylum to further mess with Peter's head. Then, when Peter finally realized how horrible the world was, he concluded that madness is the only sane response and went completely nuts and collapsed.
Note that Traveler reads Peter's mind, finds secrets that Peter is unaware of and laughs. This is another clue that Peter is the clone.
@Omar- After Harras decided that Norman was behind the Clone Saga, it was decided that Scrier was working for Norman. DeFalco decided that Scrier could only pop up everywhere if there was more than one of him, a la Scream. Glenn Greenberg then suggested that they were a cult. Then Ralph Macchio pointed out that DeMatteis was planning on using Scrier in Silver Surfer so it was decided the cult was based on a real person. This complicates things for fnord, since how do we know we're seeing the same Scrier (the one the Handbooks named Charlie Bates) all the time? But several readers had a problem with the twist- do ALL the Scriers know Peter's identity? If so, then how does Peter still have a secret identity? I don't know why DeFalco couldn't just say that Norman bought a teleportation device from the Tinkerer or something.
@Omar:
That second paragraph just absolutely nails it. I mean really and truly. Spot. On.
Well done.
Omar's assessment is pretty top drawer--I guess what's especially bad is that everyone threw in their worst ideas and so took what could have been four okay, average comics to dreck. DeMatteis is a polarizing author but he can do good stuff, and I could have accepted one Spidey comic turning into the touchy feely psychological one. Mackie's style is annoying but if left to its own devices was fine turning in pedestrian, entertaining-on-a-month-by-month stuff like his Web run. A retro DeFalcon run wouldn't have been the worst idea at this point in the grim 90s (I don't like Kavanaugh's stuff). Unfortunately, we got four comics that began taking on a similar, mixed, bad style.
I think Omar Karindu hit the nail on the head. Judas Traveler does seem like a mish-mash of DeMatteis and Mackie's favorite tropes... He is a mystic psychiatrist fascinated with the human condition and the nature of good & evil who possesses an enigmatic past and a secretive agenda about which he cannot tell anyone because, well, reasons. Judas Traveler is sort of like a cross between Dr. Stoner from DeMatteis' Doctor Fate and Caretaker from Mackie's Ghost Rider.
