{"id":16834,"date":"2023-04-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=16834"},"modified":"2022-01-09T19:43:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T23:43:08","slug":"tac-119","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/04\/27\/tac-119\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC 119"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

$1.95. That\u2019s fair, I think. 2 cents less than somebody thought! Sabretooth continues to be a Spider-Man villain, and I continue to think that\u2019s crazy. Crazy that he was just kinda laying around, available, no longer an Iron Fist foe, not yet a Wolverine foe. Allegedly, Claremont & Byrne had already decided Sabretooth was Wolverine\u2019s dad, and were going to have him show up in X-Men eventually and force Wolverine to kill him. But then they had their falling out, Sabretooth didn\u2019t make it into the X-books for a few more years, and then Claremont was forced out before he could do what they planned (If he still wanted to). Now Sabretooth is Wolverine\u2019s step-brother or something? I don\u2019t even remember. This month in the art whack-a-mole game, it\u2019s Rich Buckler on breakdowns, Bob McLeod and finishes and a D. Martin on colors. In my humble opinion, pencilers were lucky to have guys like Bob around in those days, inkers who were also great pencilers, someone they could trust to finish things up. If you can\u2019t ink your own work, a fellow penciler is the next best thing. Anyway, Spider-Man opens the issue shocked that he\u2019s lost his bearings in mid-swing as captions define the word \u201cconcussion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s interesting to me to note that continuity could be followed here. WEB published #19 this month, halfway through 5 daisy-chained issues, but they didn\u2019t reference what was happening in the other books, so they can be taken to occur before the others, and meanwhile, this one slots nicely into place right after ASM 281, which came out earlier in the same month. People are doing long stories, but it\u2019s not contradicting or tripping each other as happens so often. Priest was apparently a pretty controversial editor, to put it mildly, and even he doesn\u2019t think he was a good fit for the job, but the line is working well together, you gotta give him that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Weird last panel. That\u2019s the hospital Sabretooth is in, tho it coulda been easier to read the sign. He clearly does not have his now-famous advanced healing yet, and is recovering from injuries sustained in TAC 116<\/a>. He kills a doctor and 2 cops watching his room and vows revenge against Spider-Man, his face still covered in wounds and stitches. Meanwhile, MJ is trying to get Peter to talk to her about his Spider-Manning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s been awhile since I\u2019ve seen a good MJ scene, in any era, but this is good. She\u2019s trying to be a friend, and also totally not ready to hear about this stuff. It\u2019s kinda funny, but it\u2019s also real, and nicely done. And we\u2019re back at the Roosevelt Island Tram! Since those Web issues all took place before this, that flashback ending here actually could\u2019ve been some time ago despite being published 2 months from now. Complicated! Felicia tells herself she doesn\u2019t love Spider-Man anymore, and knows she\u2019s lying, and has decided to come out here and dump all her keepsakes of him into the ocean to try to convince herself. It\u2019s a lot less than you\u2019d expect given the end of ASM 205<\/a>! In another confusing transition, Sabretooth seems to be in view of the tram, but just by coincidence. He sniffs a scrap of Spider-Man\u2019s costume, gets his scent, and takes off for revenge. Meanwhile, Peter lets Candi, Randi and Bambi into the growing party at his place, where they meet Joe Robertson. This is a Peter David comic, after all, so it\u2019s gonna need a really broad, really terrible \u201ccomedy\u201d bit, and here it is, as the girls meet Randy & Amanda:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good grief. Why is Felicia following Sabretooth? Maybe we\u2019ll find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hey, another nice moment. The whole Hobgoblin fiasco really needs stuff like this, and isn\u2019t getting it in ASM for whatever reason (Hint: It has the worst of the 3 writers at the moment!). One more consecutive page\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kind of an odd assemblage for a party, isn\u2019t it? Amanda thinking she doesn\u2019t know these people doesn\u2019t exactly make her all that unique in this particular room. Do Harry and Robbie know each other? I doubt he knows Martha. No one but Peter knows the girls from upstairs, as far as I know. Or didn\u2019t, anyway. MJ chases Peter out of the room to accuse him of using Spider-Man as an excuse for running out on people, but then Peter locks eyes with Sabretooth on the roof across the street. But, as luck would have it, Sabretooth is somewhat inexplicably spotted by a passing police car, and diverts down to the street to kill the cops, counting kills as he has since the doctor who was trying to help him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Felicia, of course. She reminds him he was trying to kill her when he started beefing with Spider-Man, and opens their fight by slashing open the wounds on his face with her claws, which she has now. Again? Did she have claws last time we saw her in the mid-80s? I can\u2019t keep track. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is all really well-staged. Except for the random cops, this is a really good setup to stick Peter in. Felicia is still staying out of \u2018Tooth\u2019s reach down below, and tags him in the face again when he suggests she\u2019s nothing without Spider-Man. Peter\u2019s upstairs changing, knowing the others are definitely going to figure out his secret from this, but unable to just watch Felicia die. The fight is getting more brutal, and Sabretooth grabs Felicia\u2019s leg, trying to bite a chunk out of it, but finds metal under her outfit. And then Felicia turns as feral as him, tackles him to the floor and starts smashing his face into the pavement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Man, there was more character in this issue than every other issue in the last several months put together. I kinda treasure the ones like this, so few do they seem to be. I dunno if they got a lot of mail about how messed up it was when they brutalized Felicia recently or if this was always the plan, but it\u2019s a pretty good start to a redemption arc. Even if she is sporting a colossal rat tail. Oh, I\u2019m not buying that she\u2019s in league with Foreigner, obviously. This was a good one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

$1.95. That\u2019s fair, I think. 2 cents less than somebody thought! Sabretooth continues to be a Spider-Man villain, and I continue to think that\u2019s crazy. Crazy that he was just kinda laying…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[1075,253,1074,22,26,172,287,21,545,333,376,24,852,697,276,121,2],"class_list":["post-16834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-amanda-robertson","tag-bob-sharen","tag-foreigner","tag-harry-osborn","tag-joe-robertson","tag-liz-allen","tag-martha-robertson","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-normie-osborn","tag-peter-david","tag-randi-candi-bambi","tag-randy-robertson","tag-rich-buckler","tag-sabretooth","tag-silver-sable","tag-spectacular-spider-man","tag-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16834","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=16834"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16839,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16834\/revisions\/16839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}