{"id":19453,"date":"2023-12-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-22T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=19453"},"modified":"2022-06-13T19:31:53","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T23:31:53","slug":"mtu-vol-2-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/12\/22\/mtu-vol-2-7\/","title":{"rendered":"MTU Vol. 2 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our final issue of MTU volume 2 is moved up ahead of the others this month because of the crossover they\u2019re all doing. It\u2019s funny to me that famed Dracula writer Marv Wolfman has wandered into the last 2 team-up titles and been like \u201cSomebody say vampires?\u201d First Dracula in Spider-Man Team-Up, now his co-creation Blade in MTU. he is joined by the TRIPLE TOM TEAM of Tom Denerick on pencilers, Tom Palmer on inks and Tom Smith on colors. Almost all Toms, almost all the time! And I must say, Denerick is really avoiding the Palmerization most pencilers gets when working with him. Didn\u2019t he ink the last Wolfman thing, too? He did, it was him and Tom Smith with Bob McLeod in SMTU 6<\/a>. Not nearly enough Toms in that issue. We begin at 5:12am at ESU, where Blade is tailing a vampire onto campus. Not far away, Peter Parker is dozing off trying to finish a chem paper after chasing villains all night, and a kindly janitor wakes him up. It\u2019s made clear Peter does this all the time and they\u2019re friends, which is some nice business. Unfortunately, the janitor, Jose, then walks in on Blade\u2019s adversary injecting himself with something. He lets out a scream that alerts Peter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is a pretty OG sounding Spider-Man, perhaps unsurprisingly. Him not getting what\u2019s going on seems odd considering all the vampire business he\u2019s been up to over the years. It\u2019s funny, I think of Tom Denerick as a real middle of the road, meat & potatoes kind of guy. His stuff was never very flashy or exciting, but he gets the job done. But in this era, with the race to see whose art style can be the most off putting, he\u2019s standing out for his sheer competence. A furious Spider-Man beats the vampire unconscious and webs him up for the cops, seemingly still not getting that it\u2019s a vampire. Blade, cool guy that he is, just watches, but then lets the vampire get taken to Rikers instead of killing him, which seems pretty odd. As the vampire bashes around a cell in a straightjacket, yelling at \u201cTheodore\u201d that his serum was only half successful because it\u2019s taken away many of his vampire powers but seemingly stopped sunlight from killing him, Blade is let in as a visitor and immediately stabs him in the gut. How on Earth did he get let in in the first place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Verrrrry wooden-looking knife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ok, well, whatever! We cut to Jose\u2019s funeral, Peter obviously blaming himself, as he is known to do, MJ telling him to cut it out. Then we\u2019re at their place, later in the evening, as the news reveals Jose\u2019s killer was smuggled out of jail, and puts a photo of Blade on TV asking for info. Peter recognizes him, tho I\u2019m not sure they\u2019ve met. I mean, I know I haven\u2019t read every single thing, but he\u2019s not shown up on the blog yet, and I\u2019m running out of material that he could be in. Well, anyway\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some issues with the black plate on this comic. Spider-Man is seriously gonna sit on top of a truck for thousands of miles??? Google says it\u2019s a 20 hour drive! Whhhhhaaaaaat? This comic just got extremely goofy. We cut to Bladd, who has his guy chained up in the back of what I guess is a station wagon, real exciting crime fighting vehicle, and is only 50 miles outside of New Orleans. The vampire is taunting him, and one assumes has been for 20 hours, and Blade can\u2019t take it anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now, I don\u2019t know much about Blade, but I thought he was always a vampire. Just a sort of mutant one that can go outside during the day. Was that not always true?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sure, just hop off that truck, web onto nothing in particular, and then teleport into downtown New Orleans, no problem! What is going on with that local flavor panel? Bourbon Street, obviously, but what\u2019s that lady doing? I like that there\u2019s apparently a jazz band on every corner in this New Orleans. Is that tiny Spider-Man at the bottom a swipe of the cover to ASM 423<\/a>? It kinda could be. Well, Blade has his guy on a table surrounded by doctor-lookin\u2019 types who are trying to figure out how he\u2019s been modified, and then Blade gets him to tell his story, which includes being turned by Dracula in Austria, 1794, after Drac had already feasted on his family.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Legit good opening line there for our hero. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The pointless fight continues for a page, then Sage escapes, and Spider-Man tags him with a tracer, and he & Blade follow. Then it\u2019s time for more exposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spider-Man has been involved with so many vampires! What? Come on! As they get to fighting, which is really just Spider-Man kind of shown flipping around in the background while Blade & Sage fight, Sage talks about how being experimented on has made him more human, which makes him haunted by his past and losses, and how all he\u2019s wanted the whole time for was Blade to kill him. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Suddenly Sage is not a foot away from Blade anymore, somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But\u2026 but his family died in Austria! Why are their graves in New Orleans? Why did any of this happen if all the guy wanted was to die? How is Spider-Man gonna get back to New York? Good grief, this was the only issue of this volume that read like true, 1970s Marvel Team-Up, and not in a good way! And on that weird note, we take our leave of the series. After this, it apparently turned into 4 issues of Namor Team-Up, with Tom Peyer returning and even Pat Ollife randomly popping back in for one issue. Weird, but outside my remit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our final issue of MTU volume 2 is moved up ahead of the others this month because of the crossover they\u2019re all doing. It\u2019s funny to me that famed Dracula writer Marv…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[1705,132,71,21,2,1706,227,706,1278],"class_list":["post-19453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-blade","tag-marv-wolfman","tag-marvel-team-up","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-spider-man","tag-tom-denerick","tag-tom-palmer","tag-tom-smith","tag-vol2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19453","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=19453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19454,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19453\/revisions\/19454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}