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Star Jaws!
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After the incomprehensible madness of The Phoenix Gambit it's a relief to be back in the comparatively calm and sensible world of "Spidey Super Stories", with a thoroughly enjoyabe riff on "Star Wars" that kicks off with a cover cleverly echoing the movie's own poster.
The film had been out for several months when this comic hit the newsstands, but was still dominating the cinema and was, clearly, becoming a great pull for younger readers. The poster recasts Spider-man as Luke Skywalker, Moondragon as Princess Leia, and Doctor Doom as Darth Vader - ironically, as Darth Vader was at least partly based on Doom. The story within also casts characters from the Electric Company TV show as R2-D2 and Chewbacca, with Marvel Boy (for some reason) brought in to play Han Solo and Doombots brought in as Storm Troopers. The Millenium Falcon, meanwhile, is played by... well, basically, the Millenium Falcon.
The story sees Doctor Doom in charge of a space station "as big as a planet" (it's no moon....), where he uses his army of Doombots/Storm Troopers to capture Moondragon.
Sam The Sesame Street Robot escapes and seeks Spider-man's help, so go and find Marvel Boy filming a movie, and then jump into the Millenium Falcon and fly off. As ever with Spidey Super Stories, there's a childish dream-like logic to it all, as they use a spaceship that may or may not be a movie prop to fly up into Doctor Doom's space station. It has a gigantic mouth across the middle so, of course, he's called it "Star Jaws".
Marvel Boy and Spider-man disguise themselves as robots, allowing them to help Moondragon and the others escape back to the Millenium Falcon. However, Spider-man gets stuck on the way and ends up fighting Doctor Doom using handily placed Light Sabers.
The plot has largely followed that of the movie at this point, but deviates here by having Spidey survive the flight, allowing the heroes to escape. Doctor Doom isn't that bothered.
Apart from the (very amusing) use of language throughout, the Spidey Super Stories version of Doom is, as ever, close to the main Marvel Universe incarnation of the character, with his reliance on cunning plans and happiness to sword fight. Sadly for him he's beaten by an even more cunning plan, as The Pentagon release one million tons of TNT into space which Moon Dragon then disguises as planet Earth so that Star Jaws will bite it.
As I said, it's a very childish, dream-like logic, but it still makes more sense than "Masters Of Kung-Fu" did!
The plan works, as Star Jaws eats the TNT and explodes, leading Doom to float off into space with a few Doombots beside him, something which harks back to some of his earliest appearances back in Fantastic Four #6, >Fantastic Four #17 and Fantastic Four #23.
The comic is so full of story that it continues onto the inner covers - this was the only time Spidey Super Stories featured one continuous story rather than several - and it's a joy from start to finish. Doom is very much Doom, and the pastiche has a huge amount of fun using existing characters from Marvel and Sesame Street to retell the story. The only thing it doesn't do, which I would have liked, is to mention quite how similar Darth Vader is to Doctor Doom, but otherwise it's been the most enjoyable issue since Doom fought Kiss!
link to information about this issue
posted 25/10/2019 by Mark Hibbett
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