{"id":2246,"date":"2019-11-08T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T04:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=2246"},"modified":"2019-09-06T19:50:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T23:50:17","slug":"tac-213","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/11\/08\/tac-213\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC 213"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s 1994 now, and man, things are different! As I\u2019ve mentioned, I\u2019m making these jumps to roughly the start of each ASM writer\u2019s tenure, and David Michelinie was on for a loooong time! Between his 100 issue run (give or take) and the fact that the Spidey titles have exploded in his time to 4 monthlies and a quarterly, his era is going to take the most posts to cover, by far, so we\u2019ll be seeing it the most often. This section will include issues of ASM, TAC and WEB, plus The Adjectiveless Spider-Man (Hereafter referred to as SM), the quarterly Spider-Man Unlimited (SMU), and a miniseries. With 4 monthlies, there\u2019s at least one new Spider-Man on the shelf every week. Publication order every month is WEB, ASM, SM, and TAC. The Spider-Office was kinda out of control by now. But so was the rest of comics.
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By 1994, comics are insane. A perfect storm of weirdness took over. The big artists at Marvel started making comics that looked crazy, and the kids went crazy for them. At the same time, speculators came into the picture. A buncha rubes from the real world got told if they found a comic with a #1 on the cover, it\u2019d put their kids through college. So people were buying \u201chot\u201d comics by the truckload. Todd McFarlane\u2019s Spider-Man #1 sold a million copies. Jim Lee\u2019s X-Men #1 sold 8. For a brief stretch, comic book artists were minor celebrities. X-Force artist Rob Liefeld was in a Levi\u2019s commercial directed by Spike Lee. The world was upside down. Then they and Marvel\u2019s 4 other biggest star artists quit the company and started their own, Image Comics, making the speculator boom even crazier and supplanting DC as the #2 publisher. In a panicked response, DC killed Superman. Sales through the roof. So they broke Batman\u2019s back. One by one, all the DC heroes fell, temporarily replaced by new characters. Marvel started to pick up on how that sold, so their books started to get more gimmicky, too. On top of all that, the trend toward darker, more violent comics that began in the wake of The Dark Knight Returns is now in full effect, so all the heroes have to be meaner, darker, tougher. It\u2019s a catastrophe. In a few years, the speculator bubble will burst, the bottom will fall out of the comics industry, and Marvel will be bankrupt. But right now, comics are, generally speaking, terrible.
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And Spider-Man? He\u2019s among the worst. This is an unusual jump in another way, in that we\u2019re not going to see an issue of ASM for awhile. I had no real choice but to cut it here. David Michelinie\u2019s last issue is part of a crossover that ended in tragedy that is simultaneously extremely silly and one of the most terrible things that\u2019s ever happened to Peter Parker. I don\u2019t think I can get through this without spoiling it, but I\u2019m gonna wait and see. In response, Spider-Man is about the become the grim and gritty tough guy Marvel has decided you want. So what better time for JM DeMatteis, champion of depressing Spider-Man comics, to take the reins of ASM? He\u2019d done 25 issues of TAC at this point, where he did a bunch of real serious and sad comics, and now it\u2019s time to really max the sadness out, because somehow they think that\u2019s what the kids want.
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I did not want it. I was a lad of 15. I was buying most of this crap as it came out. Sure, DeMatteis\u2019s sadsack storylines in TAC were a bummer, but I often skipped those, I usually liked the other titles. Then the above-mentioned tragedy happened, and suddenly, all the comics are dark and sad and miserable all the time. I was hating this stuff. But I was also an idiot, and held out hope that things would get better. They would not. We\u2019re more than 2 years away from Spider-Man comics I could even call decent, let alone good. It\u2019s just wall to wall sadness and suffering for awhile, and then\u2026 well\u2026 something even stupider than that. The worst Spider-Man story in history. But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself. I haven\u2019t read this stuff in decades. In a strange way, I\u2019m kind of excited. It\u2019s been so long. Do I still hate this material? If anything, I probably hate it more, but who really knows? Only one way to find out. Just keep reminding yourself we have plenty of classic stuff to get back to later.
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SO MUCH has changed from the previous period. Where to start? Venom became so popular they had no choice but to soften him up a little and make him an \u201canti-hero\u201d who\u2019s been starring in his own comics. Hobgoblin is\u2026 whew, that\u2019s a whole thing. Harry Osborn is dead, courtesy of JM DeMatteis. Carnage, the serial killer in a Venom symbiote, is a thing. Things are extremely weird. But we\u2019re doing this, so we\u2019re doing this, and we\u2019re starting with this issue of TAC, taking place in the aftermath of the above-mentioned tragedy.
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Ann Nocenti is back for this one, and while Sal Buscema is still the regular artist on the series, this one\u2019s drawn by James Fry with inks by Sal and Rodney Ramos and colors by Chia-Chi Wang (Whose name is misspelled in the credits). It\u2019s actually been 10 issues since DeMatteis\u2019 last, with a series of fill-in writers in the interim, and the new regular writer isn\u2019t here until 215, so Ann Nocenti\u2019s doing a 2-parter. Another characteristic of comics of this era is gimmick covers. All the Spidey titles have a shiny metallic solid color background this month, and all of them came polybagged with promotional material for the upcoming Spider-Man animated series. This cover is courtesy of Joe Madureira, who was the star X-Men artist of this time. Enough preamble already, let\u2019s get to it.
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So edgy! Deep into the post-McFarlane era now, style-wise. The Image guys have caused a revolution, and now people can kinda draw however they want, for good and for ill. If Marvel has a house style anymore, it\u2019s ripping off Jim Lee, but not everyone is doing so. Spidey say he hasn\u2019t gotten out of costume in \u201ca dog\u2019s day.\u201d He wonders if he still has a job. He decides to drop by the crime scene he\u2019s just discovered as Peter Parker, just in case, and uses his press credentials to be let into the scene of a grisly murder, the cops warning him he might get sick. Speaking of the cops, the detectives on the scene are the guys from then-very popular TV show NYPD Blue.
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Delightful! The cowering woman says she saw the whole thing. How the killer read off the guy\u2019s list of physical abuses toward his girlfriend, and then recreated them all, one by one. She says she just arrived in NY from Wisconsin, has no friends and no job. Peter says she needs someone to talk to, suggests Mary Jane, and invites her to dinner at their house. She says her name is Mary.
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Did people in this era really use the answering machine as a message board the way Peter & MJ do? I never saw anyone do this, but it\u2019s been a thing in the books pretty much as long as they\u2019ve been married. At an unspecified location, Mary looks at her vast collection of pill bottles before flinging them all across the room and declaring she doesn\u2019t need them anymore. Pretty sure ya do, pal. She\u2019s an artist, and gets freaked out when she finds some horrible drawings among her own, and way more freaked out when she finds a rifle in her suitcase.
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Ya see, Mary is Typhoid Mary, Ann Nocenti\u2019s most lasting contribution to the Daredevil mythos. I guess some terrible version of her appeared on that wretched Iron Fist TV show, but I sure wasn\u2019t coming back for a 2nd season of that garbage, so I couldn\u2019t tell you. She\u2019s got a split personality, and Mary doesn\u2019t know about Typhoid, but Typhoid does know about Mary. Typhoid is a vicious killer with psychic and telekinetic abilities. She was Kingpin\u2019s assassin for awhile (While Mary was dating Matt Murdock, oh, the irony!). She\u2019s very much a product of her time, I think. And here she is! Later, at the Parker residence, MJ complains that Peter is late for dinner as she gets a phone call from \u201cMary Walker\u201d… but it\u2019s really the Typhoid personality. MJ hopes she\u2019ll be fun as they arrange for her to come by.
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Goodness. Peter finally comes home to their trashed apartment, and after MJ tells him what happened, decides Typhoid is the killer he\u2019s hunting, and she\u2019s trying to silence Mary (I mean\u2026 kinda?). He wants MJ to go to Aunt May\u2019s, but she wants to wait for Mary, because MJ is great. She says Peter has been out on the streets too much. He reassures her that he\u2019s ok and heads back out. He is not. At the moment, Typhoid is in a bar nearby, trying to decide which of the leering drunks to beat up first. Spider-Man swings by just in time to see some of them go through the window onto the street and drops in. Typhoid does her flirty thing, lowering his defenses before kicking him in the face, saying she bets he\u2019s the kind of guy that would never hit a girl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But as much as Typhoid loves to fight men and have them fight over her, she says she didn\u2019t commit these murders and, telekinetically pinning Spidey to a wall with girders, flees. She wonders who really did these killings. She runs into an alley without knowing why, and as Spider-Man watches, she collapses to the ground, and then a bunch of stuff from a dumpster begins swirling up, and\u2026
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Another symptom of this era is a lot of blatant art swiping. These new guys like the Image founders so much, they straight up copy their work. And Marvel, floundering and desperate to replace the Image guys, just looks the other way. Fry has already nicked a couple of Mark Texiera drawings for MJ and Typhoid earlier in the issue, and now, as Spidey and Marys 3rd personality get into it, a Jim Lee copy fights a Todd McFarlane copy.
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That bottom Spidey close-up is from a McFarlane panel, too, except he had a web in his fist in the original, so it made sense. James fry can obviously draw. These swipes are just embarrassing. Spidey is freaked out that this isn\u2019t the same woman at all. She\u2019s much tougher, looks different, acts different. And she finally says her name is Bloody Mary. Very 90s. And when Spider-Man webs her up, she reveals another difference: she\u2019s PYROkinetic, manifesting fire to burn herself free. Spidey gets a tracer on her and smothers the flame with his web, knowing she\u2019ll be gone when he\u2019s done. As he wonders where he went, he finally puts together that that was Mary Walker, and begins to run home in a panic as we\u2019re To Be Continued.
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Welcome to the grim new world of Spider-Man. And if you think this was notably darker, you ain\u2019t seen nothing yet, I\u2019m sorry to report. This month\u2019s Marvel titles carry tributes to the master, Jack Kirby, who died earlier in the year. Jack didn\u2019t die for y\u2019all to turn every hero into The Punisher, guys. Sorry for the extra-super-long post. Things will be more normal next time with all the prologue outta the way.
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It\u2019s 1994 now, and man, things are different! As I\u2019ve mentioned, I\u2019m making these jumps to roughly the start of each ASM writer\u2019s tenure, and David Michelinie was on for a loooong…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[399,413,412,21,414,37,121,2,411],"class_list":["post-2246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-ann-nocenti","tag-chia-chi-wang","tag-james-fry","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-rodney-ramos","tag-sal-buscema","tag-spectacular-spider-man","tag-spider-man","tag-typhoid-mary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246","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=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6263,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions\/6263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}