"Busted! Busss-Ted!"

Amazing Spider-Man

No.37 - or, 478, as I prefer

"Interlude"

      With the World Trade Center interruption-that-never-happened issue out of the way ( Well, that's at least what artist John Romita jr. understood it to be, as the events of 9/11 weren't supposed to be a part of any future stories.), we rejoin matters where they were left at the end of issue #35. Aunt May has discovered that her nephew Peter is actually Spider-Man. The bulk of the issue is spent more on Pete Parker as a caring teacher than on superheroics, though some of that naturally gets worked in before the end. Pete delves into the grim, realistic mystery of one of his students, someone who was orphaned as he was, which causes him to reflect once more on how lucky he's been to have his Aunt all these years. This forms a natural counterpoint to the scenes where we see May struggling with her newfound information, her thoughts a secret to us.

      The street-level drug culture plotline begun in this issue doesn't thrill me, but I honestly can't fault Straczynski for going this route. To avoid it would be to deny the realities of modern life, especially in a less-than-affluent urban center . The final, ominous panels of that section of the story, though, seem to hint that the pressure's on to bring in someone other than normal street types ("Fine me the Shade.") which, I fear, can only cheapen the story. It's a four-color cop-out to bring in a costumed villain to be behind every evil. Racism can pop up without it being a plot by the Red Skull or the Hate Monger, and drug sales don't really need to have some similar boogeyman behind them, do they? Oh, it can be justified by saying that they'd need opposite numbers to deal with the superheroes, but the truth is an anonymous, loose association of addicts and drug profiteers is far more difficult to deal with than someone in a costume who presents himself as an embodiment of the drug culture. Hopefully I'm radically jumping the gun on where all that's going.

      No, of more immediate interest to me is May's new knowledge will play out between her and Pete, and what this means for the series. I have enough respect for Straczynski to not worry that he's going to cop out on this by tricking May into believing something else, or conveniently erasing her memory.

     As ever, feel free to drop me some email or post some comments on the messageboard.                                                                                                                                         ---MJN