{"id":2147,"date":"2019-11-07T00:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T04:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=2147"},"modified":"2019-05-28T00:30:26","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T04:30:26","slug":"tac-138","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/11\/07\/tac-138\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC 138"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hey, remember these guys? Been a second. This issue opens with Captain America helping La Tarantula brutally murder Spider-Man by stabbing him in the chest with a flying kick.
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He keeps kicking the fallen wallcrawler while talking about his country\u2019s policy on traitors, but then\u2026
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It was all a dream! I used to read Word Up Magazine! So, that\u2019s not the best start to this one, but we\u2019re in it now. Colonel South reiterates that Cap his here to help La Tarantula in his mission as the costumed duo departs. Cap asks why they hide in a garbage scow, and Ranchy (I think that\u2019s fitting) tells him it\u2019s to remind him of his cause, hunting down the garbage who fled his country. He\u2019s a swell guy, is the thing, really nice.
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Ranchy recaps last issue, and this is as good a time as any to mention that\u2019s not Steve Rogers, but rather, the improbably named John Walker. Over in his own book, Captain America was recently forced to give up the shield by the same Commission on Superhuman Activities that sent the new Cap to help Ranchy. John Walker was formerly Super-Patriot, a hardline Nationalist nutcase who staged fake crimes so he could stop them and launched a campaign to discredit Captain America as a symbol of the nation. He\u2019s a real great guy. So, naturally, when The SoSA needed a pliable goon to put in the Cap suit, they got in touch. And when Steve inevitably retakes the mantle of Captain America, Johnny Walker will continue to serve his Uncle Sam as The USAgent, in spite of being a real turd. So, while it might seem insane that Captain America would help this mustache-twirling sadist\u2026 this ain\u2019t that Captain America. However, while he is a jerk and often an idiot, he\u2019s not totally evil\u2026
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MJ\u2019s not gonna take it. However, there\u2019s nothing Michaelson can do. As Pete & MJ walk through the neighborhood recapping more of last issue, they see people living in fear that they may be the next ones detained. Then we cut to The Daily Bugle, as Kate Cushing checks in on her boss late in the evening\u2026
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Meanwhile, at the Federal Building downtown, the lone guard in the deportation detention center is enjoying a novel by Chris Claremont (\u201cHe\u2019s no Stephen King, but–\u201d) when he gets stabbed in the leg by La Tarantula. He wants the keys to the cells. The guard\u2019s not quite knocked out by the drug yet, so he wants to kick him again, but Cap stops him, and as they proceed to the cells, he\u2019s not feeling too heroic\u2026
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Considering some of the outright racist, xenophobic stuff this guy did before assuming the Cap mantle, this falls entirely flat for me, but ok. Ranchy finds Elvira and intimidates her into confessing that she called MJ and then Spider-Man showed up, and they\u2019re off to find MJ now, Cap still feeling like the villain he is in this story.At the same time, Tombstone has shown up in the office of a wallstreet trader named Roland Rayburn. He grabs him by the throat, and Rayburn\u2019s eyes glow yellow and he tries to Jedi Mind Trick Tombstone, but it doesn\u2019t work.
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That feels like it\u2019s going somewhere, hmmm? We jump ahead one hour to Peter Parker waking up from a nightmare. He can\u2019t stop thinking about the illegal immigrants he saw today, their fear. Then the phone rings in the middle of the night. It\u2019s Elvira, who mentions being at \u201cthe Westside freight yard\u201d before the line goes dead. Peter assumes she\u2019s escaped somehow and needs help, and soon, Spider-Man is approaching the railyard. He\u2019s pretty sure this is a trap, but he didn\u2019t want to scare MJ. His Spider Sense goes off, and he turns\u2026
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Ranchy manages to get a toe touch in on Spider-Man\u2019s shoulder. As he dodges away and runs for it, shocked that Cap is working with this doof, La Tarantula thinks to himself that, unbeknownst to Cap, he\u2019s doused his twinkle toes in such a high dose of his poison that Spidey should die of heart failure in minutes! Spidey is feeling pretty bad as he barely dodges Cap\u2019s shield.
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This is a big night for ol\u2019 Johnny. Before tonight, his brand of patriotism had no problem putting \u201cAmerica first,\u201d but it seems like his worldview is being challenged. Meanwhile, Spider-Man has gotten his foot caught in the train tracks on the ground, inexplicably and off-panel, which is really unsatisfying storytelling (And highly unusual for Buscema). Cap watches as La Tarantula takes advantage of this, accusing Spidey of killing his predecessor again while he sets up to kill him. Spidey says he didn\u2019t kill the original Ranchy, which perks up Cap\u2019s ears, as Ranchy prepares to run Spidey down in one of those hand-pumped railcars you see in old movies, but Spidey slips out of his caught boot and flips over the car at the last second.
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We cut to Cap as he returns to the garbage barge. Colonel South is furious, having heard Spider-Man turned La Tarantula in to the authorities as an illegal alien. Cap informs him his superiors have said South is a rogue agent acting on no legal authority before punching the crap out of him and leaving him in the garbage, saying the flag he wears should inspire, not terrify.
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A down ending, but a really good story. Comics can be a good vehicle for a message when done right. And that down ending is the end of this chunk of the blog, as we make the biggest time jump we ever will next post, from 1988 all the way to 1994. See ya there.
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Hey, remember these guys? Been a second. This issue opens with Captain America helping La Tarantula brutally murder Spider-Man by stabbing him in the chest with a flying kick. He keeps kicking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[253,60,175,73,26,286,281,37,121,2,114,280],"class_list":["post-2147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-bob-sharen","tag-captain-america","tag-chris-claremont","tag-gerry-conway","tag-joe-robertson","tag-kate-cushing","tag-roland-rayburn","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\/2147","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=2147"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4575,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions\/4575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}