Trial by Jury and setting the footnote record (Amazing Spider-Man 383, 384 and 385)



From the pages of Venom--the Jury! Dang, I guess I should add those Venom books to my pull list. Also, if you were a Maximum Carnage fan, don’t miss these issues! You have all 14 issues, right? It was kind of a big deal. No collection is complete without them (in fact, maybe you should just pick up a copy of every Spider-Man comic ever printed, for that matter, just so you can sleep soundly at night.) Sound a bit neurotic? Welcome to comic book collecting.






The Jury is a team of super guards, each with their own badass, customized, Iron Man-trademark-infringing costume and codename, like Ramshot or Sentry. Mark Bagley has a gift for designing absolutely sick looking anti-hero teams in power suits. The leader was covered in fucking spikes and had green and (copper?) armor, so you know he didn't take prisoners, unlike that pussy, Ramshot. Looking back, now I see where Halo: Reach got all of their helmet designs.

The endless call backs and mini-explanations in this trilogy were actually great for a new collector to get an understanding of the incredibly complex Spider-Man continuity that had been building for 30 years (at the time.) In a typical Spider-Man story, characters would usually yell their origin stories at each other a few times per page, which was great for getting up to speed. This trilogy took the concept to a whole new level, but at a point, all those asterisks just become reminders that you “gotta catch em all”. And by "catch" I mean "buy".

The “Trial by Jury” trilogy is an amazing example of how satisfying it can be to have all of the connecting issues—which I do, so now I feel like a king. But it's also a prime example of how frustrating it can be not to have them all, especially if you want all the details, which I sure as fuck did and do. There are callback references to a ton of classic issues (as well as some less-than-classics) throughout. In some cases, oddly, they didn’t bother adding asterisks (though maybe they should have?) Maybe they thought the issues were so famous, it wasn't necessary.

There are references to the guard that Venom killed breaking out of the Vault (ASM 315), the revenge of the Spider-Slayers (ASM 368-373, but which have a storied history going all the way back to ASM 25, a time when nobody knew what Mary Jane even looked like), Spectacular Spider-Man 204 (a Tombstone issue), the recent fights with the Hulk (ASM 381-382), Spider-Man bringing the alien costume to Earth (which had its origins in Secret Wars 8, though the costume first appeared before that in ASM 252, Spectacular Spider-Man 90 and Marvel Team-Up 141), the discovery that the costume is an alien and having the FF remove it (ASM 258), and more! They were going for the footnote record.





They even have an accurate reference to a super specific part of Batman Returns. In a Spider-Man comic. See for yourself.




I don't need to explain the sacrilege of referencing DC characters in a Marvel comic book (and yes, I know about the Spider-Man/Superman Treasury comics and yes I know about the Spider-Man/Batman crossover drawn by Mark Bagley (who else?), and yes I have copies of those, and yes this reference still seems wrong.) Batman Returns is official Spider-Man canon. Think about that. It actually comes up every time I try to explain that my replica Michael Keaton rubber batsuit is part of my ASM run. 

 Additional Note: Buying comics in Canada has its challenges. For one, we pay the higher cover price. Exchanges rates, I know. But every once in a while, there would be some SICK promotion that I couldn’t wait to take advantage of. A free ghost rider comic book? And all I have to do is take the coupon to my local Kay Bee toys? Sign my ass up!

Oh wait.

Yeah, I had to buy that one off EBay 25 years later. That’s why my copy still has the coupon.

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