Death by Tombstone

Death by Tombstone!

I guess “Death by Boredom”, although more accurate, wouldn’t have fooled as many people into buying these.

These are filler issues. No imagination, nothing interesting happens, and the overall narrative of Spider-Man doesn’t budge an inch. To be sure, not every comic book can be a landmark issue. Not every issue can involve Gwen Stacy dying (spoiler!), Spider-Man discovering his black suit is alive (spoiler!), or Peter Parker’s parents revealing themselves as shape shifting artificial silly putty robo-monsters (mega-Spoiler!). Nope, sometimes you just gotta kill some time with a generic jackass of a comic book. It’s part of the hobby we all just accept, but I must say, the fact that they made this a three-parter was kind of a slap in the face.

In Death by Boredom, Tombstone tries to get a seat on the crimelord council, which he can only do by defeating Spider-Man once and for all. It could not be more generic. Somehow it fills three issues and culminates with Spider-Man defeating Tombstone in combat by punching him really hard in the face a single time. It’s a masterpiece.

This story has the Black Cat in it, which should normally give the whole thing a big boost (since the Black Cat is awesome). The problem is that Buscema’s Black Cat looks like an 80-year-old cryptkeeper woman who happens to be a very heavy smoker. 

The only person treating you like dirt is the person drawing you.

I think the only legitimately interesting feature is the backup story where JJJ discovers that people think that the Daily Bugle is a joke. The art is pretty good and seeing JJJ snap is kind of fun. It continues on past the trilogy of boredom and into the Spidey/Shroud 2-parter in Spectacular 207-208, which is so lame and stupid that it hurts my brain.

Spider-Man versus the scribble faces. Character design by Billy, age 4.