Spider-Man, Drugs, and Bicycle Safety.... Nothing Good Can Come From This.

Dead Ball

This is it folks, the last one in the series. The last of these God-Forsaken Spider-Man in Canada comics. I hope that everyone will come back reading these extensive reviews and go back home and tell their family they love them....

No wait, don't do that, that's fucking lame. You're a misunderstood youth who has a gritty life-style of faux bi-sexuality, a tortured soul, and even though you're still trying to do it without puking your guts out you are drinking and smoking like a fucking party animal like everyone else!

This issue guest stars the Montreal Expos, and if there is any one reason I can think of as to why they moved down south and became the Washington Who-The-Fuck-Cares, it possibly has something to do with the fallout of this here comic book. It's terrible, it tries to be an action packed Spider-Man epic, with a big bad villain, continuity, and a black midget, but it comes up short.

Although, yet another bicycle safety comic, it appears that it has been mercifully downplayed in this here issue, and oh yeah, I guess the Expos being in the comic is to encourage kids to be athletic or something.

The fact of the matter is, sports stars don't sell comic books. In fact, if we're talking about comic books, five gets you ten that you're target audience is athletically impaired, let alone is interested in playing sports.

This is a breed of pork-bellied, four-eyed, acne pitted people, who's only great joy in life is not the caress of a woman, but the pending release of the next biggest console system that will be obsolete once the year is out (not to mention all the angry reviews that will be written about the video games released for said console stating it "Sucks" because they get their ass kicked in on-line multiplayer.)

At least they tried with this one, I'll give them that. They decided to go for a classic villain, forget about the lame ass guest stars, or corny bad guys, they picked a great villain, a menacing one! One of Spidey's greatest foes! The Green Goblin!

Wait.. what's that? It's not the original Green Goblin? It's his lame as son?

Oh... Well...

Okay, a little back-story here for all you non-comic people out there reading this and totally not getting the joke: See, Spider-Man's arch foe had a son who went to school with Peter Parker, and they were best buds. Then Spider-Man killed the original Green Goblin for killing his first love Gwen Stacey. The end result is the original Green Goblin's death causes his son to go crazy, discover his dad's secret identity, go after Spider-Man, finding out Spidey's secret identity, clone his parents, more clones are made, Harry dies, clones die, the original GG comes back.. and the whole thing is a big fucking mess really. But that usually happens when you have an on-going story that has went on for 40 years or so.

Anyway, enough of captain exposition for now, and onto my wisely timed crack about continuity.

Continuity is a funny thing, the great people at dictionary.com call continuity this:

con·ti·nu·i·ty
n. pl. con·ti·nu·i·ties

Now, continuity, aside from being one of those fancy five-dollar-words that only smart people (like me) use in their regular vocabulary to confuse dumb people (you), It's also a very debilitating disease for those who take fiction to the any level above having regular conversation about said fiction, and a level before they fantasies having sex with the animals featured in said fiction (Look out, Miss Lion!). Like when you're watching a movie, and from one shot to another a man who was wearing a hat suddenly isn't wearing one (gasp!), or let's say the events or things said in an episode of your favorite Star Trek series contradicts what was done or said in a previous episode.

Now while most people, such as myself, these things bring out a chuckle at best, or a sneer at worst, but to others, being bitten by the continuity bug creates a lethal chain-reaction that threatens to crack the internet right in two every time it happens!

Yes, there are people out there that care about continuity so much, that they will react with outrage, harsh words, and hours, upon wasted hours, posted on on-line message boards stating how stupid whoever did whatever was, and that they could do things a whole lot better if they were allowed to do whatever it is the person fucked up so badly on.

Possibly the worst case of the Continuity Virus I've seen on the Internet, is that someone had re-edited Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier and removed all the "undesirable" parts of the story that fans hated, including (apparently) an elevator lift scene that showed Kirk traveling up 70 odd floors of the Enterprise (Stating that according to continuity there is only 21.) Which leaves me to say: If you are so upset about a mistake in a movie that you go through the effort editing out elevator scenes that are only a bridge between one scene and the next based on one minor technical error to enjoy a movie, you really should go and seek professional help.

The butt end of the joke here kids, is that most of these spastic retards don't seem to clue in to the fact that the creators of whatever they have gravitated their pitiful lives around do this for a living first, and for a hobby second (if at all). The guy (or gal) creating it is getting a pay cheque, and more than likely a chunk of that came from the money you spent on it. So as long as that cheque doesn't bounce they nary give a fuck what you think.

And seriously, if you think you're crummy little fan-fics will get you into the big times, you've got something else coming. You know what happens to hard-core fan written things? They go bankrupt. Just look at Dreamwave comics (ouch! Is it still too soon? Well I don't fucking care. The people at Dreamwave had no sense publishing fifty million franchise comics.)

Anyway, I got off track here, but the reason I mention continuity is because on the opening splash page (Spider-Man swinging through the city of Montreal. Same old splash page, new city) there is a footnote that states:

"This issue takes place before Spectacular Spider-Man #200"

Now if any of you out there in internet land who just read that line and spat out whatever you were drinking, out your nose and either screamed:

1.) It's part of continuity!? I MUST GET THESE COMICS!

or

2.) That's part of continuity!? THAT'S AN OUTRAGE!!

Shoot yourself in the head. Now. Please. Ask for your parents help if you've never operated a fire-arm outside of playing Counter Strike.

Apparently the folks who slapped these comic books together though that somebody out there would really give a shit that the Spider-Man bicycle safety comic stories were tied in with any part of the five or six on-going Spider-Man titles that they felt a need to slap the footnote there.

Did the X-Men Stridex Acne Medicated Pad promotional comic happen before X-Men #25? Did the Spider-Man/Power Pack Sexual Abuse comic come before or after the Fall of the Mutants story-arc? Did the Quik bunny survive Crisis on Infinite Earths and does the adventures chronicle in Superman Meets the Quik Bunny have any relevance in the post-Crisis DC Universe?

Who fucking cares!! There most certainly won't be any Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Right Riders edition coming out between now and doomsday, so why the footnote?

Because fan's are a bitch. See folks, I did a little research, and apparently Spectacular Spider-Man #200 (One of those holo-foil covers that were all the rage in the mid-90's. It seemed like there were 10 or 20 of those damn things out every month. They cost five to six bucks back then and now they're all pretty much worthless.) the Green Goblin dies (again, no wait, it's his son.. No it's his father! Son! Father! Son! Father! AHHHHHHHH!!!)

You can't have a plot hole like that!! It'd confuse the fans! How could the Right Riders go toe-to-toe with a dead Green Goblin!? It just does not make sense..... that people would even contemplate that.

So since Marvel thought they'd get a few billion letters from the disgruntled Canadian fans who gave a shit that their free promotional comic didn't follow continuity, they plugged that in there. Or something. The whole idea is stupid, and I'm surprised I've gone on this long talking about it.

And if you really think I am making this up, pick up a copy of The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe: Teams 2005, and flip to the page about the Frightful Four. Now skim through there, and you'll notice that they make mention of their little adventure in Canada against Spider-Man, the Rangers and Turbine that was in the fourth issue of these comics. So yes, it's part of Marvel continuity. You may now let your head explode.

Let's just get onto the review shall we my poopsies?

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