{"id":1340,"date":"2019-08-08T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T04:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2019-08-05T15:12:25","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T19:12:25","slug":"tac-069","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/08\/08\/tac-069\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC 069"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As we’ve seen, Cloak & Dagger were created in the pages of Spectacular just 5 issues ago, and it seems they must\u2019ve been a hit, at least internally, because they\u2019re back already. It\u2019s the current regular team for TAC of writer Bill Mantlo, penciler Ed Hannigan, inker Al Milgrom and colorist Glynis Wein. And it opens\u2026 weird.
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Kinda feels like a horror comic. The overdramatic language of the splash was meant to indicate this school is abandoned, and currently full of gang members tormenting one of their own for ratting them out to someone. Bill Mantlo\u2019s \u201cblack people\u201d accent is a heady combination of offensive and confusing. They say \u201cyo\u2019\u201d instead of \u201cyou.\u201d How am I supposed to read that? Like \u201cya,\u201d maybe? It\u2019s a long standing tradition for white comic writers to just make up their own language for anyone who\u2019s not white, but at least Luke Cage\u2019s \u201cSweet Christmas\u201d doesn\u2019t require me to guess how it\u2019s pronounced. And this is a comic made before 2000, so the gang members have mind boggling \u201cstreet names,\u201d none more incredible than their seeming leader, \u201cShallacko.\u201d Holy hell. Anyway, anyway, \u201cShallacko\u201d is beating up a \u201cbruthah\u201d for telling someone they sell heroin, and then he\u2019s about to stab him when Cloak & Dagger show up and give a crash course in their powers.
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This is damn near a minstrel show, honestly, this is horrible. The various goons not named \u201cShallacko\u201d try to run, but Cloak can teleport, and cuts them off.
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Silvermane! Elderly Maggia boss and all around bad person. Not seen since ASM 180, I believe, and that means\u2026 well, we\u2019ll see. Meanwhile, in Queens, Spider-Man is breaking into Aunt May\u2019s house. It\u2019s abandoned, lucky for her, since she hopes to move back in. I guess she probably owns it, but she\u2019s been in a nursing home for a very long time. Seems like it woulda been sold or rented by now. He flashes back to his origins, moved by the surroundings, because that\u2019s what he does.
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Spidey follows the cop cars wherever they\u2019re going, and is spotted swinging away by Nathan Lubinsky. Wonder what he\u2019s doing here late at night? He thinks he has an idea for how May can get the money to get them back in the house, but we\u2019ll have to find out about that later. The cops have been joined by ambulances, and the whole gang ends up at a warehouse that\u2019s a known mob meeting spot. Everyone inside has been frozen.
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When Spider-Man finds out they\u2019re going after Silvermane, he gets pretty mad. He knows all about that guy, and doesn\u2019t want these kids throwing their lives away. His aggressive response triggers a brief hero fight.
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I would be remiss if I didn\u2019t also make mention of Dagger\u2019s aggressively sexual costume, especially on a character Spidey keeps calling \u201cjust a kid\u201d and even \u201cso innocent.\u201d Wild creepy, but sadly pretty normal for its time. On the Spidey front, Hannigan is doing the most direct Ditko homage anyone\u2019s done\u2026 well, ever, to this point. It\u2019s not a 1-to-1 swipe (That\u2019s what Ron Frenz is going to do later), but it certainly evokes the master. People said Keith Pollard\u2019s Spidey was more in the Ditko mode, but it was positively original compared to this. Spidey thinks to himself that Dagger wasn\u2019t able to stun him as bad as she did before, and maybe she was holding back. He got pictures of the whole thing, but chooses to leave Cloak & Dagger out of the press for now. The next day at school, Dr. Sloan is giving him grief for being out all night taking pictures instead of studying, and then the rest of Pete\u2019s coworkers find out he\u2019s quit his teaching assistant gig.
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Boy, you almost start to miss Peter just running out on Deb after a couple months of this. She\u2019s not worried about Biff, though, she\u2019s worried about how she\u2019s prrrrretty sure Peter is Spider-Man. It\u2019s too late to talk, though, he\u2019s gone. He\u2019s off to visit Police Captain Jean DeWolff.
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Spidey swings over and infiltrates Kingpin\u2019s tower, but Fisk knows he\u2019s there immediately and just lets him in. He also knows why he\u2019s there, because he\u2019s got spies in the police department. He even knows about Cloak & Dagger, and has heard about their origin so he can tell it to us\u2026
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In the same way Hannigan\u2019s Spidey evokes Ditko, there\u2019s no mistaking the Kingpin of Frank Miller, currently winding down his legendary run as writer\/artist on Daredevil at this time. Spidey takes the address and begrudgingly swings out to a fancy mansion, where Silvermane has his own private medical staff. Last time he appeared, he was badly injured. Actually, \u201cbadly injured\u201d is kind of an understatement. He\u2019s coordinating his drug ring from his hospital bed, but before Spidey can do anything, Cloak & Dagger show up.
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Only their 2nd appearance and Dagger is already clearly not seeing her life the same as Cloak, saying she enjoys fighting with Spidey and wishes they could be permanent partners, but Cloak won\u2019t let them. The three of them make short work of the various goons in the room, and then Cloak sets out to kill Silvermane. Spidey stops him, and when Dagger tries to do her thing to Silvermane, Spidey jumps in the way, taking the light daggers himself. Then Silvermane triggers a fire trap that would\u2019ve killed Dagger if Spidey hadn\u2019t saved her, and then he says she owes him one and he\u2019s calling it in right now:
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This characterization of Cloak as this oppressive quasi-villain and Dagger as a sweet girl being manipulated is yet another extremely uncomfortable aspect of this comic. As a reasonable person, you probably think that\u2019s it for Silvermane. He was a million years old and severely injured, blood is spilling out of his… whatever those tubes are… of course he\u2019s dead. That would make a lot more sense.
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As we’ve seen, Cloak & Dagger were created in the pages of Spectacular just 5 issues ago, and it seems they must\u2019ve been a hit, at least internally, because they\u2019re back already….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[153,35,107,315,154,277,305,250,158,100,292,164,135,316,121,2,216],"class_list":["post-1340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-al-milgrom","tag-aunt-may","tag-bill-mantlo","tag-cloak-dagger","tag-deb-whitman","tag-dr-sloan","tag-ed-hannigan","tag-glynis-wein","tag-jean-dewolff","tag-kingpin","tag-marcy-kane","tag-nathan-lubensky","tag-phil-chang","tag-silvermane","tag-spectacular-spider-man","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-hopkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5657,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions\/5657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}