Episode 273 - Continuing the Bendis/Bagley run -- we reach the big moment. Peter lets a criminal, who he easily could have stopped, run past. And his family pays a huge price.

But before that, we get the Bendis/Bagley nuanced look at Peter's extended world. We see Kong extend the hand of friendship. We see Liz Allen make a move on Peter, an MJ storm off. We see a revamped version of the famous "with great power must come great responsibility speech." And we see police cars and ambulence gathered outside the Parker home.

Loose Screws: we talk the A24 horror movie "Talk To Me" and the HBO series "Peacemaker."

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The Milksops continue their examination of Bendis/Bagley's Ultimate Spider-Man! Kevin likes it more on this reading, but is still frustrated by the slow pace. Will remains is moved by the nuanced characters. In this issue, Peter begins his short career as a masked wrestler, and also becomes a star of the high school basketball team. In our world famous loose screws segment, Kevin talks about the Aquaman movie sequel. Does Kevin like it, or not? (Spoiler: no!)

We keep going through this legendary run by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. Will continues to like it, Kevin continues to think it's too slow. We both agree the "homage" to Ferris Bueller at the top (the boring professor who goes "voodoo economics") is... weird. We discuss the effects of getting to know Uncle Ben more. We observe how obvious it must be to Peter's classmates that he has supernatural powers. We see Peter's anger boiling up.

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We get into one of the most popular runs on a superhero comic ever: Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. An attempt to win over new audiences, this was a rebooted Spider-Man without any history or previous continuity. It was a commercial and critical smash! Kevin never took to the slow pace of the plot, and doesn't think the Bendis-style dialogue is worth it, though he admits that it's well crafted and was certainly a hit. Will is taken with the emotional nuance of the characters, and the lack of other superheroes.

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Two stories in one! The top half of each page details the return of Ben Grimm, and an almost-but-not-quite battle against the Dire Wraiths (who?) And the bottom half has Reed, Sue and Franklin in hell! Which is pretty fun! Then we read a bunch of mail, which Kevin has organized by THEME! Join our subscriber level for bonus eps (soon) - https://www.screwitpodcasts.com/

We cover three more issues of John Byrne's run on FF: A check-on on The Thing while he's on the Secret Wars planet, a story of a tabloid getting a hold of naked photos of She-Hulk, and the start of a Mephisto story where Reed and Sue go to an unnamed Hell! We also talk about the recently announced FF movie casting.

We pick right up where we left off with the FF going.. back in time! Wait, not, they are going SIDEWAYS in dimensions, but to the SAME TIME! A time where... the dark ages never happened, so society got very advanced! But then blew themsleves up so they are not! Wait, no they PARTLY are advanced because Reed's science genius dad has been here. Whatever. We get into it! We now have subscriber-only eps! See screwitpodcasts.com for more details! And we talk about this in the episode. Discounts for our subscriber eps: legacymonth - 20% off monthly plan legacyyear - 20% off yearly plan

We close out our season on writer/artist Keith Giffen with a look at another of his creator-owned series: Trencher. Trencher is another crack of the "Lobo" type -- a hyperviolent cynical tough guy who takes missions in which he has to kill lots of people. Trencher is less of a satire than Lobo -- and the world is more specific. He is a reincarnated soul who must hunt down other reincarnated souls. A Blade Runner of reincarnated people. And his targets tend to be ludicrous: a guy whose super power is controlling his nose hairs, someone who can vomit with pinpoint accuracy, and Elvis Presley split into four bodies (a la Superman, after his early 90s "death.") HIs art is different yet AGAIN -- looking like a combination of late 80s Giffen and Geoff Darrow. A fun, specific biting series that deserved more time -- a fitting end to our study of a great storyteller.

We go back towards the beginning of Keith Giffen's career, when he was "just" an artist. Specifically we examine his work with writer Paul Levitz on the 1983 Legion of Super-Heroes story "The Great Darkness Saga." This 5-issue story showed The Legion facing super powerful "shadow villains" who seemed to be clones of people from the distrant past. When it's revealed to be Darkseid --- it was one of the first times a character from Jack Kirby's New Gods came into the DC proper in a major way. The story was also epic in scope, had huge surprises and full of great character moments. Though it's more traditional than much of Giffen's later work, it's masterfully done. We assume Giffen was helping with the plotting here (he would soon be credited as a co-plotter on upcoming issues). We can see Keith learning lessons he would apply in the Annihilation mini-seres that we covered two episodes ago. His art is very traditional in this story, though we see a few glimpses of the abstract experimental style that he would adopt in a few years.

We continue our Keith Giffen coverage with a look at the creator-owner property he did in the 2000s, Hero Squared. Keith did this with his Justice League collaborator J.M. DeMatteis. J.M. was kind enough to be on this episode! We ask J.M. about Keith in general, his collaboration with Keith and then we get into the series Hero Squared. Hero Squared is the story of Milo Stone, an unproductive aspiring filmmaker who learns that his alternate universe self is a superhero. As the series progresses, the characters -- the two Milos -- talk argue and cooperate with each other as they become friends. There's lots of humor, action and commentary on the superhero genre as we go. And this was long before multiverse fever ran through the comics industry!