It’s getting harder and harder to remember as the years wear on, but I want to say this is one of the early comics I got as part of The Great eBay Hysteria of 2018, while TAC 19 was one of the last gaps I filled in the series. I read this one during my initial pass at making a blog, before I shuffled things around. So this is my 2nd time seeing it, and the first since reading the previous issue. As we begin this month, Spidey is hanging outside police headquarters in the rain to hear the interrogation of The Enforcers. They’re not giving up any info, tho, and Ox is getting very perturbed.
“All reet?” How many accents did Bill Mantlo make up in his time writing comics? Spider-Man swings away, tired of getting soaked in the rain, but as he enters his apartment, the plaster comes off the ceiling of his bathroom, dumping him on the floor.
Half a good plan there, Peter. Shoulda closed the skylight. Mrs. Muggins says he can get a ladder and some plaster from her tomorrow and repair it himself so she doesn’t have to deduct it from his rent. Meanwhile, the still mysterious villain whose identity was spoiled on the cover recounts how he figured out who Spider-Man was last issue and then…
Lightmaster always feels like ⅓ of a Ditko design.
The black bars of that cage don’t feel like light to me. Peter rushes Lightmaster and gets zapped, but it’s a ploy to make sure no one notices him tagging Hector with a spider tracer. Lightmaster flies off with Hector and intimates that his plans will complete tonight. It becomes clear that Holly has feelings for Hector, and only ran game at Peter to make him jealous. But also, Peter picks up Hector’s amulet and realizes his new friend is also The White Tiger. Switching to Spidey, our man quickly locates his tracer… in a light bulb factory. Lightmaster villain monologued earlier that he has to be near light at all times or he’ll die, but even so: wah waaaaah. Anyway, Spidey sneaks in just in time to confirm Hector is the Tiger because he’s not well separated from his amulets, and to see Lightmaster enact his plan to “use his incredible light powers” to broadcast on every TV station (wut)…
Spidey leaps into battle, with Hector just kinda watching and asking occasionally if Spider-Man needs help. Lightmaster starts laying into him with his light constructs, almost hitting him a few times, but…
He… he couldn’t just… go back the way he came…?
And that’s our abrupt end! Not an all-time classic, but the gag of the villain mistaking someone else for Spider-Man is played better than usual. As we’ve seen, Hector’s identity being revealed doesn’t work out so well in the future. Kudos to Mantlo for trying to bring some much-needed diversity to the Spidey cast, but their generally never showing up in ASM kinda takes away their legitimacy. At any rate, this brings TAC back to #21, which we saw all the way back in Block 4, like 3 years ago. It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this so long. Next time, we start hitting a couple more MTUs to finish out this block.