Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #123
Cover Date: Aug 73
Title: "...Just a man called Cage!"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Gil Kane & John Romita Sr. - Penciler
Tony Mortellaro & John Romita Sr. - Inker

Review/plot:
A mystery character has removed Norman Osborn's Green Goblin suit and left the body somewhere the police can find it. The Marvel Chronology Project lists the Green Goblin as appearing in this issue, and, well, there's his corpse, so, yeah. Based on the fact that years later Goblin will turn out to not really be so dead, i guess that makes sense.

At the funeral for Gwen, Peter and Flash come as close to coming to terms with each other as we've seen so far. Also we learn that Aunt May travels with some of Dr. Octopus' goons as protection, which is interesting. And JJ couldn't make it to the funeral cause he's busy with his latest anti-Spider-Man scheme.

Harry is looking very psychotic (and it's drawn very well), and not talking to Peter.

Today, the first issue after the death of a major supporting character would be a downtime issue... OK wait, that's not true. When Happy Hogan died in Iron Man #13 in 2007, it wasn't ever even mentioned again and in fact I HAD NO IDEA THAT HE DIED.

*ahem*

Generally speaking, when a major supporting character dies today, you expect to get a down time issue that shows the main character coming to grips with that death. In this issue, however, we move right along. There are some panels showing that Peter is depressed and that Mary Jane is trying to help him out of it (and move in to fill the vacancy left by Gwen?), but the main plot of this issue is JJ hiring Luke Cage to fight Spider-Man.

Spider-Man starts off on the wrong foot with Cage, and they get into a couple of mean fights...

...before Peter realizes that he needs to approach things a different way and webs Cage down so they can talk.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Spider-Man/Luke Cage meeting

Chronological Placement Considerations: Parts of this issue take place concurrently with Hero For Hire #12, and Luke Cage appears next in that issue directly.

References:

• Spider-Man admits that he started off in the super-hero game as a way to make money as well, a reference to his show biz ambitions in Amazing Fantasy #15 and his attempt to draw a paycheck from the Fantastic Four in Amazing Spider-Man #1 (and in fact he does earn money from being Spidey by taking pictures of himself).

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Tales #100

I originally thought this book was odd for jumping right back into an action story, but after Amazing Spider-man 2 (where Peter had... what? Six months of down time?!!!) I appreciate it a lot more.

When Gil Kane handed in the pencils for Spider-Man 123, the characters were good, but too dynamic. Stan had Romita redraw key scenes so the characters look sedate, almost stunned, the way people at funerals really are, as well as fix Mary Jane's attire. Kane's idea that even a girl as "flighty" as Mary Jane would wear a fringed buckskin jacket to a funeral is ridiculous.

Any graybeards out there recall PBS' "The Electric Company"? They showed Spider-Man, a.k.a. Spidey, in stories to help educate the target audience. Most were narrated by Morgan Freeman in his "Easy Reader" days. The cover to ASM #123 was reworked to show Spider-Man battling a "villain" called the Thumper. When I bought this back issue years ago and saw the cover I instantly made the connection.

Yeah I think that's how I first found out about Spider-Man myself...that and Amazing Friends. Lucky Spidey Super Stories isn't continuity, lest we get more jokes about, say, the Thanos Copter.

Ataru320, we can't forget the 1967 Spider-Man cartoons featuring the iconic theme song. As a kid, when cable TV was just losing its training wheels, we used to get an independent station out of Chattanooga (I'm a native Knoxvillian) that showed these plus Gigantor and a hodgepodge of reruns. The first season was fun concentrating on the rogue's gallery, but with season 2, much as I respect Ralph Bakshi's work, his takeover of the show came with deep budget cuts, a lot of Spidey fighting dragons, wizards and the like, and enough stock footage to make Filmation look like Pixar by comparison.

A great fight issue with an angry Spidey and an opponent he can unload on. Cage makes a good showing (although Spidey clearly comes out on top, despite his own words to the contrary).