WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #74, now on sale
Today, we look at the finale of Nick Spencer’s Amazing Spider-Man run recreating an iconic Spider-Man moment, only with a Mary Jane twist!
This is Repeat the Past, a brand-new feature were I spotlight notable comic book callbacks. Basically, stuff that is too notable to be an Easter Egg and not really functioning as metaficational commentary, so it is not a Meta-Message, either.
Nick Spencer is obviously a big fan of comic book history, as almost all of his comic book work for Marvel has dealt with Marvel’s past in some way, shape or form, even if often his history is comparably modern compared to other writers (Spencer revisits characters from the 1990s frequently in his work for Marvel). Therefore, it is natural that Amazing Spider-Man #74 (by Nick Spencer, Christos Gage, Marcelo Ferreira, Mark Bagley, Ze Carlos, Dio Neves, Carlos Gomez, Ivan Fiorelli, and Humberto Ramos) heavily features a major callback to Spider-Man’s iconic lifting heavy stuff piled on top him.
THE ORIGIN OF SPIDER-MAN LIFTING HEAVY STUFF
Amazing Spider-Man #33 (by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee) was the final part of the “Master Planner Saga,” which featured Peter Parker learning that his Aunt May is deathly ill, likely due to a blood transfusion Peter gave her a number of issues ago (his blood being radioactive and all). So Peter finds out a way of curing her, but he needs a special serum. Well, the problem is that a criminal known as the Master Planner ALSO wants the serum.
After a tussle, Spider-Man succeeds in securing the serum, but not before being trapped under a pile of heavy machinery in the Master Planner’s underwater base – a base that has cracked, sending water from the river above ever so slowly into the room where Spider-Man is trapped. And if that weren’t enough, the Master Planner’s guards are outside the room should Spider-Man somehow escape!
How Spider-Man gets out of this mess is the thing of comic book legend, as Steve Ditko delivers some of the most brilliantly designed pages of the Silver Age as Spidey is inspired by visions of his Aunt May and Uncle Ben (Uncle Ben was VERY rarely referenced back in the early days of Spider-Man stories, making this one a big deal)…
This gives him the motivation to dig into his deepest reserves and free himself. Stan Lee’s dialogue here is not really necessary, but it adds a whole lot of flavor to the whole endeavor…
Now here’s something that might seem novel today, but really was the case back in the old days. People really didn’t DO callbacks the way that we see them now. Modern comics are a good deal more callback heavy than the past. Homage covers, for instance, weren’t really a thing during the Silver Age. When artists recreated older covers, it was typically just artists reusing good designs they had, not thinking people would actually say, “Oh, that’s an homage!” (there were certainly exceptions, though, but they were rare).
THE FIRST SPIDEY LIFTING THINGS CALLBACKS
I believe Gerry Conway and Sal Buscema did the first in-story callback to the Spider-Man lifting heavy stuff in 1990’s Spectacular Spider-Man #168, where Spider-Man has been trapped under a giant stone totem by someone pretending to be She-Hulk…
In this instance, it was Spider-Man’s love for his wife (they were practically still newlyweds based on comic book time), Mary Jane, that got him over the hump…
Three years later, David Michelinie, Mark Bagley and Randy Emberlin went directly to the original concept for their 30th anniversary celebration of Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #365, as Spidey is trapped under some rubble by the Lizard, who then headed off to do some bad stuff…
Michelinie cleverly ties in Spider-Man’s sense of responsibility, as well, as why he HAS to get out of the rubble to stop the Lizard…
In Spectacular Spider-Man #229 (by Tom DeFalco, Sal Buscema and Bill Sienkiewicz), Peter Parker and Ben Reilly have teamed up together as Peter considers retiring as Spider-Man (Mary Jane is pregnant and he has learned that he is a clone of the real Peter Parker and Ben Reilly is the REAL Peter. MJ later lost the child and Peter turned out to be the real Peter). He is trapped under some rubble and he just can’t get past it…
Luckily, he now has a buddy to help him!
That inspires Peter to officially retire and pass the torch to Ben (that does not last).
In Peter Parker: Spider-Man #98 (by Howard Mackie, John Romita Jr. and Scott Hanna), the final issue before the Spider-Man books all relaunched with new #1s, Spider-Man shocks the world (or at least New York City) by briefly lifting the entire Daily Bugle offices!
THE ICONIC MOMENT…WITH A MARY JANE TWIST!
Amazing Spider-Man #74 sees Spider-Man and his friend, Harry Osborn, at odds against Kindred, who are working for Mephisto as his champions. Doctor Strange, meanwhile, has Spider-Man as his champion. At one point, Kindred knocks Spider-Man under some rubble and Mephisto gets some catty commentary about how this is the moment for Spidey to tape into his deepest reserves to get past the rubble, but then he doesn’t…
Luckily, since Mephisto was allowed two champions, Strange was allowed a second, as well, and while Mephisto might have thought that it was Harry Osborn as Strange’s choice, he instead went a different direction…
Spider-Man and Strange both hit the jackpot with this one…
It was a perfect callback, because this all ties into Spencer ending the issue with Peter and Mary Jane a couple again, and so having Mary Jane come into an iconic Spider-Man set-up and help save the day was a great way of setting up that ending, with Peter and Mary Jane reunited.
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