WEB OF SPIDER-MAN #109 - February 1994

A Shock to the System

Credits: Joey Cavalieri (writer), Rurik Tyler (penciler), Sam De La Rosa (inker), Steve Dutro (letterer), Bob Sharen (colorist)

The Plot: Spider-Man follows Shocker to a seemingly abandoned TV studio. The studio is actually a secret base belonging to Night Thrasher, who’s hiding an experimental biofeedback harness. After the heroes defeat Shocker in battle, he confesses that he wanted the harness to control his powers, which he’s convinced will kill him. Night Thrasher and Spider-Man combine their scientific knowledge and use the harness to tame Shocker’s powers.

The Subplots: None.

Creative Differences: A few added word balloons elaborate on Night Thrasher’s real name and costume gimmicks, Spider-Man’s spider-sense, and who exactly is going to take Shocker to the Vault after he’s cured.

I Love the '90s: The title of this issue is presumably a reference to an early '90s Billy Idol song.

Miscellaneous Note: The Statement of Ownership has the previous year’s average sales at 332,858 copies with the most recent issue selling (is this a typo?) 432,900 copies. Even Web of Spider-Man almost broke the half a million mark!

Review: Web can never, ever escape filler, can it? Not that this is particularly bad filler, it uses the characters logically and has decent art, but it’s still a page-killer. The most ridiculous element of the issue is a scene that has Shocker literally terrified of Spider-Man’s shadow, but other than that there’s nothing really objectionable here. I’ll give Cavalieri credit for utilizing Spider-Man and Night Thrasher’s scientific expertise and emphasizing Spider-Man’s willingness to help people, even a villain who’s tried to kill him numerous times. So, it reads like a free comic given out at a baseball game, but it’s okay as filler.

The Savaging Prelude - Death Becomes Her!

Credits: Terry Kavanagh (writer), Alex Saviuk (penciler), Stephen Baskerville (inker), Steve Dutro (letterer), Bob Sharen (colorist)

The Plot: Calypso seduces a Guardsman and breaks into the Vault. She unlocks Curt Connors’ cell, only to be killed by her former pawn when he transforms into the Lizard. The Lizard escapes into the night.

The Subplots: None.

Web of Continuity: A one-page interlude showcases the Parkers’ new brownstone home, which has already debuted in Amazing.

I Love the '90s: “Death Becomes Her” was the name of a popular Bruce Willis/Meryl Streep movie at the time.

Review: The regular creative team was still free to do seven pages, so this issue’s filler is padded out with a brief prelude for the next story arc. “The Savaging” is a sequel to Todd McFarlane’s initial Spider-Man storyline, and it’s about as good as you might expect. Kavanagh actually uses Calypso’s voodoo powers quite well during her brief invasion of the Vault, and killing her off so early in the story arc is an unexpected move, but it’s hard to forget that this is setting up an unbearably bad story. And even if Kavanagh’s scored some shock value with her death, killing off Calypso feels like a waste. Say what you will about McFarlane’s “Torment” storyline, but he did manage to take the ultra-obscure Calypso and sell her as a credible threat.

GENERATION X ’95 – November 1995

Of Leather & Lace

Credits: Scott Lobdell & Jeph Loeb (writers), Wood & McManus (breakdowns), Lightle/McManus/Sienkiewicz/Panosian/Russell/Chaloner (finishers), Comicraft (lettering), Moreshead/Kalisz (colors)

Summary

Cordelia Frost, Emma Frost’s teenage sister, meets with Shinobi Shaw in Boston. She’s kidnapped Mondo, and demands a place in the Hellfire Club in exchange for him. Suddenly, armed men working for someone named Barrington take Mondo’s unconscious body away from Cordelia. Soon, Cordelia arrives at Xavier’s School, looking for Emma. She tells her that she came to America with her friend Mondo to enroll at the school, but he was kidnapped. Emma is suspicious, but agrees to send the team on a mission to find him. Meanwhile, Mondo escapes from Barrington’s men and wanders throughout Boston. Emma and Generation X arrive to help him as the armed men chase him down. After Mondo easily defeats a group of the men, Barrington monitors the situation and decides to end their mission. The men teleport away, leaving Mondo with Generation X. Cordelia decides that she came too close to being found out, and decides to leave Mondo with the team. Mondo says goodbye to her, not realizing that she was the one who kidnapped him from their island in the first place.

Continuity Notes

This is the first full appearance of Cordelia Frost, who made cameos in previous issues as the girl living on an island with Mondo. According to Cordelia, Emma Frost’s telepathic powers don’t work on her (which of course makes it easier for this issue’s plot to work).

Barrington is the name of the mystery man Maverick was working for in his first appearances. He makes an appearance in this issue, but he’s kept in shadow. The men working for him have armored suits that resemble Maverick’s.

“Huh?” Moment

Jubilee is drawn without any feet on page twelve, which is pretty noticeable since this is a giant splash page of her diving into the pool.

Approved By The Comics Code Authority

This issue opens with sixteen-year-old Cordelia lounging in skimpy lingerie, smoking a cigarette and drinking wine.

Review

I did buy this issue when it was released, so I guess I’ll do a full review of it. The story can’t be described as typical annual filler, since it involves a new member actually joining the team, but the art is typical of the haphazard messes that double-sized issues often turn out to be. Aside from needing so many finishers their names can’t fit into one credits box, the editors have also assigned incompatible artists like Bill Sienkiewicz and Dan Panosian to work on pages right next to one another. One scene has moody pages drenched with ink featuring expressionist characters, while the one next to it has poorly formed figures made out of super-thin lines standing around in awkward poses. It’s such a disorganized mess, Cordelia looks different on almost every page. In some scenes it’s impossible to tell her and Jubilee apart. The dark, moody pages stand out as the best-looking ones, even though that style really doesn’t suit the story at all. The story itself is mostly fluff, but I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if the art was more consistent. Mondo isn’t that bad of a character, and his extremely laid back attitude can be amusing. Cordelia is sharply written, getting some good lines in during the first scene (“You want me. You want me so much that it bores me”.). Bringing back Barrington, one of the numerous mystery characters introduced during the pre-Image era, would’ve been a nice payoff, except that the story doesn’t offer any answers about him and keeps everything involving him (literally) in the dark.

The Very Personal and Very Private Journal of Monet Saint Croix

Credits: Scott Lobdell (writer), Jeff Matsuda, Vince Russell, & Rurik Tyler (artists), J. Babcock (lettering), Dana Moreshead (colors)

Summary

Skin reads M’s diary, which is filled with child-like drawings and descriptions of her early days with Generation X. M figures out that he’s read the diary, but is confident that he won’t be able to deduce her family’s secret.

Production Note

This back-up story is hand-lettered, which stands out now that all of the titles are using computer fonts.

Continuity Note

M’s draws an image of her saddened father in a twins’ bedroom. M is pleased that he’s sad because “it is his fault, after all”.

Review

It’s a very short back-up story so there’s not a lot to say about it. It reinforces a hint from an earlier issue that M writes and draws like a small child, and offers a very vague clue about her past. Most of the pages consist of a recap of Generation X #1, which seems excessive when you consider that this issue was only a year old at this point. Some of the cartoony drawings are fun, but there’s really nothing going on here.

X-FORCE AND CABLE ’95 – December 1995

Fun, Fun, Fun!

Credits: Jeph Loeb (writer), Matt Ryan & Rurik Tyler (pencilers), Mark Pennington, Andrew Pepoy, & Ian Akin (inkers), Matt Webb & Malibu’s Hues (colors), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (lettering)

Summary

While vacationing on a tropical island, X-Force’s volleyball game is interrupted by the Impossible Man. He wants Cable to allow his three teenage children to join the team, but he refuses. After Impossible Man continually pesters the members of X-Force, Cable finally relents. The three teens check into X-Force’s hotel, but are only interested in watching television. While jet-skiing, X-Force is attacked by a giant green and purple monster named Barrachus, the Kalinator. Cable assumes that the monster is secretly the Impossible Man, until he realizes that the alien is actually disguised as his bar of soap. Cable uses his telepathic powers to learn Barrachus’ greatest fear, which is to be eaten by its mother. The Impossible Man’s children join forces to shapeshift into a larger monster and swallow Barrachus. Impossible Man thanks Cable for motivating his children, who have now taken Cable as their role model.

Continuity Notes

Caliban is referred to as “the purple one” by a hotel clerk, even though he’s actually colored gray in this issue. Since it’s actually written into the dialogue, I guess Caliban was officially considered purple at this time (he was colored white in all of his original appearances, for whatever that’s worth). There’s also a narrative caption that refers to the Askani as a “cult of women”, which contradicts the fact that men were shown to be a part of the order in the early issues of Cable.

Production Note

Mark Waid gets a “special thanks” credit, labeling him the “Ambassador to Popup”.

I Love the ‘90s

Cable is horrified to learn that the Impossible Man’s kids are “slackers”. Later on in the story, they’re concerned about missing the latest episode of Melrose Place.

Review

I believe this is the first (allegedly) comedic story to feature Cable and X-Force. Very little of it is actually amusing, since almost all of the humor is just based on the idea that the Impossible Man is annoying. Annoying doesn’t automatically equal funny, so it’s a bit that gets old quickly. Loeb keeps the story from being too obvious by revealing that the green and purple monster isn’t the Impossible Man, which at least adds a small twist to an otherwise predictable Impossible Man story. I think this is supposed to be an homage to the Impossible Man’s occasional appearances in Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants annuals in the ‘80s, but it lacks most of the imagination and fun of those stories. I will give Loeb credit for trying something different, though, and some of the scenes with the teenagers aren’t bad (their imitation of various Cable action figures is amusing). The art is extremely inconsistent, as the members of X-Force suddenly look as if they’re small children towards the end of the story. They’re not drawn in that style at the start of the issue, so I have to assume that one of the multiple inkers misinterpreted Ryan’s pencils. The transition from Ryan to Tyler is also jarring, as Tyler’s art is less cartoony and more hard and angular.

The Gamut

Credits: Todd Dezago (writer), Daerick Gross (art), James Houston (colors), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (lettering)

Summary

In a back alley, Domino fights a group of ninjas and a doppelganger of herself. After defeating them, Grizzly appears, quoting the words he spoke before she had to kill him. She stabs Grizzly with a broken street sign, exposing him as a robot. Domino yells at Arcade, who has been secretly watching in a nearby truck. She tells him she’ll see him at the same time next year.

Review

It’s annual filler, not surprisingly. Dezago does introduce one unexpected twist, which has Domino allowing Arcade to try and kill her annually in order to test herself. It’s slightly ridiculous, but seems to fit her character. The story’s nicely drawn and does what it needs to do in eight pages, so there’s really not a lot to complain about. Arcade has been redesigned to look like some sort of gruesome freak, which ties in to the Wolverine/Gambit miniseries that was released around this time.

X-FACTOR # 82 – September 1992

Sittin’ By The Dock Of The Bay

Credits: Peter David (writer), Rurik Tyler (pencils), Al Milgrom (inks), Glynis Oliver (colors), Richard Starkings (letters)

Summary

The X-Patriots, a group of mutants that fled Genosha months ago, are trying to enter America but the government refuses to grant them asylum. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants attempt to recruit the X-Patriots, but they’re stopped by X-Factor. Havok tries to convince the X-Patriots that Genosha is now safe, and pledges that X-Factor will travel back with them to prove it.

I Love the ‘90s

Madrox is wearing a Ren & Stimpy t-shirt.

Continuity Notes

Sauron was in a “regenerative state” after getting shot in X-Force. He revives himself by feeding on a bum at the bay. For some reason, Sauron made quite a few appearances during this time after living in obscurity for years.

The letters page explains that Madrox is able to duplicate his clothing because it’s made out of unstable molecules, and that he cannot duplicate objects he’s holding. This contradicts the current portrayal of the character, which has Madrox duplicating anything within the field around his body.

Review

X-Factor continues to move in a more conventional direction with this issue, but it’s still enjoyable. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants are a natural choice for villains when you consider that Quicksilver used to be a member, and that Pyro and Blob used to be in Freedom Force, the government-sponsored mutant team before X-Factor. This version of X-Factor never developed an opposing team to act as a recurring threat, but I think it should have been this incarnation of the Brotherhood. As opposed to their X-Force debut, the Brotherhood actually seem threatening, and all of the members have something to do.