I'm not sure if Soul Coughing's reunion tour came anywhere near here, but I don't exactly have my ear to the ground for that sort of thing anymore: I missed Garbage last month, since I didn't hear about it until the day afterwards, and I'm still sore about that one. Anyway, this song has always reminded me of really, really old cartoons; so perfect for today! From 2020, Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham #3/23, written by Zeb Wells, art by Will Robson.
Midway through this mini-series, and Spiders-Ham and Man have been chasing someone that also had a dimensional teleporter: this issue, they're back in WWII, and Spider-Ham has taken...a really off-putting 30's animation style form! He also seems to rhyme a lot, which probably doesn't help: Spidey has a rarely seen somewhat dismayed expression in his eyes, even the webbing pattern on his mask seems downcast. They almost catch the gasmasked malefactor, but he escapes again.
Meanwhile, back on the funny-animal Earth-8311, the collected heroes and villains are going to fight to save their world from becoming less cartoony; as soon as they settle on a name for the event. Captain Americat, and the rest, realize they kinda miss Spider-Ham; and settle on the event name "Aporkalypse!" Ham sees this, in an inset panel...Using the power of the Bee-yonder, the Spiders chase the bad guy, first through a gritty Dark Knight-style universe, then a comic strip version; with Spider-Ham changing to match both times. They then fall into the space between universes, where Spider-Ham sticks his head through a hole and can see the story, like it's a comic book! (The newspaper strip-style J.Jonah Jameson yells as they depart "WE DON'T GET META AROUND HERE! WE SERVE AN OLDER AUDIENCE!") Ham also peeks in on the crossover, a pretty solid double-pager, and hey, there's a Nightcrawler in there! You know I'm all about that nonsense.
After a lot of gawking through at other points in the story, the Spiders have a moment for what is probably the throughline for this one: Ham was feeling like he was always in the way, or didn't fit in, which was why the Bee-yonder was changing him to 'fit' wherever they went. Spidey has to admit, Ham was a hero, and had a lot of fight in him, even if nothing else made a helluva lot of sense. In a devastated future, the Spiders catch up with the bad guy, as Cap and the X-imals do the same on 8311, setting up a double reveal: Spider-Ham is right, it's pretty cool, for Kangaroo the Conqueror! Who blames Spider-Ham for the destruction of their world!
Solid fun, even if Spidey looks (and acts) like he would rather be anywhere else. Also, I feel like the cover is a homage to something, but can't nail it down.
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