SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 21

July 20TH, 1986 - NOVEMBER 8th, 1986
By Stan Lee w/Floro Dery & Friends

Seven-month storylines seem to be the norm for the Spider-Man strep by this point. In the early days, they tended to last three or four months, and as a general rule, that carried all the way through the artistic tenures of both John Romita and Larry Lieber. But partway through Fred Kida's run (actually in the middle of his final storyline), they began to get longer. This is now our fifth five-plus-month-long arc in a row, and for the record they've gone seven months, five months, nine months, seven months -- and now seven months again.

Spider-Man's 1986 ends with Stan Lee beginning to plant the seeds for the web-slinger's marriage to Mary Jane Watson in 1987. I'm honestly a bit surprised Stan was thinking about this so far in advance, but I guess maybe he figured such a momentous event should have some build-up. So we have Aunt May worrying over Peter's lack of a wife and steady job, while MJ returns to New York with a promotion at Compton Computers -- she will now be running the company's franchise operations. Peter feels a bit inadequate in the shadow of MJ's success, and sells his motorcycle for some quick cash to take her out. He wants to propose, but when he ducks out on a New Year's Eve date to play Spider-Man, MJ declares that she doesn't want to speak with him again.

This finally prompts Peter to decide that he will reveal his identity to MJ. But first he needs to get past her cold shoulder to do it. His persistence pays off, and he eventually gets her to meet him at his apartment, where he shows her his costume and demonstrates his power, then tells her his origin. But Mary Jane is taken aback by the revelation, and tells him she needs time to think about it. So Spidey sets his mind to another task: a rash of ATM robberies in the city, which has drained Aunt May's savings. Unfortunately, a gung-ho cop is hunting him as well, seeking the glory of unmasking Spider-Man. (Which seems odd, since we're explicitly told more than once that Spider-Man isn't currently wanted for anything -- yet this guy, Detective Kovanson, pulls a gun on Spidey in the street, yelling at him to unmask for no apparent reason, twice -- and even shoots at him once as well!)

Spider-Man eventually gets a lead when he finds out that the nation's leading expert on ATMs, Doctor Farraday, is missing. The web-slinger decides the crooks have kidnapped Farraday, and begins searching for him. But his Spider-Sense instead leads him to Alice, the beautiful daughter of his new next door neighbor, Mister Foster. Alice pops up throughout the storyline, never speaking when Peter tries to strike up conversations, and randomly visiting ATMs at night. Yet our hero takes a very long time to piece together the idea that Alice might be part of the scam -- indeed, it takes the shocking revelation that she's a robot for him to finally realize that Foster is Farraday! (Sorry for the spoiler, but if you read this storyline, you'll realize literally within seconds of her first appearance that Alice is both a robot and the ATM crook. It's really poorly telegraphed.)

In the end, Alice goes haywire and throws herself and Doctor Farraday out a window. Spidey gets a cash reward from Mayor Ed Koch, splits it with Kovanson as payback for the Detective not arresting him, and gives the other half to Aunt May.

Yeah, it's weird. Every time this strip dabbles in the mysterious and esoteric world of those magic boxes we call computers, the entire affair feels ill-conceived. I remember when I was a kid and ATMs were new, there were people who didn't trust them (my mother-in-law still doesn't!), and maybe Stan was just one of those folks. But the silly plot, coupled with the bizarre, go-nowhere Kovanson sub-plot, makes this one a chore to plod through. Not even the "will she or won't she?" stuff with Mary Jane and the proposal can help it to feel like anything other than dreck.

Indeed, I find that my interest in the strip is dwindling at this point. I mentioned a while back that when our local paper finally started to carry the Spider-Man strip in the early nineties, I found it to be less-than-stellar compared with the monthly comics I was reading at the time. I've since wondered if maybe it was merely the ignorance of youth that created that impression, especially after reading the early Lee/Romita stuff and really enjoying it. But now I feel like maybe I was right in my first impression. It's hard to explain why, but something about the strip just doesn't feel as fun as it used to. I do have my suspicions, however, and I'll lay them out in an "afterword" post in a couple weeks. Because first, we have one final storyline to get through in the final IDW volume to date.

But before we go for the week, I do want to touch one one of Stan's writing tics that has been driving me absolutely nuts over the past few storylines, but that I haven't had an opportunity to delve into until now. This started around the time Stan switched to first-person narration, and it's really weird: every daily strip ends on some kind of little cliffhanger, right? And often those cliffhangers involve some bit of dialogue. So lately, probably at least once in every week's worth of strips, Stan will do this dopey sneak preview caption box at the bottom of the final panel, restating what somebody just said in that same panel.

For example, in a strip's third panel, Peter thinks, "I need to find a way to change into costume." Then there's a box at the bottom of the panel that says, "Tomorrow: the way!" Or Peter tells Jonah, "I'll do it on one condition," and a caption at the bottom of that same panel says, "Tomorrow: the condition!" Spidey says, "Only one person can help me now!" A box says, "Tomorrow: the person!" Spidey thinks, "I have a plan!" A box says, "Tomorrow: the plan!"

What's the point of this? It's a serialized newspaper strip. Of course every day will continue into the next. You're ending the strip on a cliffhanger; naturally it will be resolved in the next one. Those little captions are redundant at best and insulting at worst -- and idiotic in any case. I'm not sure why Stan started to do them, but I really, really wish he'd stop!

Anyway -- next week, like I said above, we'll take a look at our final storyline in this go-round with Spidey's newspaper adventures!