Issue(s): Spider-Woman #33
Cover Date: Dec 80
Title: "Yesterday's villain!"
Credits:
J.M. DeMatteis - Writer
Stephen Leialoha - Penciler
Bruce D. Patterson - Inker
Mark Gruenwald - Assistant Editor
Denny O'Neil - Editor

Review/plot:
This is probably the most covered Marvel comic on the internet, so let me outsource the humor to two of the greats: Seanbaby and Dave's Long Box.

Guest writer J.M DeMatteis himself calls Turner D. "corny"...

...so i guess we should take all this with a grain of salt, although that's hard to do considering all the murder going on. The gist of this story is that Spider-Woman takes a case that requires her to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco to stop Turner D. Century, who rides around on a floating bicycle with a doll in the back and burns down buildings that represent the degeneration of society.

And he thinks Spider-Woman is a slutty dresser.

DeMatteis keeps up the tension between Spider-Woman and Scotty McDowell. He's mad when she chooses to rescue people instead of pursuing Turner (and yes, some "realistic" nudity from Leialoha).

But Scotty gets his information wrong at one point, and Turner D. napalms San Francisco's Chinatown. It turns out that doll's head is a bomb.

With that, Scotty stops acting so haughty.

Scotty's information did seem sound though. It turns out that all of the properties that Turner D. was attacking used to be owned by a Morgan MacNeil Hardy. The Chinatown attack was a fluke. So Spider-Woman goes to Hardy's mansion, and finds that inside it, an old fashioned town is set up. Turner D. is giving a speech to his mannequins, and doesn't like to be interrupted.

But Hardy, a shriveled old man, arrives...

...and Spider-Woman is able to convince him to tell Turner D. to stop. But that's only after Turner D. has a fit and starts a big fire, which both he and Hardy seemingly die in (although both will appear again).

Also in this issue, Spider-Woman catches Scotty masturbating...

...and a woman hits on Jessica in a bar in San Francisco.

Obviously a crazy and much-mocked premise, but this issue is actually leaps and bounds better than the recent Michael Fleisher stuff.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Turner D. Century and Morgan MacNeil Hardy

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Spider-Woman rescues a politician under attack from citizens that don't want a landmark hotel torn down for a shopping center. Spider-Woman says she doesn't understand politics since she was raised in Wundagore. The footnote is for Spider-Woman #1, which i guess is ok, but Marvel Spotlight #32 would have been better.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Evil masterminds motivated by nostalgia is a bit of a DeMatteis thing early on. In addition to Turner and Hardy, Professor Power has a similar, if less extreme, outlook.

This really is a decent issue--my first exposure to Turner D Century was in the Handbooks, and I was surprised when I read this and found his surrealism and himicidal tendencies kind of work; he's not a total joke.

It's not awful, at least he was an original villain.

But they should have toned down the body count. Killing dozens of people on each outing was a bit much, even for a comic book.

I think here we find JM DeMatteis' first published story from Marvel. I like the groundbreaking nods to Jessica's cosmopolitan lifestyle, the humor- funny, a nostalgic p.o.v. is the natural enemy of a new writer on a character (new herself)- no? Meanwhile, Century's a chance for JM to unload his actual nostalgia in a fun way that acknowledges how, with the power, the vision of how to achieve a fair and perfect world's gotten more complex than it probably was two generations before.

This is JM's first Spider-Man story. My first of his Spider-Man stories is in MTU #111, his 2nd try-complete with Spider (story builder) God Omm. Here we have more of a Kyle Richmond tale, revisiting what is I'm sure a big favorite Defenders storyline for its later writers: The Headmen! Callbacks to the Origin of Kyle Richmond- and yet another story where some menace comes out in the trappings of a past decade! I see how he got tapped to write Captain America, in a way.

Sorry, I meant to leave that second comment under MTU #101.

Great stuff! Lame villian but it's so funny it's borders on greatness.