Spider-Rama: Amazing Spider-Man #91

Welcome to Spider-Rama! Every weekday in May, 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 #91
Spider-Rama
by Stan Lee, Gil Kane, and John Romita Sr.

With her dad dead and Spider-Man totally partially to blame, Gwen Stacy decides to totally overreact support the mayoral campaign of Sam Bullitt, who wants to run New York with an iron fist, starting with Spider-Man.

POINTLESS TRIVIA

BEN: The funeral of George Stacy.

DUY: I don't know where else to put this, but Kane really likes these kinds of collage-y type panels, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. This one's just weird to me.

BEN: I’ve noticed that too, and, it’s not always that effective.

WHAT'S AGED THE BEST?

BEN: Comics have never been political, Duy.

DUY: Conservatives were never painted in a bad light in the old comics, no, never.

BEN: My favorite joke about Conservatives is on the Simpson’s where Dracula is a member of the Republican inner circle.

BEN: Great, now we’re going to be accused as liberals.

DUY: Little do they know we hate everyone equally.

BEN: Why limit your hate to only half the population?

WHAT'S AGED THE WORST?

BEN: Gross.

DUY:  The opening narration in the issue says that "due to a weird quirk of fate, it seemed to those who witnessed the tragic event that the blame for Capt. Stacy's death belonged to --- Spider-Man!" Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross try their best to explain the sheer incompetence of this type of reporting in Marvels #4 by saying the police knew it was Ock's arms that caused it, and people just said what they thought would make the news. Or does that actually age well?

BEN: It makes sense for Jonah, but I’ve always found the public hating him to be frustrating.

DUY: It makes sense if you think of Jonah as someone like Trump. He just has followers because some of the things he says makes sense.

NITPICKS

BEN: I mean, you can fight back a little without them jumping to the conclusion you’re a superhero.

DUY: Based on the Hobie stunt from only four issues ago, didn't Gwen know there was a connection between Spidey and Parker?

BEN: Why you bringing up old stuff? The woman has been through a trauma!

FAVORITE PANEL

BEN: I like her gloves:

DUY: Readers may or may not know that one of my pet peeves is when someone goes on and on about the good old days, because then we have to remind them that the good old days were only good for some. So although I am adding to my pile of JJJ panels, I'm really picking this sequence because of Robbie:

WHO WON THE COMIC?

DUY: Robbie.

DO YOU SYMPATHIZE WITH GWEN?

DUY: Be honest. If you were Gwen and you knew Spider-Man was Peter, would you be understanding or would you hate him?

BEN: I was thinking the same exact thing. If there’s one person she would believe, it’s Peter. This is basically confirmed in What If #24. In fact, the only things they really argue about are caused by him maintaining this secret.

DUY: True, if he just came clean, things could not possibly get worse.

BEN: I was also wondering why he wouldn’t just change his superhero identity, become Night Monkey or something. I know the answer is because it’s a comic series about Spider-Man and Marvel would never do that, but in-universe it seems illogical to keep going.

DUY: This would become an actual story around 1998, called "Identity Crisis" (no, not that DC one).

BEN: We’ll get to that in 10 years.

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.

Leave us a comment below or on our Facebook page. See you on Monday!