Spider-Rama: Amazing Spider-Man #117

Welcome to Spider-Rama! Every Monday and Wednesday, Ben and Duy will look at a Spider-Man issue from the very beginning, in chronological order, and answer questions for various categories, inspired in large part by one of our favorite podcasts, The Rewatchables by The Ringer. Our goal is to make it to Amazing Spider-Man #200. Will we make it? Grab your Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus or crank up your tablet to Marvel Unlimited, and then tune in every Wednesday to find out!

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #117

Spider-Rama

by Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, John Romita, and Jim Mooney

In this second-part  reworked storyline from Spectacular Spider-Man Magazine #1, Spider-Man must now fight the Disruptor.

POINTLESS TRIVIA

DUY: George Stacy played a big part in the original story. Since he's dead here, his part is now played by Robbie Robertson.

BEN: This is Stan, right?

DUY: If it is, it came out a few months after Jack Kirby introduced Funky Flashman over at DC...

WHAT'S AGED THE BEST?

BEN: I love Peter, Gwen, and MJ together, playing up the Betty and Veronica angle.

DUY: It saddens me that we will not see Peter/Gwen/MJ much again. MJ is best as the third wheel.

BEN: The message is still great, but the execution was way better the first time.

DUY: It also kind of shows that George Stacy was redundant with Robbie around.

WHAT'S AGED THE WORST?

DUY: This. This is dumb. Look, we've already seen this story. We know he's Raleigh. This is not going to be a surprise. And also, even if we haven't seen this before, there are literally no other suspects:

BEN: Are you saying it’s like in Batman when Hush was revealed to be the only new character introduced in the story?

NITPICKS

DUY: This is all because I saw the original story and I hold it in high regard, but there does seem to be a significant level of quality discrepancy between the panels from the original story that were just reworked, and the new panels. Like the "Stan Lee" character looks more hollow, less filled out than the ones that came from the original story.

BEN: It’s such a weird move. Why re-do the story and make it worse?

DUY: Apparently it was to capitalize on the elections.

FAVORITE PANEL

BEN: Mary Jane holding chili dogs:

DUY: I'm going to miss Gwen so much. What a great character:

WHO WON THE COMIC?

DUY: Gwen Stacy, quite possibly the most perfect love interest outside of 90s-to-modern-day Lois Lane.

BEN: Gwen, break up with him now! Save yourself!

DUY: That's it for Spider-Rama this week.

BEN: Thank you, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko—

DUY: —for telling us we aren't the only ones.