Marvel 1981 Week--Amazing Spider-Man #222!

Well, kiddies, at this point on our week-long trek through Marvel 1981, we're going to come up against a phenomenon that defies in-depth analysis:

The fill-in issue.

You see, prior to Jim Shooter's elevation to Editor-In-Chief, Marvel had a policy of never, ever shipping their comics late--can't risk losing that newsstand space, you know.

Unfortunately, though, this left them in kind of a bind when creators ran afoul of the Dreaded Deadline Doom, for whatever reason. The solution--run a reprint.

Boy, did that piss off fans (especially when the reprint shipped with what was supposed to have been the cover of the scheduled new story!) So when Shooter took the reigns, he declared no more reprints for emergencies. Instead, he began to stockpile "inventory stories" for each title--new stories that they could run in a pinch.

While superior to running reprints, these fill-in issues presented problems of their own. Because they were being prepared for a future publication at an unknown date, they couldn't be too tightly tied to any particular point in continuity (e.g., if you draw the story with Hero X going out with Girlfriend Y, and by the time it's printed Girlfriend Y is no longer in the picture, well, oops).

Which had the effect of making many of these fill-in stories, no matter their quality, seem generic as all heck, and not of much value in discussing the state of that character in 1981. Case in point:

Spider-Man is busting up a gang stealing furs!!

And our creators:

Let me emphasize that by looking critically at the concept of fill-in issues, I'm NOT picking on Bill Mantlo, Bob Hall or Jim Mooney. It was a tough task, to create a story that neither tied into nor contradicted a possible future continuity, and couldn't reference any current events in Peter Parker's life. It just occasionally produced...bland comics.

This story was published between Denny O'Neill's last and Roger Stern's first, and obviously Mantlo couldn't have had many details about the new status quo when this tale was written, doubtless months beforehand. So the result is...generic.

For example, we have the pretty generic "Spidey busts up the hoods" scenes, but without any of Spider-Man's traditional angsty worrying about his life at the same time:




Of course, some aspects of Spider-Man's life were set in stone back then, so of course the citizens he was helping hated him:

Meanwhile, an electronics store is being robbed in an odd manner:


Speed Demon? Who is he? Patience, young padawans...

But how fast is he?


That fast.

And when Spidey tries to catch him with the webs?



Ouch.

Anyway, given that this is a fill-in, we can't check in on Peter's home life, or even love life. So no Aunt May, no Mary Jane or other fine ladies. Nope, it's off to one of those other bedrock, never changing aspects of his life, the Daily Bugle!

Unfortunately, despite depending on this job for rent money, Peter is still a pretty crappy photographer:

Nope, the only good photo has is Speed Demon standing over his beaten body, which J. Jonah Jameson stops the presses for.

Meanwhile, an origin for Speed Demon:


Ahhh...another hallmark of a fill-in issue: the disposable bad guy. Take a villain who hasn't been used in years, and hasn't even been seen in costume for nearly a decade, and doesn't seem too likely to be used in the interim. No one's going to mind if you use him, re-purpose him.

Back to the monologuing:



Dude, whom are you talking too?!?

Well, Spider-Man's waiting for him to rip off Bloomingdales:

While this time, the Wallcrawler has an actual plan to beat the speedster:

Then Spidey swipes his loot:

And we get the best panel of the week:

Spidey than proceeds on a series of Looney Toons stunts to wear out Speed Demon:


Really?


Seriously?

Tuckered out, Speed Demon decides that discretion is the better part of valor...but:






And that's how you beat a super speedster (Marvel-style super speedster, at least)!


I know it's decades too late, but may I kvetch about how little sense the whole "Spider-Man plants ONE camera at ONE location and still manages to get shots of an entire battle that ranges across several floors and every department of a huge store" makes? I mean, come on now!!

And our denouement:

So, A) JJJ writes editorials predicting who will beat whom in hero/villain fights? He runs editorials hoping that known criminals get away with robbing people???

B) He refuses to run a picture of Spider-Man catching a crook because of worries about his credibility?!?

Seriously, how did this guy get elected mayor??

BONUS PRODUCT PLACEMENT 1981-STYLE:

Well, that's our story. Not a bad tale, but mostly empty calories. Shooter kept the trains running on time, and it was better than reprints. But most of the fill-in stories were (by necessity) so divorced from where the characters were at a given point in time, so generic, that while sometimes fun, they often weren't very satisfying reads.

And so it is with this story. Decent fights, nice to see peter using his head. But it's so completely remove from his personal life and current status that this story could have taken place virtually any time over a 40 year period in Spider-Man history. And not of much help in discussing the state of the Spider-Man union in 1981...

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Speaking of Spider-Man:

I'm not sure why Spectacular Spider-Man #60 was a double-sized comic. It's not one of those magic round numbers, it's not any anniversary of anything in particular in Spider-Man's career. It's just a standard-length story of Spidey fighting the Beetle, with a 17-page back-up re-telling Spider-Man's origin (dear Stern and LaRocque: Lee & Ditko did it in 11 pages). And nothing in the interior was by Frank Miller.

But man, that's a nice cover, isn't it? (In spite of the verdammt bicycle contest banner that wrecked most of the marvel covers this month...)