Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1989-11-01 00:08:30 |
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Spectacular Spider-Man #156
Issue(s): Spectacular Spider-Man #156
Cover Date: Nov 89
Title: "The search for Robbie Robertson"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Sal Buscema - Penciler
Mike Esposito - Inker
Glenn Herdling - Assistant Editor
Jim Salicrup - Editor
Review/plot:
Gerry Conway's generally pretty good return to Spider-Man takes a strange and probably offensive turn in this blending of Spider-Man with the movie Deliverance, which is specifically how it's advertised in the next issue blurb of issue #155.
Basically, Spider-Man goes into the backwoods of the Appalachian Mountains in Central Pennsylvania to look for signs of Tombstone and Joe Robertson, who fell here from a helicopter "days ago". Spider-Man doesn't find Joe and Tombstone, but he does find a village of inbred hicks.
Uh boy.
Two of the hicks, a pair of brothers whose mother once worked outside of the Three Mile Island nuclear facility, are mutants. One brother is, and i'm not making this up, Banjo...
...and the other one is named Bugeye.
Their fight all turns out to be a misunderstanding, and Spider-Man leaves with some sympathy for them, while the hicks decide that maybe they don't have so much to fear from the outside world any more, despite the fact that they all look like cartoonish monsters (even the non-mutants).
Meanwhile, it turns out that Joe and Tombstone have wound up with a different rural archetype.
A number of other subplots are developed in this issue. Mary Jane is hosting a painting party for the new apartment, and we see the Black Cat again seemingly stalking Flash Thompson.
Kristy Watson continues to not accept that she has an eating disorder.
And Marla Jameson explains to us why she wasn't around the whole time the Chameleon had Jonah locked up in his apartment, and we also see that Puma has bought the Daily Bugle.
Quality Rating: C
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: It's been "days" since Robbie and Tombstone fell from the Helicopter, and since this issue has Mary Jane hosting a painting party at their new loft above the Osborns, it must take place after the Assassin Nation storyline in Amazing Spider-Man #321-325.
References:
- At the painting party, Betty Brant thinks about the rumors that Glory Grant shot her werewolf boyfriend to save Spider-Man in Web of Spider-Man #55. That's actually not what Glory intended to do...
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
Several letters criticized the depiction of the "hicks".
Letter writers also had problems with the idea that the children people exposed to radiation outside the Three Mile Island plant could become mutants, since the people OUTSIDE the plant were exposed to less radiation than a dental x-ray. The letters page responded that small doses of radiation can induce mutation in the Marvel Universe. But people still had a problem with that. If that's the case, then why don't we ever see Dental X-Ray Man?
Note that Puma becomes owner of the Bugle in this issue. This causes complications because Doctor Strange 11-12 have to take place after this issue but Jonah seems to Morgana's publisher in those issues.
Hurray, we've reached the Spidey issues I actually own!
Years ago, on the Superdickery forums, we had some fun with the idea that people in the Marvel Universe were more susceptible to mutations. I designed a guy who could control fungi because he once ate some moldy bread, and a girl who could summon meteors from the sky because she had that glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling as a kid.
Really wildly offensive. Like the white person equivalent of Tintin African or WWII era Japanese depictions in comic of decades ago. And wasn't this around the time Spidey explains to the audience how most skinheads weren't racists at all but actually just want to appreciate Black Indian music or something?
