{"id":2142,"date":"2019-10-31T00:00:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T04:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=2142"},"modified":"2019-05-27T19:15:21","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T23:15:21","slug":"tac-137","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/10\/31\/tac-137\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC 137"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So, here\u2019s a fun thing. This issue debuts the new regular creative team on TAC\u2026 and it\u2019s the first creative team on TAC. Gerry Conway wrote and Sal Buscema drew the first issue back in the 70s, and now they\u2019ve reunited, and plan to stay awhile. While Sal\u2019s been working steadily at Marvel the whole time, Gerry went off to DC, came back, somehow became Editor-in-Chief for a minute, left again almost immediately, and eventually got into TV writing. Now they\u2019re reunited, and it feels so good (theoretically, I don’t know them or anything). Plus: the villain in TAC #1? The Tarantula. So who else would they pick to antagonize their first issue back? But, of course, the original Tarantula is no more, so this is the introduction of a new one. It\u2019s sort of a shame this goofy character is coming back, but the story here is actually great, so strap in, folks, and let\u2019s get to it. Buscema continues to ink himself, as he will for a good while, and Bob Sharen provides the colors.
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As the issue opens, Spider-Man is swinging over the city in the middle of the night, grousing about working for JJJ.
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I don\u2019t know that JJJ really creates assignments anymore since he became Publisher, but Gerry just got back, we\u2019ll let it slide. And here he is, the new Tarantula. Can you believe they found another guy from the same country whose preferred method of killing people is lightly touching them with his toe? What\u2019re the odds? Let\u2019s see how the rest of that scene plays out, as it\u2019s important to the rest of the book:
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Spidey hears the scream, and detours to check it out.
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LA Tarantula, rather than The Tarantula. Important distinction! Maybe would\u2019ve been better if this was a woman? I dunno. In keeping with the methods of his predecessor, La Tarantula has goons, and they open fire on Spidey. But in the seconds it takes him to dodge the bullets, the whole gang vanishes. Spidey thinks the only way they could pull that off is if they had the precision of a military operation, and assumes the new Tarantula is a government assassin like the last one. Fair guess! Then approaching sirens make him flee the scene. The next day, a furious JJJ wants everyone at The Bugle to drop everything to find out what happened to Ruiz. We haven\u2019t seen this side of him in a long time. He tells Robbie to put Ben Urich & Peter Parker on it, but Robbie is in a fog. A few days ago, in Web #36, he saw something that\u2019s shaken him to the core. Someone called Tombstone, who seems to be a figure from Robbie\u2019s past. This is what\u2019s known as \u201cforeshadowing.\u201d Meanwhile, the now-obligatory MJ cheesecake shot morphs into something far more serious.
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Suddenly this comic from 1988 is feeling really, really current, eh? Sadly, some things never change. Meanwhile-meanwhile, a car pulls up to a pier, and a guy in a suit gets out and walks over to a garbage barge, where, surprisingly, a hatch pops open in the midst of the trash, and he walks in.
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Gullivar South looks like he was invented because editorial wouldn\u2019t let Henry Peter Gyrich sink this low, but that\u2019s totally conjecture on my part. He says elements in the CIA & FBI are providing resources and support as he hands Tarantula a folder full of people to kill, starting with Elvira\u2019s family. Later, Peter meets MJ for lunch. He\u2019s thinking more and more about going back to school lately, and talks with her about it. She says why not just do it, and he notes he doesn\u2019t make much money.
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Fair enough! While Spidey rushes off to The Bugle, Joe Robertson gets a hot dog while staring up at Kingpins building, wondering if \u201che\u201d is in there. He doesn\u2019t mean Kingpin, though.
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I\u2019m sure you guessed, but this is not the last time we\u2019ll see Tombstone, who always talks in a whisper like that. We catch back up with Peter Parker, rushing to meet Ben Urich as he talks to a lawyer called Maggie Michaelson about Armando Ruiz. He was here seeking political asylum, but because his unnamed country and the US are close allies, no one from there is recognized as a refugee, so he was illegal (That… doesn’t sound like how it works. Does it?). Ben brings up the previously mentioned amnesty (aka The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 in the real world), but Maggie says people like Armando are afraid to apply out of fear.
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This issue is looking pretty good, I must say. The grit on these lines is actually pretty cool. Credits on Amazing dating back to the double digits, and Sal\u2019s stuff has really never looked better. That\u2019s impressive. Peter follows that guy, who he\u2019s pretty sure is La Tarantula out of costume, but he\u2019s accosted by a gang of young men who think he\u2019s snooping for the INS and has to do a big Spidey leap to escape them. He feels how terrified they were.
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Conway\u2019s not pulling any punches with this one. Elsewhere, Tarantula and his goons are chasing Elvira & her family out of their home, making them flee to a church, because her husband is an enemy of his country\u2019s government. I am amused to note Tarantula\u2019s only named goons are Juan and Hildalgo, just like in the original Tarantula\u2019s first appearance. The same guys? Who knows? At the church, Elvira calls MJ in a panic. She tells Peter where they are, and Spider-Man is off. The priest at the church tries to comfort the family, but then Tarantula smashes through a window.
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Spidey quickly takes out some of the goons, but Tarantula is able to leap into him. Spidey angles their fall so they hit more of the goons as a police presence starts forming outside.
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Spidey ignores Tarantula to focus on the goons, taking them down. Tarantula flees out the window he came in through, surprising Spidey, but only for a second, because\u2026
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Whaaaaaat? Say it ain\u2019t so, Cap! There may be more to this than meets the eye. We\u2019ll see in the next issue of TAC.
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In this era, we have these scumbags who say comics have gotten \u201ctoo political\u201d these days for daring to deal with real world issues. Like it\u2019s a new thing. As we\u2019ve seen, from the Stan Lee days through this 1988 issue to today, Marvel Comics have always tackled issues of social justice. Sometimes they do it with nuance and compassion, sometimes they let Nick Spencer do it, but these dopes who think it should just be (white) dudes punching each other never got the point.
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This one and many to follow I first read a year or two ago, in a trade simply called \u201cTombstone.\u201d Uh, spoilers. Too bad I didn\u2019t get the random idea to buy a zillion Spidey comics before I got that trade, I guess…
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So, here\u2019s a fun thing. This issue debuts the new regular creative team on TAC\u2026 and it\u2019s the first creative team on TAC. Gerry Conway wrote and Sal Buscema drew the first…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[113,253,73,13,26,21,37,121,2,114,280],"class_list":["post-2142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-ben-urich","tag-bob-sharen","tag-gerry-conway","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-joe-robertson","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-sal-buscema","tag-spectacular-spider-man","tag-spider-man","tag-tarantula","tag-tombstone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142","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=2142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4570,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142\/revisions\/4570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}