90 cents! Head down to McKay’s and get some comics below cover price. You think Rhino on the cover means we’re done with Harry Osborn?
Dr. Kafka’s looking a little more svelte. Not yet the video vixen she’ll become under Luke Ross.
The idea that it’s supposed to be a real person’s eyes and teeth, especially the eyes, in there, is so funny to me.
More of that excellent Ashely Kafka care we’ve seen so often. Cops run in and drag her out over her own protests and Harry keeps saying he’ll kill her. She is certain he’d never have gotten through that glass, which, I dunno, maybe Sal didn’t get the memo, but it sure looks like he was already through it. Spider-Man is on the cops’ side, and then one of them says they’re moving Harry elsewhere. Say that despite Kakfa getting good press for her treatment of Vermin, the police don’t agree with her methods.
How can Kafka and Spider-Man be so dumb? That cop is right, Ashley’s idiotic methods get people killed, over and over and over again. Ugh. Also, this Rhino horn as shark’s fin thing is very silly. Spider-Man takes off despite Kafka wanting to do him next, into that fog, and we do another shark fin thing. The Rhino says he “got The Goblin’s signal,” and is apparently trying to do one last job and get out of the life, like he was in Deadly Foes of Spider-Man. He sez The Goblin has already given him a down payment, and keeps mentioning how he came to the US as a spy in his original appearance. Which, you know, true and all, but him being Russian “don’t really like up wit’ da way he’s always talkin’ like some mob tuff guy,” if you asked me. Apparently, now that the USSR has dissolved, Rhino wants money to move his family to the US. That’s an unusual angle, at least. He internal monologues all this as 2 cops spot him, chase him, get their car smashed, and lose him.
As a lad, I thought it was so weird that they did this “Normie hates Spider-Man” thing. Because he’s a toddler. What could that possibly lead to? I hadn’t counted on the world-class terribleness of Dan Slott almost 30 years later. Speaking of terrible, the next page is a 9-panel grid of the same image of Harry staring manically into the distance. Good stuff. As Mark implied, this is meant to be the same night as last issue, which… makes no sense to me. They let Kafka start doing her stupid thing, like, 15 minutes after he was arrested? Come on. Peter Parker walks the street, brooding about all this when The Rhino just misses him on the street. When his Spider Sense went off, he expected a mugger, but this is much weirder.
That’s some quick change. Spidey begins pummeling Rhino, really taking out his frustrations, and though he called Peter “he” rather than “I” back there, he seems to be rather more reckless with the language during 2 pages of very one-sided action that leaves Rhino lying in a hole in a construction site.
Norman, Harry, Venom, whatever, if the villain knows the hero’s secret, it can create some real drama… for awhile. But the longer it goes on, the less impact it has, and then what do you do? People can only get amnesia so many times. It’s a very exciting path to nowhere. Ah, well. Loo at this, a month of single issue stories. Who woulda thought it even possible anymore? Now it’s time to go on some sidetracks.