Peter Parker: Spider-Man #42
Fifteen Minutes of Shame Part 1
It’s Spring Break and the music entertainment channel, Sonic TV, has invaded the Sonic TV Beech House located on Jones Beach in New York with a huge music festival. After a performance from a band called Sausage-Finger, veejay Billy Alabama then interviews the pop-star couple of Tiffany Gibson and Johnny Waterlog who talk about their newest singles. When put to an audience vote, Johnny’s son is voted first place. While Tiffany appears to take it well on live television, that evening she furious that Johnny got the number one vote. However, her mood quickly shifts to romance after she shoves her boyfriend onto the sand. But, before they can get into it, Johnny is suddenly swallowed up by the sand. Unfortunately, Tiffany’s screams cannot be heard over the loud party going on not far away.[1]
Meanwhile, in Manhattan, Peter is sick with a cold fo the second time and is at home channel surfing trying to find something interesting to watch.[2] When he stops on Sonic TV, he catches a news report about how Johnny Waterlog and Tiffany Gibson had gone missing the night before. They then interview members of Johnny’s bandmates in N’Step. As the members of N’Step compare themselves to the Beatles and bicker among one another, Peter feels like he is losing brain cells watching this nonsense. As he wonders who is in charge of this cultural drek, back at Jones Beach director Teale Hunter is herding the talent around for whatever they need to be doing. As she is trying to get Tyson Hayley to get ready for the latest segment of his dating reality show, one of Teale’s assistants tells her that singer Maria Kelly refuses to leave her trailer, because she claims she saw the beach swallow Johnny and Tiffany the night before. She tells the assistant to get Kelly out of her trailer or she’s fired, then herds the Crisquo the rapper to the stage by the ear after he tries a pick-up line on her.
Back at his apartment, Peter Parker continues to watch Sonic TV, unable to bring himself to change the channel even though he hates what he’s seeing. When Crisquo leaps off the stage and onto the beach, he is suddenly swallowed up by the sand in front of the cameras. Seeing this sets off Peter’s spider-sense and he tries to convince himself to stay home because he is sick, but his sense of responsibility can’t keep him away. Soon, Spider-Man takes a tax down to Jones Beach where his presence is basically ignored by the party-goers. Teale Hunter also doesn’t like the idea of Spider-Man snooping around, dismissing Crisquo’s disappearance as a publicity stunt.[3] When it becomes apparent that Spider-Man isn’t leaving, Teale decides to make Spider-Man a celebrity guest so they can both help each other out.
As Spider-Man is taken to a dressing room a consciousness within the sand beings to come alive, remembering Spider-Man from the sound of his voice.[4] As a new band begins playing,[5] The entity in the sand then begins seeing memories of his childhood of his father leaving his mother and begins to stir. The party-goers dismiss the movement of the sand as being caused by the music. This is followed by another memory of where the entity is visited in prison by the woman he loved. When he finally got out, he discovered that she was cheating with him with another man and thinks he beat the man to death.[6] Meanwhile, Spider-Man has been forced to work with Teale Hunter’s programming schedule, taking part in various reality shows and contests in order to be able to conduct his search for the missing musicians. Eventually, Spider-Man gets fed up as the has hit a dead end in his investigation and his participation in Sonic TV events are becoming more and more irritating. That’s when his spider-sense begins going off as the entity in the sane becomes annoyed by the music of Maria Kelly and begins swallowing everyone on the beach. Avoiding being swallowed up in the sand, Spider-Man jokingly tells Teale to prepare for a new guest on her show.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Sandman, Tiffany Gibson, Johnny Waterlog, Tyson Hayley, T. Diddy, Teale Hunter, Maria Kelly
Continuity Notes
I am just going to say this upfront that this entire story is a kind of commentary on the celebrity culture of MTV and reality television in the 2000s. This story is full of parodies of musical acts that were popular in that era as well as some really dated slang. Basically all the cringe-worthy content of this story should be considered topical.
Peter first got a cold back in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #37.
Teale thinks Cisqo is” pulling a Tupac”. Rapper Tupac was killed in a shooting in Las Vegas on September 13, 1996. Like many musicians killed in their prime, there is a group of people who think that Tupac faked his death and has been living in secret for years. However, Tupac is very much dead, in fact, his morgue photos could be found on Rotten.com’s Celebrity Morgue until the site went down in 2018. When I was a teenager, I took a perverse joy directing idiots on the internet to that site whenever they repeated the claim that Tupac was still alive. Anyway, the Tupac reference should be considered topical.
Going to get this out of the way as well, this is the Sandman (duh), how did he end up on the beach? Long story. It all started in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #16 when Venom ate a chunk of the Sandman’s body causing him to slowly lose the ability to maintain his form. He eventually fell apart in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #22.
This performer is depicted as Kid Rock and he is singing “Bawitdaba”, which was already 3 years old when this comic came out so it was already a dated reference when this comic was published.
The Sandman’s past was explored in more detail in Marvel Two-In-One #86 and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Annual #1. The girl he remembers was named Marcy and she cheated on Flint Marko with a guy named Vic. In this story, Flint wonders if he killed Vic, according to Marvel Two-In-One #86 he only beat Vic up.
