{"id":14081,"date":"2022-08-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=14081"},"modified":"2021-05-13T23:29:29","modified_gmt":"2021-05-14T03:29:29","slug":"tac-244","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/08\/09\/tac-244\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC 244"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yay, he\u2019s back. Or is he? This is a lot of Luke Ross for a guy to have to sit through in sequence. Man, this time period. Lotta ups & downs in a long-running comic character, obviously, but for me, the word for this period is \u201clackluster.\u201d There are way better and way worse runs, but in some ways, bad is better than middling. At least bad inspires a reaction. This stuff is neither good nor terrible. But, also, like 1994-1998, for sure my least favorite period for art on Spider-Man, and in comics, in general. There\u2019s exceptions, of course. John Romita, Jr\u2019s here, for starters. But this faux-J. Scott Campbell, faux-Joe Maduriera wave was not my wave. Everyone ripping off Jim Lee was bad, but this was worse. Joe Mad, at least, was pretty good, but the wannabes trailing in his wake never were, and I was never into Campbell to begin with, so an industry rife with people trying to be 5th-rate versions of him\u2026 rough time for me. The aggressive change to \u201cphotorealism\u201d at the turn of the century was maybe not that great, historically, either, but compared to this? No wonder the early 2000s felt like a Renaissance for comics. But\u2026 way off topic. DeMatteis has swung the needle back to Komedy this month, as a page of grim\u2019n\u2019gritty narration tells us we\u2019re entering the lair of a terrifying and brutal villain\u2026 The Kangaroo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Approaching this objectively, on the one hand, it is obviously, intentionally silly. On the other hand, the original Kangaroo just being a guy who jumps and wears a furry vest\u2026 not very kangaroo-esque, really. So\u2026 this is sort of an improvement. The optimal move is not to create a new Kangaroo, but I supposed this is the next best thing. Why does he have a stylized \u201cAPB\u201d on his chest?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boy oh boy. Ross still aping McFarlane on Spider-Man and Campbell on everything else. Things actually get worse on the following page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh boy. Not to run yet another sequential page, but\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026 look at that last panel. What is this, a Blondie comic? Anyway, Peter tells her Chameleon knows who he is, and she is remarkably cavalier about it. When pressed, she rattles off all the villains who\u2019ve tormented her (Well, some of them) since they got married, as well as the hardships they\u2019ve had to deal with during The Clone Saga, and says they\u2019ve survived all that intact. She says even if Chameleon were to reveal his secret to the world, they\u2019d just move, take up fake names, and keep on. She\u2019s pretty solid these days. So she puts his mask on him and tells him to go find Chameleon and slug him one for her. Speaking of whom, maybe it\u2019s time to see how about how Kraven was on the last page of last issue. Dimitri is on the ground wherever we left him, staring up at his seemingly returned friend\/tormentor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Is it really him? Is it a trick? Is it somewhere in between? Weirdly silent last panel considering that sentence continues on the next page \u201c–would make of this?\u201d But it\u2019s over a different scene, Flash Thompson & Betty Brant walking in the rain. Betty says she\u2019s been burned by Flash in the past, but decided he sounded so down, she should come see what\u2019s up. Flash monologues about how he hit a low point, going to bars to find people even lower than him, which reminded him of his drunk dad, and how he worried he\u2019d fall into a hole. Betty says she doesn\u2019t think that would ever happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What a page. What a face. What a plot twist. Also, why\u2019s his hair brown? Is it supposed to look wet? I dunno. He kicks over a trashcan and thinks, \u201cMaybe just one drink.\u201d How\u2019d these two split up in the 80s, I suddenly wonder. I remember them in it to win it in Inferno, and then suddenly Flash was with Felicia. I must\u2019ve seen it already, but\u2026 no memory of it. Maybe it just got lost in the shuffle when Conway quit. Odd. Anyway, we cut to Ravencroft, where Dr. Kafka has a list of 35 safehouses Chameleon might be in, and wants her & John to go look in all of them. That\u2019s a lot. But then Edward, the former Vermin, runs in to say word of Chameleon\u2019s escape has leaked somehow, and one of the Senators who authorized Ravencroft to reopen after its history as the most escapable facility in the world, wants answers. But Kafka says to tell them she died and she and John rush off into the night, watched by Jack O\u2019Lantern. Back in Queens, MJ wakes up from a Chameleon-induced nightmare. She chastizes herself for talking all  tough to Peter only to have nightmares about the guy. She goes to the closet and grabs a bat to take back to bed with her, just in case, hoping to herself that Peter can catch Dimitri tonight. Her hubby is out swinging around, thinking MJ is strong, maybe too strong, that she\u2019s holding too much in, and about how he\u2019s glad they\u2019re going ot therapy, when his Spider Sense goes off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Who on Earth would call that \u201ca death of honor?\u201d \u201cEat some bugs, bury Spider-Man alive instead of kill him for no obvious reason, and then eat a shotgun. Flawless victory.\u201d Is DeMatteis just talking about himself, here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yeesh. Dimitri says his father beat the knowledge that he was a Kravinov out of him as a child, but he\u2019s remembered. Then Kraven vanishes, a hallucination the whole time. Shades of Fight Club. The realization that he\u2019s of the \u201cexalted\u201d Kravinov line fills Chameleon with pride and fire, but then Spider-Man shows up. He makes fun of Dimitri and villains in general for always talking to themselves like he\u2019s not the king of that, but Chameleon\u2019s not having it. He\u2019s all hyped up on being a Kravinov now. Spidey announces he doesn\u2019t care what Dimitri could do with the secret of his identity, and then the villain lowers the cage Kraven kept Vermin in during Kraven\u2019s Last Hunt down into view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yeah, yeah, whatever. This stuff ends next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yay, he\u2019s back. Or is he? This is a lot of Luke Ross for a guy to have to sit through in sequence. Man, this time period. Lotta ups & downs in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[1240,427,177,12,93,331,125,27,442,610,629,21,121,2],"class_list":["post-14081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-alexei-kravinoff","tag-ashley-kafka","tag-chameleon","tag-flash-thompson","tag-foggy-nelson","tag-jack-olantern","tag-jm-dematteis","tag-john-jameson","tag-john-kalisz","tag-john-stanisci","tag-luke-ross","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-spectacular-spider-man","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14081","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=14081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14096,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14081\/revisions\/14096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}