Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
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Spider-Woman #22
Issue(s): Spider-Woman #22
Cover Date: Jan 80
Title: "Bring on... the Clown!"
Credits:
Michael Fleisher - Writer
Frank Springer - Penciler
Mike Esposito - Inker
Mark Gruenwald - Assistant Editor
Jim Shooter - Editor
Review/plot:
Spider-Woman is reduced to fighting evil clowns now. On the one hand, the guy is a legitimately scary serial killer...
...but once you start using clown gimmicks during a fight with a super-hero, you cross a line and you are just a joke.
Spider-Woman has more trouble with this guy than you'd expect. A venom blast and two punches seems like more than you'd need for what is essentially an ordinary guy.
We're also seeing Spider-Woman's venom blast getting limited. She can only use it once an hour (that's why it's only a mild blast above).
The clown's backstory is that he's a henpecked husband (whose last name is Whimpley!) and he takes out his aggression about his wife on other women.
The Clown puts Jessica's friend Lindsay McCabe in the hospital because Spider-Woman dumbly flies directly into Linday's house after dropping off the Clown's previous victim at a hospital.
Quality Rating: D+
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A
References:
- Jessica stayed at Lindsay's house previously in Spider-Woman #19 and left a spare change of clothes in the guest closet.
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
Bizarrely, at DC a little while before this the Flash fought another killer Clown. That came off a lot better, probably because the DC Clown was mute and had no thought balloons. I can't imagine Fleisher didn't know about him; Fleisher spent most of the 1970s at DC and that Flash issue was heavily promoted in house ads.
He totally knew about him: in the opening panel there's a pile of newspapers with front pages about the Clown. The bottom one's title is "Flash villain missing".
A bizarre feature of this title, IMO, was the lag in the letter columns. This issue's is all about #15 (published around eight months previously, cover date Apr 79 to this issue's Jan 80) and was literally all about promoting the Shroud as opposed to Spider-Woman herself, all the way up to a special item box lampshading Marvel Preview #21. After #15 he very briefly appeared in a crowded thought panel from Jessica in #17, and never again in this series nor in Jessica's thoughts, IIRC.
That got somewhat better going ahead, but none too soon. By #33 (a one-shot bridge issue), the references would be to #28, and by #35, to #33.
The end result is a book that more often than not seems to have lost interest in its own recent past and settled on making time until its next change of direction. That has been true ever since #1, IMO, all the way to its very last issue (#50). There are only two true commited runs in the whole book: #21-32 by Michael Fleisher and #34-46 by Chris Claremont. Everything else was very tentative or the wrap-up of #47-50.
