The Amazing Spider-Man #314: “Down and Out in Forest Hills”

In a special Christmas issue, the Parkers find themselves homeless, and an overworked accountant pulls a gun on his boss and has his crew kidnap Santa Claus.

And, yes, despite having an April 1989 cover date, this comic hit store shelves on December 13, 1988. Newsstands were particularly odd places, back in the day…

Ho Ho Get Out!

Caesar’s Revenge: The End of a Short Era

Jonathan Caeser’s lawyer helps his client reach out from beyond the bars of prison to evict Peter and Mary Jane from the building he still technically owns.

The lawyer knows his case is flimsy, but it will take years in court to settle it. Caesar is a jerk on this point, but his lawyer should be disbarred.

Thus endeth the Bedford Towers era of the Spider-Man books. Looking back at the time I read Spider-Man in the late 80s and in the 90s, it feels like the eras of the title revolved around where Mary Jane and Peter were living.

This location barely lasted a year, which is much faster than I remembered.

This may also be the last we see of that delightfully friendly doorman for the Bedford Towers. He’s put up with a lot of goofy stuff, but this is the worst. He probably had to hold open the door for the thugs who moved all of the Parkers’ furniture out onto the street while they were out.

In reality, there’d probably have to be letters of eviction served and warnings given and all sorts of regulations to be followed from the city of New York. But this isn’t a documentary comic. It’s a dramatic superhero narrative. I’ll just go along with “someone broke into their apartment and put all their stuff on the curb while they were out for the day.”

The Doorman Knocks Five Times

Let’s dig into the archives and appreciate the The (Nameless) Doorman of the Bedford Towers, world famous house of horrors with a secret room where its owner could kidnap a resident for days at a time.

Imagine getting paid by that jerk?

The Doorman made his first appearance in “The Amazing Spider-Man” #300. After Venom’s cameo at the end of issue #299, Mary Jane didn’t feel safe in their old apartment. They managed to get a quick placement at the upscale Bedford Towers. (We’d later learn that Jonathan Caesar helped that along for his own criminal reasons.)

They moved in that same issue, but Peter needed to deliver a message to Mary Jane later on while out in his Spider-Man garb. This was long before everyone had a cell phone in their pocket, so he called The Doorman on a payphone to pass a message along. The Spider-Man costume had a spare change pocket for just this reason, I’m sure. It was a pocket full of dimes, I’d bet.

The Doorman made his second appearance in the very next issue, “The Amazing Spider-Man” #301. You may notice that he appears have a darker tone of skin here. Is that a coloring choice or a coloring error?

I checked the original newsprint edition of this issue. He looked even darker brown there. (Mary Jane’s dress was still pink, but didn’t have the neon glow that the digital version has.)

Let’s see if the third appearance will indicate a direction for the character:

We didn’t see The Doorman again until “The Amazing Spider-Man” #308, no doubt owing in some part to Peter’s tour around the country for his book on Spider-Man photography. Mary Jane was home for part of that, but we didn’t see her entering or leaving by the building’s front door.

In this issue, he proved that he was good at his job. He maintained the homeowner’s privacy while faced with the civilian-clothed Black Cat. She looked ready to show her claws, but walked away, instead. It may have been the doorman’s only other superpowered run-in besides Spider-Man, himself.

And, yes, they’re definitely going for a non-white, likely African-American, character here. We’ll chalk up that first appearance to a coloring mistake, or a lack of notice to the colorist from others about what the skin tone should be.

I don’t have issues of the other Spider-Man series that ran concurrently with this past year of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” but I have to think The Doorman made appearances in those other series here and there. I’m limiting myself to just these McSpidey issues. I wonder how they colored him over there. This is an incredibly trivial footnote to McFarlane’s classic run, but I can’t help but obsess over little details like this.

In the very next issue, the doorman held the door for Peter Parker as he returned Mary Jane safely to their home, after her run-in with Jonathan Caesar.

Let’s face it: this doorman has seen some s$%&.

Or, perhaps, he was paid a little extra by the boss to keep an eye on Mary Jane. He’s the one who let Caesar know all the times Mary Jane was home so that he could get “closer.” I’m sure he played dumb during the police investigation, too. He likely got away with it, scot-free.

Finally, in this issue, we see him out in the snowy street with the Parkers’ furniture, looking almost as stunned as Peter was.

He also appears to have turned back to being white again.

Here’s hoping he can relax a bit now that Spider-Man’s family and their beloved Felix the Cat stuffed animal are gone. Maybe he can take a good hard long look at himself in the mirror and figure out what color his skin is, too…

Back to the Eviction…

Bonus points to McFarlane for creating a great slicked-back-hair lawyer with the little mustache who looks as greasy and scummy as you could imagine someone you’d want for this job.

He’s straight out of central casting and he’s perfect for the role. If someone complains he’s too stereotypical or too obvious, then they don’t get the iconography of superhero comics. The obvious and the blown-up-out-of-proportion stereotype are what so much of superhero comics feed on. Shoot for the obvious, the gimmicky, the tried-and-true. You can create new things in other corners.

Aunt May offers Peter’s old bedroom for the couple to come live in. She has plenty of room in the attic for their furniture. Problem solved, right?

Of course not. Peter lets her know they have plans already and walks off.

We’ll come back to Peter’s little lie there and what he’s planning and why. But, first, we need to set the main plotline for this issue into motion.

We cut to the next scene and admire the way David Michelinie plays with words and names. The scene is the “famous” J.C. Herdlings department story. It sounds like JC Penney and acts more like Macy’s, thus keeping Marvel’s lawyers worry-free about any potential lawsuits.

It also borrows from the name of Glenn Herdling, Spider-Office assistant editor and the writer of a Spectacular Spider-Man Annual story featuring The Prowler that McFarlane drew. A review of that is scheduled for later, as well…

The store’s manager is a classic Scrooge-type character, Howell Thurston III. Normally, I’d assume that name needs no explanation. However, I recently came across a group of people a couple of years older than I am who had never heard of Augie Doggie and Doggy Daddie. And in a world of a dozen major streaming services and hundreds of new television series every year, I assume nothing now.

See, kids, there was once a show called “Gilligan’s Island.” The rich guy on that series was named Thurston Howell III. Every kid in the 1980s knew that show. it played on heavy rotation somewhere at all times. I think TBS had the show at that point. (It was also known for being the network that started all of its shows at five minutes after the top and bottom of the hour for…. some reason that I’m sure made sense at the time.)

Having the over-the-top rich guy with that inverted name made sense in 1989 as a cultural touchstone.

In any case, he’s in the office with Clark, the trod-upon accountant who’s stuck working every Christmas without overtime pay. He’s the chinless, big-glasses wearing, receding hairline guy with the suitcase that comes packing a gun. He wants to get his revenge for being so overlooked all these years.

But — ! Before we get to that, we have to deal with the complications in Peter’s plans not to move in with Aunt May.

Peter and Mary Jane take a snowy walk-and-talk stroll through snowy Central Park. It’s Christmas season, so of course it’s snowing.

Peter tells Mary Jane that he wants his independence and doesn’t want to go backward in life. He can’t move back in with Aunt May.

Mary Jane, almost too casually and as a joke says, “Oh, you want to prove you’re a grown-up, so we’re out on the street on Christmas Eve!”

Ouch!

She’s right, though.

Before Peter can defend himself, there’s a mugging nearby and Peter has to don his Spidey togs and leap into action. Finally, at page 7, we get a McFarlane Spider-Man image! This is an image that, if it was a photo, would have been taken far, far away with a very long lens. That’s the only way the full moon would look that huge in the sky . Even as low as it is to the horizon, that’s a gigantic chunk of moonscape right there. You can practically look up Uatu’s nose from this angle.

Yes, I know The Watcher is on the dark side of the moon, so you’d never see him from Earth, but let’s just roll with it, OK?

Nerd.

Oh, we need a recurring segment here:

That’s So Eighties: Tough Guy and Tough Gal Edition

As he leaps into action, Spider-Man wishes that the radioactive spider had bitten someone with bigger shoulders, like Chuck Norris, Mike Tyson, or Brigitte Nielsen.

I don’t think I have to explain who Chuck Norris is. He’s the guy the internet created before there was an internet so that there could be internet jokes. It’s kind of like the way Rick Astley didn’t really exist until the RickRoll was created and now we all have these fake implanted memories of liking “Never Gonna Give You Up” in the 80s.

Did you enjoy that “Shazaam” movie starring Sinbad, too?

Mike Tyson is the guy from the Nintendo boxing game before he bit someone’s ear off and they replaced him with a generic super boxer. It’s like if Nintendo had a game today called “Will Smith’s Slap Out”, and then had to replace him when he actually did it in real life.

Funny enough, there is a recently released video game called “Asterix and Obelix: Slap Them All!” No, that’s not a joke. Click the link.

Brigitte Nielsen was, at the time, rumored to star in a She-Hulk movie. Comics Scene Magazine teased that for months before it faded away. This was the picture they used in the writeup, though my memory says it was always in black and white:

Back to the Issue…

Peter heads back to the Daily Bugle office Christmas party (they could still call it that back then).

There’s a great page with J. Jonah Jameson being J. Jonah Jameson. He hates spending the money on the party, but it’s deductible!

If Peter can’t get more work from Jonah to pay for a new place, stat, then he’ll consider his options with friends at the Bugle that he could bum a couch off of in the meantime. They’re all eliminated for one reason or another, though, including (most hilariously) JJJ.

Peter is trapped, and Flash Thompson is his only way out.

Peter visits Uncle Ben’s grave just as the events at the Macy’s lookalike store get underway. Shots are fired. Armored vehicles are fleeing. Peter has to interrupt his tender moment to be the superhero. He makes quick work of the guards and, with the help of Santa, takes out the accountant with the gun who masterminded the whole thing.

It’s enough to make a guy smile. See?

I love that smile. I know some people don’t like it when you can see Spider-Man’s nose in this mask, or when the mask’s eyes squint, or when a hint of a smile shows on the mask in a way that, sure, makes no sense. But, again, who cares? Does it look cool? Then go for it! This is a Spider-Man comic, not a Ken Burns documentary.

As I remember, Erik Larsen pushed it further than McFarlane. Maybe we’ll see some of that coming in in an issue that isn’t far from now….

Speaking of cool Santa Claus Spider-Man issues, who can forget this classic Kyle Baker cover from Spectacular Spider-Man #112.

It’s a pretty good Terminator movie poster riff.

After the big fight, Peter Parker returns to Uncle Ben’s grave, where he finds Aunt May. He realizes what an idiot he’s been and takes her up on her offer to move in with her. Everyone goes back to Aunt May’s house for the holidays and live happily ever after!

No, wait, this is a Spider-Man comic. It’s just new drama waiting to happen. I’d keep my eye on Nathan if I were you…

Final Thoughts

This is an issue without a costumed villain to deal with. McFarlane is left drawing people in regular clothes with their exaggerated facial features that he likes so much. The recurring characters look on-model, but the one-off characters get the big noses and ears and funny hair styles. It’s McFarlane’s playground. Without worrying about having to repeat the models past a page, McFarlane can stretch his artistic wings on the “civilians” and go crazy with them.

Spider-Man makes a couple of appearances, and they’re memorable ones, including a striking dramatic crouched pose we see only after the action is over. That felt badly-timed, though. Why would Spider-Man ask who’s next after he takes everyone down?

I forgive it because it looks cool.

It feels a little Frank Miller-esque, too, to me. It feels like a panel that a Miller Batman would easily have been at home in. There’s a lot of Miller’s influence on McFarlane’s artwork if you look at enough of it long enough. It seeps into his writing when you get to adjectiveless “Spider-Man”, in particular.

I’ve included both the original newsprint edition of the panel and the digital “restoration.” I almost think they could get away with the deep, rich blacks in the image if they didn’t also turn the blues up to 11. Heck, all the colors are suddenly super saturated.

It was a very subtle shading/lighting technique in the snow in the original edition, but it’s overpowering in its blue-ness in the digital edition. sigh

If you want to go into crazy detail, someone on Reddit posted a scan of the original art.

Anyway, back to the story:

Peter Parker’s tribulations feel a little immature and slightly whiney for a man who’s out of college and has been out on his own for a while. The idea that he doesn’t want to move back “home” again is a familiar one for most adults, but given his situation, he starts to sound too “A New Hope” Luke about it. He realizes the errors of his ways near the end and does the right thing by everyone’s favorite, Aunt May, but the road getting there feels unnecessary. I can cut the guy a slight break after his Christmas is ruined like that.

It also dawns on me that this is a story of its time. Given the stats of children living with their parents to a later and later age these days, I don’t know that the stigma is still that strong to moving back in with your parents after you’ve moved out.

Original Art Watch

Ouch, the markers McFarlane used for some of the detail work haven’t held up very well. Here’s a section from one page:

That is a LOT of intricate webbing that Spider-Man used to take out the bad guy.

You can see in the original art that McFarlane paid careful attention to the fine line work of all the webbing, then went in afterwards to draw in the black lines for the backgrounds — silhouettes, shadows, and other linework.

The latter job was not done with the kind of ink that stays stable forever, obviously, and is already starting to fade into something that looks like gray wash.

You can see the full piece of art in McSpidey Fan’s collection on Comic Art Fans.

Spiders on the Cover Watch

I don’t see any this month. Looks like McFarlane took a pass or just plain old forgot. Or, perhaps, it’s behind the logo or corner box.

Felix Watch

The black and white tabby makes two appearances in the issue.

He appears on the splash page looking a little worried over the Parkers’ eviction.

He appears later in the issue on the wrapping paper of a grateful near-mugging victim who Spider-Man saves. You know she’s happy by the width of the smile on her face. That’s super appreciation right there.

For completeness’ sake, I should also mention that Felix is seen on the box again on the next page as Spider-Man carries it while he webs away from the Park. It’s just clearer to read in that first panel.

Next Issue

Hydro-Man! And Spider-Man takes down another trio of criminals. And, yeah, sure, that Venom guy everyone seems to like is in it, too…