THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #153
"The Longest Hundred Yards!"
Featuring:Plot Summary:“There are certain people in this life who just seem naturally attracted trouble, take Peter Parker, for example.” On a quiet night in Manhattan, Spider-Man hangs from a cathedral. He spots a cabbie driving down the street and is surprised to see someone out besides him. When his spider-sense starts to tingle, Spidey’s thoughts turn to a rash of recent taxi robberies in the area. That’s when he notices that the cab’s duty-light is flashing in a familiar pattern: three short, three long, three short. Recognizing the flashes as Morse code for SOS, Spider-Man swings into action to get the cabbie out of trouble. He leaps down in the front of the cab forcing the cab driver to swerve to avoid him. Quickly, he cartwheels over in front of the cab forcing the cab driver to swerve the other direction and putting the cab into a skid. Once the cab has been disabled, Spider-Man pulls off the cab’s rear door, dodging a gunshot from inside. He leaps into the back seat and bowls the cab-jackers through the other rear door knocking them unconscious. As he puts the finishing touches on the thieves, the cabbie complains about the wrecked state of his cab. Spider-Man attempts to help with by wedging the rear doors back into place, but when he slams the trunk closed, the doors CLUNK right off onto the ground. Giving up, Spider-Man swings off suggesting the cab-driver’s insurance man could use a good laugh. Cut to the campus of Empire State University, early the following day, Peter Parker steps off the campus boss thinking about a news report regarding the cab-jackers he just heard. All in all, life would be just spiffy for Peter if he could only get a certain Mary-Jane Watson to speak to him. Spotting MJ getting ice cream with Flash Thompson and Harry Osborn, Peter hurries over and greets the gang. After Peter asks Flash and Harry for a little privacy, Mary Jane snaps at him for ignoring her at the Parker (see issue #151) and abandoning her to go gallivanting around town snapping photos and says she would be out of her mind to give him another chance. Peter replies that she doesn’t sound like the Mary Jane that declared all-out war when she thought she was losing him to Gwen Stacy (back in issue #148), and Mary Jane retorts that maybe she realized that Peter wasn’t worth fighting for. At this point, Peter is completely exasperated and tells her to just forget everything. At the last moment when Peter is stomping off, Mary Jane calls him back in a quiet voice. She tells him that she lied, and he is worth fighting for. Now that they are on speaking terms again, they start walking off when Ned Leeds approaches. Ned tells Peter that he is supposed to interview a Bradley Bolton who used to be a huge ESU football star but now runs his own computer company. Ned asks Peter to come along on the interview because Ned doesn’t know anything about computers. Peter says that he’d love to meet Bolton, and the threesome heads over to the football stadium to meet Bradley Bolton. Bradley Bolton stands at the 50-yard line of the stadium by himself remembering how lonely and empty the stadium could be. He compares it to a graveyard –a graveyard of lost memories. Ned and Peter approach and Peter says that he really enjoyed Dr. Bolton’s treatise on “intermolecular computer synapses”. As the interview progresses, Dr. Bolton comments on the irony of them standing in a stadium discussing his scientific achievements. He says that if it hadn’t been for a certain Saturday afternoon in the stadium he wouldn’t have gone into computers at all. 
Flashback: “Boom-Boom” Bolton was the best quarterback ESU ever saw. On a Saturday afternoon, it was the final game of the season – Empire State playing Metro U. for the league championship. The score was tied going into the last two minutes of the final quarter, and Bolton was determined to break that tie one way or another. On the Empire State one yard line, Bolton takes the snap from center, and takes off like a shot with the goal beckoning only 100-yards away. He stiff-arms, leaps, dodges, and spins to avoid Metro’s defensive line. Seventy-five yards to go... Fifty yards... Legs pumping, heart pounding, lungs pulling breath after breath, he sees nothing but those goal posts rising before him. Finally right before the goal line, he caught and tackled, one foot from goal line. After fumbling on the next play, Metro took possession and marched down for a touchdown, ending the game. Bolton’s failure to score had shattered his teammates’ spirits. Back to the present day, Bolton tells Ned that these days, his wife Ellen and daughter Mindy are all the rooting section he needs any more. As Peter comments on his beautiful wife, a man approaches with a message for Dr. Bolton. Dr. Bolton has a stunned reaction to the message, but tells Peter and Ned that he has to hurry off because he forgot another appointment. He hurries off promising to end the interview later. A short while later in a nearby park, Bolton approaches a man calling himself Paine. Bolton demands the return of his daughter, and Paine promises here – just as soon as Bolton performs a little service for his employer. Paine says that his employer is interested in the final component of the computer Bolton constructed to catalogue all world-wide habitual offenders. As soon as the computer part is in Paine’s possession, Bolton can have his daughter back alive and unharmed. Of course, Paine tells Bolton that if he’s stupid enough to go to the police, well, until he has the part, Mindy’s life is in Paine’s hands… At E.S.U.’s homecoming dance, Peter cuts in on M.J. and Ned, but it’s to ask Ned about what could be bothering Dr. Bolton. M.J. gives him the cold shoulder (in the doghouse again) as Ned says that Bolton and his wife have looked pre-occupied and worried about something all evening. As much as Peter wants to help, he and Ned both realize that their problems are their own, and they can’t butt in. Peter returns to M.J. and asks her dance since “Kung Fu Fighting” is apparently ‘their song’. In the middle of the dance, Peter spots Bolton heading out the door. Thinking fast, Peter hands M.J. off to dance with Harry and runs off to ‘get some punch’. As Peter descends into the basement of the gymnasium, he spies Dr. Bolton taking something out of a locker, and sneaking away. Peter stops to change into his working outfit, a move that will cost him precious time later. Dr. Bolton wanders out into the football stadium where he is greeted by Paine accompanied by Paine, Mindy, and 4 armed thugs dressed up like Flash Gordon. Bolton meets one of the thugs at the 50-yard line, hands off the component, and returns to his end of the field. Laughing, Paine says that he’s decided to keep the child for a while longer as insurance against Bolton going to the police and starts carrying Mindy off. Bolton reaches his breaking point, and in no subtle comparison to the flashback earlier in the issue, starts to sprint down the field. It’s only one-hundred yards, but instead of dodging linebackers, this time Bradley Bolton does machine-gun fire for the thugs. He sprints, dodges, lunges, and charges ahead. Legs pumping, heart pounding, lungs pulling breath after breath he runs downfield. Ninety yards… Seventy-five yards… he sees nothing but his daughter down on the goal line. On the fifty yard line, he’s hit hard, but keeps running. Finally he tackles Paine, and cradles Mindy in his arms. Too late, Spider-Man makes his appearance. He leaps in and quickly dispatches all four thugs dodging machine-gun fire the entire time. As he finishes the last thug, Paine draws a handgun, but before he has a chance to fire a shot, a quick webline snatches the pistol from his grasp. Paine turns to run, but a simple leap allows Spidey to cut off his retreat. As he begs for mercy, Spider-Man knocks him out with a shot to the jaw. Finding Bolton still alive, he begs Bolton to hang on until the paramedics arrive. It’s too late for that though, and Bolton gasps his last breath. He asks if Mindy is safe, did he make it this time? “Yeah, Doc. You made it – the whole hundred yards. Touchdown.” 
Comments:Setting: My parent’s house on Memorial Day weekend. With any luck, I can get an issue out on my return tomorrow. (Ok, so 'tomorrow' was a bit optimistic, sue me.) Plot Analysis:“There are certain people in this life who just seem naturally attracted trouble, take Peter Parker, for example.” Thus, with these words begin one of the lamest Spider-Man issues I have ever read. To be blunt, I can’t find anything redeeming about this story. It’s campy, and in a bad way. It’s full of plot hole you could toss a football through, and for cripes sake, we don’t even get a happy ending! Ok, breathe... Breathe deeply… Let it go. Just let all the pain, bitterness, and bile go . It’s only a bad comic… Certainly not the first you’ve read and probably not the last. Alright, the issue starts off decently with the comedic interlude with the car-jackers. Well, OK, the conversation with the cabbie afterwards was amusing. Even Peter’s make-up with Mary Jane was well done, and up to this point, the issue is OK. It’s nothing remarkable, but OK. At this point, the whole story takes a turn for the worst. We’re introduced to a character we’ve never seen before and will never see again (quite literally since he’s dead now). He immediately goes into a pointless flashback to his college football glory days. The author pulls out all the stops in order to club the reader over the head with foreshadowing. Conveniently enough, Dr. Bolton receive a ransom note for his daughter at just this moment. This spares the writer the effort of actually trying to create dialogue for this one-shot character. It’s a shame though, I was really hoping to hear more of what passes for cutting edge 70’s techno-babble like “intermolecular computer synapses”. Actually, the real shame is that he didn’t receive the note 2-pages ago sparing us that painfully pointless flashback. Y’know, I almost feel like two authors wrote this story. There was the “Peter-M.J-other supporting characters” write who handles dialogue pretty well. Then there’s the “any scene with Dr. Bolton” writer who apparently has gone on to have a long and prosperous career writing dialogue for George Lucas. Anyways, skipping to the end of this ‘story’, Dr. Bolton waits to make the exchange on the football field (Hey, did you remember that foreshadowing earlier?? Didja?? Didja???). Now, the first thing that I notice is that the bad guy’s thugs shop at the same boutique that Flash Gordon does. Not that the story would’ve been greatly improved if they were actually dressed like gangsters, but it might’ve had a little more credibility. Who knows though, maybe there was APB out for 5 guys carrying machine guns and wearing overcoats, so they thought they'd break into a costume shop for a better disguise. Bolton gives up the computer component in exchange for his daughter. But wait, the bad guys, being bad guys, try to make off with the computer component AND the little girl!!! How dare they! Thus, Dr. Bolton begins his ill-fated sprint across the field. The thugs may be dressed like Flash Gordon but they shoot like Stormtroopers as Bolton makes it 50-yards before one of the four tommy-guns focused on him manages to clip him (in the back no less as Bolton runs towards the bad guys). He still makes it the remaining 50 yards and tackles the main flunky holding his daughter before they finish him off. Although Peter Parker was originally right behind Bolton while he walking to the football field, Spider-Man waits until now to burst onto the scene. My assumption is that Peter realized he left his costume at home, and took the bus there and back to go get it. Spider-Man makes quick work out of an “entire squad of fully armed men” and captures the man villain Paine. It’s too late though. Bolton holds on to make his death slightly more dramatic and expires on the goal line cradling his daughter. Hopefully, he has good life insurance because I have no doubt she’s going to need a WHOLE mess of therapy later. I leave you with these words from the Simpson’s Comic Book Guy: “Worst issue ever!” 
Art Review:Well, it’s hard to grade the art in this issue objectively when I have so much disgust directed towards the story. With another look, Ross Andru’s pencils are commendable. It is nothing outstanding but definitely above average. One thing I notice is that he does make a good effort depicting facial expressions. At time, some of the faces remind me Archie comic artwork, but overall it’s pretty good. Now, I look through this issue and I can see that Andru is capable of drawing guys in overcoats, suits, and everyday clothes decently. WHY did they insist on putting the thugs at the end in bad sci-fi getups? Action Factor:As for action, I can sum it up in a 4-count: FOUR thugs dressed like Flash Gorden. THREE shots to the back as Dr. Bolton runs towards thugs (we’re gonna need the Warren Commission to figure that one out), TWO car-jackers at the beginning, and ONE punch to subdue the main bad guy. Spider-Villain lessons 101:
Tip #1:
Tip #2:
Tip #3:
|
©2002 Samuel Smith
Spider-Man ™ and all images © 2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.