I noticed that Marvel had a comic come out today called Amazing Spider-Man #1000 and though I haven’t been a regular reader of Spider-Man in a long time, I thought it might be nice to see the most important Marvel Universe get celebrated, and this might just be a book in which that happens. And I was right! The Rocket Racer is in there!

I just had this idea that a milestone issue like this could do a scene where we get all sorts of cameos of characters who have appeared over the years, so I was happy to see the panel above. And to be clear, that is the only panel in which Bob appears. But what a panel! What a reveal! In the Marvel Universe, there is going to be a Rocket Racer movie? I need more details!

Look, I know this is a joke, I know that. It’s just funny that a character as silly as people think the Rocket Racer is would have a movie. I know. But I also take the character more seriously than anyone else. As I’ve said before, there is nothing in the character of the Rocket Racer more inherently silly than there is in Batman or Captain America or most other supposed “cool” characters in the genre. If we treat the character seriously, we can be amused by his situations and care about what happens in the stories. So here I go.

Possibilities:

1. This is good for Bob.
2. This is bad for Bob.

If this is a good scenario for our hero, what does that mean? Well, it means he’s getting some respect. Bob is someone who likes to show off and joke around while he’s doing his thing and he has been a bit performative about his antics (getting into fights for money while rich people watched) more than once in the past. Note that the billboard makes no mention of an actor portraying Bob and Spider-Man identifies it as “Rocket Racer’s movie career” so to me sounds like he’s talking about the guy he knows being in that there movie. This movie is not only about Bob, but stars Bob (could be sort of half documentary, half action film). I think this is the best chance to show off that he has ever had and it could very well be bringing in much-needed money to his family.

If this is a bad scenario, it could be something that Bob doesn’t want. In spite of (or, probably, because of) his desire to show off, any time he fails, Bob takes it hard. Maybe he doesn’t want this movie to happen but someone has forced him into it. It could be a thing where he needs to maintain the rights to his costumed identity. It could be that he’s being forced into it by threats to his family. Basically, I’m saying there could be a villain or worse a corporation that is making this happen and Bob isn’t getting much profit from it at all. What if the time he was consulting She-Hulk for legal advice, he was trying to stop this from happening? And whether he thinks it is good or bad, how is he gonna take it when it inevitably flops?

We don’t know. Nothing in this story tells us. I think we will mostly only be able to infer what happened here by where Bob is in life the next time we see him. I, for one, can’t wait.

But my favourite part is Parker admitting “I can’t even remember if we left it as friends or enemies.” I genuinely think that Bob falls into a tier of person that Peter knows where they aren’t quite close enough to be real friends and Peter thinks they are “lame” enough that he will make jokes at their expense. Look at what he did to Will O’ The Wisp after all. Peter likes Bob when he helps him, but otherwise barely thinks of him unless they have to fight. This is accurate.

Okay, this time the Invaders try a sort of religious tactic to get their conquest of Earth going. Brother Avery is an Invader posing as a preacher or something who does a trick for his congregation: he takes a pill that starts killing him, then he starts to glow in the way the Invaders do as they die. But instead of burning up, after he shows off the glow he heads off the stage to one of the regeneration chambers they use to not die. It’s a pretty effective scam, so he’s got a whole bunch of people showing up to his performances. What’s more, he’s preaching that they should prepare for “the coming host of angels” so they will accept saucers bringing people from space with glee instead of trepidation. It’s a good plan, but obviously David Vincent is on the case.

Vincent knows the alien red glow, so he sees through this one immediately, including understanding that they’ve probably got the regeneration chamber backstage. He offers his services to Now Magazine (We must sadly assume that in the universe of the Invaders this magazine is not owned by J. Jonah Jameson’s) to get pictures of Avery’s whole operation. To get into the church, he actually bothers to use an alias! He almost never does that! He poses as Dennis Victor and, though the Invaders see through, but he focuses on a non-alien member of the church, Sister Claire.

Most of the episode is typical Invaders stuff, with Vincent doing action hero stuff like dodging a car and sneaking around, but the Claire stuff is interesting. It’s clear that Claire has made a lot of mistakes in her life and that Brother Avery’s miracle has given her a faith that has helped her turn her life around. She does not want to believe David Vincent and his claims, but the Invaders have no qualms about using her to capture Vincent and then killing her. And the thing about a show like this one is that when Claire is in danger, there’s as much chance that she could be saved or be killed. Watching the episode, I have no way of knowing if she’ll survive or not. One may say that, since the show doesn’t bring back characters like this, it doesn’t actually matter if the guest stars survive or not, but if we go that way we’d say it doesn’t matter in any movie who survives if there isn’t a sequel. As far as this story is concerned, we want the characters to survive, but the fact that the Invaders is willing to kill off such characters means we can’t be certain. That’s what I love about horror, and I’m glad the show does it. Anyway, Claire survives and Vincent ends the episode with another ally ready and willing to join the fight against the Invaders but we presumably never see her again. Maybe Vincent sent her off to help his brother with his underground alien-fighting operation.

A couple of special-effects-related comments on this one: One, when we see Brother Avery regenerating, there is a sort of wiggly mass visible inside him that we’ve not seen before and I wonder if anything can be inferred from it about the Invaders’ true forms. Two, there’s a scene where Vincent shoots through a car window to kill an Invader and to show the bullet breaking the glass they do a special effect wherein they just draw a crack pattern over the window. It’s very badly done and, in a show that usually has fairly good effects for its time, really stands out as funny. It’s better than I’d do, for sure, and I’m sure the people doing it had budget and time concerns to worry about, but it doesn’t change that it is an amusingly bad effect. I loved it.

September has mostly escaped now, so I should report on my activities in case they provide any alibis:

• THE SECOND FLASH FOSTER STORY: I polled my Patron(s) about how I should follow up my coverage of the first Flash Foster and his High-Gear Hot-Shots story, it was decided I should check out Flash’s story from the following issue. I did so, and it is a better story, though it gives most of its emotional weight over to a different character.
• PHONE GUYS: My Phone Guys comics were the big point of focus for me this month. There are two important things to know about Phone Guys. 1) This comic is a foundation on which this website stands. I have put up a Phone Guys comic every week since the first of November, 2010. During some of my more depressed eras, there are probably months where it was the only thing that went up. And 2) This comic is not well made. I don’t mean that it isn’t good (though that is a claim I wouldn’t fight), what I mean is that I make it in a bad way to make a comic. At about this time every year I make all 52 Phone Guys comics that will go up over the following year. That means that for most of the month I’m trying to get two or more of them done in a day, often in the wee hours after being wiped out by work often resulting in the very “good enough, print it” comics that have become a tradition. So I did that this month. 52 more comics in which two people say stupid things at each other over phone. The lifeblood of the Book of PDR.
• THE MARVEL APPENDIX 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY EVENT: My favourite encyclopedic website of obscure Marvel Comics knowledge, The Marvel Appendix, has been around for 25 years (Hey, that’s even longer than this website). To celebrate, they’ve been putting up a truly overwhelming number of profiles covering every corner of the Marvel Universe and then some. I helped out with a small handful (including an android superhero, a civilian, a motorcycle designer, a team of mercenaries, a jerk Deadpool knew, and of course an alternate universe version of my beloved Rocket Racer), but my entries were a drop in a waterfall compared to what everyone else put up. I enjoy helping the Appendix when I can, but I am constantly reminded that I am a mere sidekick compared to the other contributors. My Marvel love is highly focused, but they seem to have expansive collections and organization skills I envy. I could not have got 25 years out of that site, but they could have done it without me easily. Congratulations to them, I’ll continue to do what I can, when I can.
• BEEKEEPER REVIEW: CAPTAIN QUAID: The beekeeper I reviewed this month is from a show based on Disney’s Tangled. That was a movie I remember enjoying, so it was easy to dip into the show for Quaid’s two episodes. For the record, this is my 96th Beekeeper Review here on the site and I’d love to finally make it to 100 soon, so I will probably try to do a monthly review for a while.
• MUSING ABOUT THE MERMAID MASK: I decided I should start a regular thing on the site where I talk about adventure games I’ve played. I love adventure games so much and don’t talk about them enough, so this will force me to do so. I checked my Steam library and wishlist a few days back and I have around 90 games waiting to be played. Let’s get that number down.
• OBSCURE MARVEL CHARACTER PIXEL ART: This month I have drawn none other than Dennis Dunphy, aka Demolition Dunphy, aka D-Man. Dennis is a character that has been treated with little respect in a lot of stories over the years, often used him as the butt of a joke. He is a funny character, it’s true, but they tend toward mean-spirited mockery. But I assure you he’s actually one of the most purely heroic characters in the Marvel Universe anddeserves respect, so don’t come talkin’ around here unless you treat him right.

• STUDENT LOAN DEBT BELOW $3000: That’s right, it says it right there. The student loan that has absolutely upended every aspect of my life (in spite of the fact that it didn’t even help me actually graduate) has been brought to a number below three thousand dollars! It is, I admit, going more slowly than I had hoped. Every time I make an actual budget to organize my life, something happens. I have an expensive car problem or I am made to move into a more expensive apartment or the prices of all gas and food and everything everywhere increases. Every dollar paid off comes with a struggle. But that struggle is slowly paying off. At the risk of “jinxing” it, I am currently on track to have this shit finally gone from over my head in three years or so. After that the money that currently goes toward it could actually be saved up, a scenario I can almost not imagine right now.
• HOVER HEAD COVERS: After my success at making the Adventure Dennis section of the site better last month, I’ve decided to continue improving and beautifying things around here. To that end, I have given comics-style covers to my Hover Head comics, as seen below:

• ETHAN COEN’S MOVIES: I am a big fan of the work of the Coen Brothers, but I had not got around to checking out the movies that Ethan Coen has made sans brother/avec wife. Until now! I do think that part of the reason it took me so long to watch Drive-Away Dolls and Honey Don’t is because the reactions I heard said they were middling at best. Well, now that I have seen them, I can see where those reactions were coming from. They seem intended to be a sort of b-movie fun romp, but they’re still full of Coen-esque action and tension and quirky characters and dialogue. I can kinda see the seams that hint at which of the Coen Brothers brings which aspects of their team fims, but I enjoyed these fine. If I find most of the Coen Brothers’ work to be incredibly good, a movie that is half that level in quality is actually still pretty okay. The real question is, won’t anyone save Curlie?
• WEIRD TALES MAGAZINE: I can’t remember how I came across it, but I was searching for some old story in an issue of Weird Tales and found it on the Internet Archive. After I noticed they had a lot of issues of the magazine on there, I’ve just been checking out a short story or two a week. I don’t think I have any specific recommendations, I’ve just been picking things that look short and have an interesting name. You could do that too, if you want.

Why is it safe to tell actors to “break a leg?”
Because they’re already in a cast.