Now she strikes! And we’ve already seen her strike again in ASM 395! It’s JM DeMatteis, Jerry Bingham and Joe Rosas on deck. And we get right into it, as the woman who will be Nocturne is hanging out in her apartment, narrating like she’s in a hard boiled detective novel, thinking about her partner, Jackie in DeMatteis’ beloved, unnecessarily hard to read narration font as applied by Joe Rosen…
It’s implied but not yet explicitly stated that our narrator, Angela Cairn, was romantically interested in Jackie, an unusual choice in 1993. The detective novel narration is killing me. “Jackie. She was running through my head like a mantra that night.” Angela goes to consult “the cards,” but they don’t look like tarot cards. Her card is a bat. Maybe she’ll become Batman! Then the phone rings, shocking her out of her reverie. Angela is being informed of a fifth” mutilation murder,” a killing spree she’s sure is connected to Vermin and the other weirdos from The Death of Vermin, though she can’t prove it and he’s cured now. She doesn’t believe that, and wants to solve this new thing. A tip from an informant leads her to a warehouse at 3am, where she is promptly… knocked out or something, the art is vague.
Man, that random Captain America story from 1982 where he got attacked by a rat man is the gift that keeps on giving. If you like misery and suffering, anyway. Angela appears to die rather than mutate, and the thingie up there is disappointed. HILARIOUSLY, the thingie apparently dresses Angela’s body in that outfit Nocturne wears before tossing her in the river. Why!??? So stupid.
Hilarious. Well, it’s 16 pages in, maybe we should look in on Spider-Man. We find him on a splash page surrounded by Zemo’s mutates, meant to look like he’s being attacked, but it’s a fake out.
Nocturne is on the roof of the building as Spider-Man leaves, his own narration taking over to say he hopes Edward really is cured, but he’s spent too many times fighting The Lizard to just believe it (Fair point!) He’s been worried the killer Angela was after was, in fact, Vermin, and that’s why he stopped by . His internal monologue is interrupted when he’s buzzed by Nocturne.
So, like, Zemo’s mutation process turned Edward into a rat-man, but it turned literally everyone else into just random goop monsters, until Angela, who it turned into a bat-woman. Very consistent, very easy to swallow. Cannot get over that mutate lady putting her in her sexy dress before chucking her in the river. Oh, hey, I forgot Angela was the unnamed and very angry cop saying a bunch of 100% true things about how Dr. Kafka is a dangerous quack in TAC 190 and 195. I am made to remember this because Spider-Man goes to her place to get help (WHAT), because he knows she’s been on the mutilation killer case (HOW), and he arrives just in time to see Nocturne come speeding out of her window. It’s coincidences all the way down!
They tussle for a few pages, dueling noir narration a blazin’, before Angela gets scared of her own power and flies off. Spidey hits her with a tracer and then goes to check out her apartment. It’s wrecked, but GUESS WHAT, her bat card and a spider card have fallen on the floor together! Oh my gosh! Meanwhile, Nocturne goes back to the scene of the crime of her own death and finds the mutate lady still there, and now very pleased by Angela’s transformation.
They fight, Angela’s narration saying she didn’t see it at the time, but the mutate clearly wanted her to kill it (Fun all the time!), and then eventually Spider-Man shows up to complicate matters further.
“Did a part of me sense the truth… that this woman who looks like Angela Cairn and who I saw flying out of Angela Cairn’s apartment… is Angela Cairn?” Not exactly the world’s greatest detective. Moved by Cairn’s empathic power, Spidey decks the other Angela, and she flies into a wall and changes back to her usual weird form. Angela lunges in for the kill, but Spider-Man is desperately trying to stop her.
And Spidey swings off, thinking maybe she’s becoming the person she was destined to be. Either way, we’ve already seen her only other appearances. Which seems kind of odd. Seems like DeMatteis went to a lot of trouble setting her up. I mean, credit where it’s due, this one is a lot more polished than the other 2. It doesn’t just feel like a commercial for some other comic no one wants. I guess everyone’s plans kind of fell by the wayside when the clone thing started. A lot of abandoned concepts. Next, there’s a short where Nocturne stops a mugging, goes to visit her mom, watches her through a window and then leaves, unable to go in.Which further feels like DeMatteis had more plans for this character. Then a short where Black Crow fights D’Spayre, and buddy, I do NOT care. And then… a Prowler short. It’s written by Glenn Herdling, with finishes by Al Milgrom and colors by Marie Javins, and breakdowns by… John Romita, Sr.? What? Random, but I am not complaining. Hobie’s in the Sons of the Tiger Martial Arts Studio, with his brother, like back in TAC Annual 10, three years ago.
Hector’s brother explains who The Sons of the Tiger were as Lin leads Hobie into another room, telling him some developers are trying to force them out of the building. And wouldn’t you know it…
I just felt like running the classic Romita action. Not exactly earth shattering, but always fun to see the master do a few pages! Alright, with these annuals out of the way, we’ve unfortunately arrived at the Spectacular Spider-Man section of this block…