Marvel Way

03/30:Mary Jane keeps on changing her clothes today, it would seem. Also, the "NEXT" box fills me with hope! Soon we will be rid of Simon Krandis and his incredibly convoluted, destined-to-fail plan. The Persuader I could take or leave, honestly, and Jimmy Godero... just sort of vanished. All in all, Jameson should be happy about the fall of Krandis.

Ah, and I see the door's been fixed.

03/31:I can't tell what Mary Jane is wearing today, and Spider-Man is speaking in Yoda-like sentence fragments. Though I would supposed Yoda would say "Reach her I must!". Not to mention the fact that this is, by far, the artsiest panel we've had. It's one panel, but it's split by the door! That's the Marvel way of doing things, I suppose.

Also, it looks like the Persuader is going to push Mary Jane out of the way and electrocute himself on the door. It's a shame that they've wasted the past few days actually giving the guy some character and now he's going to get killed. Alas, that is also the Marvel way of doing things.

Love and Death-traps

03/26:The Krandis Mansion has remarkably thin walls if Spider-Man can hear his wife's screams from a hidden subterranean cave.

03/27:The mansion does have one death-trap, it would seem, and only one. Well, two if you count the booby-trapped windows, but those are really outside the mansion.

03/28:The Persuader takes a surprising turn by wanting the woman he loves to be happy, no matter the cost. I was half-expecting the Persuader to attempt to take down Spider-Man himself in order to win Mary Jane, but only after taking out Simon Krandis. Also, how is Spider-Man going to fit through that tiny door?

03/29:Ah, it was just faulty perspective. As for the death-trap itself, the machine that activates it looks like something from an old science fiction movie. Also, if I'm correct in assuming that the door Spider-Man is headed towards is the same Mary Jane is headed towards, it brings up several questions. Namely:
1) Why is the doorknob on the left side of both sides of the door?
2) It looks like wood, and I'm pretty sure wood can't conduct electricity.
3) Isn't it sort of foolish to have a door leading from your stately mansion into your subterranean cave? I mean, if the door was hidden behind a grandfather clock that'd be one thing. Just out in the open like that, though? That's asking for trouble. Don't even say that it's fine because it's booby-trapped, because then Simon Krandis would be sending the Persuader out with dead servants all the time since they touched the door. Perhaps that's what happened with Jimmy Godero.

False Prediction

Simon Krandis is obviously planning to have the Persuader hurl Mary Jane into Spider-Man like a harpoon. It'll be worth seeing, it will.

Spider-Man is a Smash!

03/23:Spider-Man can now be arrested for vigilantism, breaking and entering, and destruction of property. After all, at this point and time the world at large knows Simon Krandis as a legitimate if unethical businessman. If he plays his cards right, the police force could be on a manhunt for Spider-Man within the hour. Or, if Krandis acts quickly, they could even show up at his house and legally end his spider-problem. Since Krandis owns a cave, he can just keep the Persuader and Mary Jane there while the police are kept totally unawares...

03/24:...instead, he'll make the typical villain flaw of continuing to get Spider-Man himself. Also, note that Spider-Man's reasons for bashing through the wall have gone from rightful wariness to sheer delight of property damage. That's why he's our hero, that is.

Mundane Trap, Bar None

You know what would make this really awesome and fun? If when Spider-Man touched the bars, it emitted a secret signal to a small shed in the backyard which Electro burst out of. Then, he would electrocute Spider-Man. Of course, this won't happen, and instead Spider-Man will simply fall for an obvious yet somewhat effective trap. Also, it looks like Professor Unambitious is about to punch his monitor.

On a side note: the mental image of Spider-Man being electrocuted by the bars makes me want to watch "Jurassic Park".

The Predictable Spider-Man

Preliminary reports stating that Spider-Man was going into the front door have proven to be false. However, considering how his enemy knows that Spider-Man is tracking him and the wall-crawler's usual modus operandi is to enter through windows on the top floor, it may have been safer for Spider-Man to enter through the front door. Also, I would like to point out that the captive Mary Jane is not bound at all, and she appears generally unguarded. Surely she could take out Professor Unambitious? Heck, even if the Persuader is guarding her, I doubt she'd have to do much to make him turn traitor. The guy is already planning to do so already, for god's sake. Also: I just noticed the bars on the windows of the mansion. Classy.

The Incredible Growing Spider-Man

So I see Spider-Man's spider-sense decided to work. Guess this means no one's going to clobber him with a lead pipe, and there'll be no falling bricks. Oddly, the first and last panels make it look as if Spider-Man was sort of tiny, then became sort of giant. Not an insane amount, just enough to make me think, "Boy, does he look a bit taller than he should." Here's hoping we're done with this by May.

Professor Unambitious

For today's post, instead of talking about today's strip, I shall announce that I have decided to start calling Simon Krandis by a codename: Professor Unambitious! The man could do so much more with his resources, such as the cave and hired thugs, but neglects to do anything more interesting than kidnapping Mary Jane to get to Spider-Man. With a monocle and a lab-coat, Simon Krandis could easily become the nefarious Professor Unambitious. He could even keep the Persuader on the payroll as his traitorous second-in-command, and I'm sure he could find something to do with Jimmy Godero. If he could find Jimmy Godero. Alas, but Simon Krandis suffers from a criminal lack of ambition, and so we shall have no monocle or lab-coat. He shall forever be Professor Unambitious to me, though.

List of Things (I Am Tired)

1) Krandis should seriously be a super-villain. He has a cave under his house, for god's sake, which you get to from his garage.
2) I'm undecided about the "Batman" reference.
3) The Persuader just wants to be told that you're not romantically involved with Spider-Man so he can move in. He suspects nothing, and is undaunted by the fact that you're married.

On-Time, If Late

First off, that's not an underground entrance. That's a garage. Second, unless this is one of those times when Peter's plot-specific spider-sense doesn't work, Peter will be able to figure out he's in some danger. Especially when you consider he knows that Simon Krandis and his cronies are up to no good and should be somewhat on guard anyway.

Shoddy Metaphors

03/14:Spider-Man does not have webbed feet, though his frequent ally Howard the Duck does. Also, I don't think the death warrant metaphor is really a good fit for this. I mean, they don't go to people's deathbeds and make them sign their death warrants before passing away and therefore it would be foolish to think that someone you're about to kill in some way would sign one. It'd go like this:

[Spider-Man swings in through a window]
[Simon Krandis emerges from the shadows]
Simon Krandis: Greetings, Spider-Man. Now, I must insist you sign this death warrant so that I may kill you.
Spider-Man: Are you crazy? I'm not signing that thing!
Simon Krandis: Drat! Foiled again!

I realize this is a long way to go to basically say it's a shoddy metaphor.

03/15:An underground entrance? Snazzy! Also, really freaking paranoid.

03/16:Here we see Spider-Man using logic, and acknowledging that Simon Krandis has become insane. We are also reminded of the Persuader's Mary Jane lust, and another shoddy attempt at metaphor by Simon Krandis. What's worse is that the NEXT box points this out, and when they take take off their duty of teasing us to point out that your metaphor is shoddy, that's bad.

Simon Krandis: Faithless

It's sad when your hired muscle is showing more intelligence than you are. It's also sad when you don't have any faith at all in your exploding car.

Career Paths

Simon Krandis is insane if that's the best way he could think of to kill Spider-Man. All I can say is that the evil costumed super-geniuses lost a great one when he decided to become a thuggish businessman. Case in point: He has a thuggish henchman with a codename. Give each of these guys a gaudy costume and, in Krandis's case, a codename and you'd have a pretty decent evil super-team. Also, it has never been more obvious that the Persuader openly loathes Simon Krandis and will kill him for Mary Jane.

Mary Jane: Trump Card

The first two panels are just exposition and plot clarification. Panel three proves Krandis was somehow behind the exploding car, and tells us that Mary Jane will be his trump card. The most mundane, and therefore most likely, explanation is that Krandis will use hostage MJ as a bargaining tool to get Spider-Man to back off. This will fail when the Persuader steps in, as he has the hots for MJ as well and, presumably, won't suddenly claim to be using her to get to Spider-Man. The second option is that Krandis will use some heretofore unseen scientific connections to turn Mary Jane into a battle-ready cyborg or, perhaps, simply a genetically altered killing machine. Oh, or maybe some sort of hypnotism or magic will unlock Mary Jane's dark side. Any of those options would be great fun and, therefore, will not happen.

Spider-Mouse?

A typical Monday recap strip. I do like how Krandis refers to Mary Jane as a delightful slice of cheese. He's a charmer, he is.

Great Irresponsibility

Spider-Man eschews his mantra of "With great power comes great responsibility" and lets two thugs steal some stuff. Yes, even though there's a cop there and Spider-Man does have other things on his mind, it's sort of uncharacteristic of him. I suppose Mary Jane's signal is making him hurry things up a bit, but it would take all of five minutes to catch those two crooks. I'm still not buying this whole plot twist with Simon Krandis, though. The man is either some sort of criminal genius, or he's just a moron.

Questions:
1. Whatever happened to Jimmy Godero?
2. When will this storyline end?
3. Will the next storyline feature the debut of the "Marvella" movie and perhaps Mysterio, or at least some other costumed villain who wants to make things difficult for Mary Jane? I know the cartoon featured a subplot where Hydro-Man was a former boyfriend of Mary Jane and refused to let her go, so that could be incorporated into the strip, maybe. You could even bring Kraven the Hunter back, as he was the one who got Mary Jane into the movie business in the first place. There's so many things that could be done with the whole "Marvella" debut, but I'm willing to guess that it'll be some fat mobster in a suit making things difficult. Now, if that fat mobster happens to be Kingpin, I'll be pleased, but in any other case I'll be pretty mad.

Sadly, only Stan Lee knows the answers to these questions.

Metpost: Crime and Punisher

While looking for random tidbits of whatnot, I found a thread on a message board which also mentioned the Spider-Man strip collection (which I shall need to get, of course, the only impediment is that it will cost me at least $30 due to its availability being limited to the United Kingdom) but also led me to a Punisher site with a complete Spider-Man arc on display. Here's the arc. It features Punisher and the Owl, and is exactly 100 strips long. I shall have to do some counting and come up with an average storyline length so I'm not so in the dark.

News of a Most Relevant Sort

So I was looking at the Internet, I was, and voting against Brian Clevinger on the Eagle Awards when I get to a section about reprint compilations. I was sort of blah about it, when I noticed The Daily Adventures of Spider-Man Volume One. A little bit of research lets me know that this is a compilation of the newspaper comic strip starting from day one. The only problem is that it appears to only be available in the United Kingdom. While I have plenty of Internet reviews saying this exists, can anyone actually confirm it?

Out of Left Field

Whoa, whoa, hold up. Simon Krandis has been clumsily trying to court Mary Jane for the past several months, including daily viewings of her play and asking her to marry him, because he's after Spider-Man? I mean, yes, there have been attempts made on Spider-Man's life by Krandis's associates (including the missing Jimmy Godero) but Krandis has never shown any animosity towards Spider-Man, save as a romantic rival. Unless Krandis is after Spider-Man to have Mary Jane for himself, I'm going to just assume that Stan Lee is reading this and is trying to throw me off. Which would be pretty neat, but still.

On a more ironic note, Krandis just destroyed a device which would have brought Spider-Man right to him.

Sweeper Keeps it Moving

Thank god for the sweeper! If it wasn't for him, Spider-Man would spend the next week meandering about looking for something to do. That valiant sweeper is here, though, with a solid clue for the web-slinger. My hat is off to you, sweeper, and what's this?

Thanks to you, this mess of a storyline will be over that much sooner.

Darn it, Krandis!

Simon Krandis finally notices Mary Jane's bracelet, and single-handedly draws this storyline out for another month. Will the man's evil never cease?

Posts: Now With Three Distinct Tangents!

Spider-Man's amnesia adventure is a bust. This is bad because I was looking forward to wackiness and whatnot, but it's good because it would have padded out the storyline a bit and with today's installment, we inch that much closer to a conclusion. You can tell because not only is Mary Jane in trouble, but she's with the two main antagonists of this arc. The only missing aspect is Jimmy Godero, and maybe that henchman the Persuader was using to bomb Daily Bugle trucks. If that Godero thing doesn't get resolved, by the way, I am going to quite peeved.

I would also like to point out that, in the past, everything has proven able to stop Spider-Man. We can only pray that a chilling wind doesn't start up, forcing him to retreat lest he catch his death... oh my god. I just realized something. For the longest time, Aunt May would fuss over Peter telling him to wear a sweater and carry an umbrella and not do anything too dangerous. The reader would know that her nephew was actually Spider-Man, and therefore able to deal with those things. Well, let's say that Aunt May was right and Peter couldn't handle those things. This is the sort of Spider-Man that would result from that. Everything about this strip is so much clearer now.

This is probably going to be how things turn out:
1) The Persuader stops the car somewhere isolated, all the better for a Climatic Finale.
2) The Persuader will stand idly by, wringing his hands while Simon Krandis ham-fistedly tries to obtain Mary Jane.
3) Simon will get fed up and act a little bit too forward towards Mary Jane, and at this point Spider-Man will come in.
4) Spider-Man will fight the Persuader, who will no doubt choose to defend Mary Jane instead, and punch out Krandis.
5) The villains will go to jail, Jameson will be happy, and... there'll be like, fifteen plot threads left hanging.

Mish-Mash

Everyone who had their money on the chivalrous bruiser theory, it looks like your bet is about to pay off. Simon Krandis has gotten his hands on a martini (or perhaps just a remarkable simulacrum) and, at this point, our happy trio has been driving around for about a week. In order to make myself feel better, I'm going to assume that Jimmy Godero is waiting around Krandis's apartment with a lead pipe.

I would also like to call shenanigans on Sunday's "NEXT" box. Rather than getting an amnesia storyline, we get one panel of Spider-Man trying to remember things, a panel of him remembering those things, and then we cut back to the Krandismobile. To be fair, though, it did say "OUT OF MEMORY?" The answer is apparently no.

About the Characters

About Spider-Man: I see that Spider-Man's Amnesia is more like Spider-Man's Momentary Disorientation. Thanks a lot for building up my hopes only to have them explode like a robot car in my face.

About Mary Jane: It's not a teleportation device, ma'am. You have to assume that your husband, whom swings around the city, may not be able to be by your side at a moment's notice. Have some patience.

About Simon Krandis: It pleases me to know that he doesn't notice the object of his desires constantly pressing her bracelet. How much do you want to bet that he doesn't notice that the Persuader is also lusting after Mary Jane, and that Jimmy Godero isn't dead. The man's obtuseness will be his downfall.

Spider-Man's Amnesia Adventure Prologue

Today is mainly recap, but that last panel is a doozy. Spider-Man's mask is at least scuffed a little, and the "NEXT" box proudly proclaims that he may be out of memory. This is always good for a bit of a laugh, and maybe Jimmy Godero will show up and turn the memory-free web-slinger against Simon Krandis (which is something Spider-Man was already attempting, but let's ignore that for now) as revenge for Krandis's dirty deeds.

My highest hope for Spider-Man's amnesia adventure is that Jimmy Godero will convince Spider-Man to don a pinstripe suit OVER his costume in order to join Krandis's operation. This would be fantastic. What will probably happen, though, is a week or so of Spider-Man walking around moaning about how he can't remember. Someone had better take advantage of Spider-Man's innocence during this thing, or I will be severely disappointed.

Spider-Man: Suffering Only a Mild Headache

Spider-Man, as we can see, is in one piece. The man has a headache, but I would consider that a pretty mild result of being in an explosion. Not only that, but his costume is still immaculate despite being caught in that same explosion. This means that Spider-Man's costume is much more resilient than he is, considering how it's not complaining about its fibers hurting or anything.

We're going to spend the next week watching a punch-drunk Spider-Man unsteadily swinging towards Mary Jane and her bracelet, all while Mary Jane acts like she's actually attracted to that disgusting Simon Krandis. By the end, everything will work out and Mary Jane will make some pun about her acting ability. I pray this is all over by April.