{"id":14353,"date":"2022-09-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=14353"},"modified":"2021-05-31T13:10:06","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T17:10:06","slug":"sm-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2022\/09\/01\/sm-81\/","title":{"rendered":"SM 81"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cat! Not.. not the most interesting name. Is one of those guys Cat? I confess I don\u2019t remember. The first \u201cThe Cat\u201d was a lady, and eventually became Tigra, leaving the name open for\u2026 someone, I guess. Och, look at this splash!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gorgeous. All the writers making jokes about The Clone Saga are really pushing it. But look at Spidey moving through the city:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Welcome back to The John Romita, Jr. Fan Blog. Guess we\u2019re in media res on this one. As our hero walks into the smashed up bar full of similarly smashed up goons, he thinks that the guy doing all this is making his life easier, but he still can\u2019t condone this violence. Some of the goons wake up, saying things like, \u201cThank God, it\u2019s only Spider-Man!\u201d and begging him to help them. One says they \u201cdon\u2019t know nothing about the kid.\u201d Internally, Spidey wonders what Betty Brant got him into, and then we rewind to get some backstory on all this. Peter & MJ were having what MJ says is their first quiet night alone since SM 75, but Peter is messed up from his vampire bite, as he always is, so she suggests he take some aspirin and let her nurse him back to health. Peter thinks he better not take too many or he\u2019ll aggravate his long dormant ulcer. Deep pull! Remember back in ASM 113<\/a> when he got diagnosed with an ulcer? I think this is the first reference since back then. But then Betty Brant calls to tell him to turn on CNN. Some ruck peoples\u2019 kid was kidnapped, and she wants them to find it. Peter\u2019s not sure, but it turns out she was calling from a cell phone at their front door, and so we flash back to the present, where Spidey tries to question more beat up goons in an alley, but they start shooting at him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh, that\u2019s scratching my brain. I think that\u2019s a Ditko homage, but I don\u2019t have the exact reference. Of course, it would\u2019ve been 2 of 6 panels on a Ditko page, but even so. That didn\u2019t get Spidey anywhere, so we flashback again to Betty leading Peter in slipping into the crime scene. Despite the books recently trying to position her a cub reporter despite her doing it almost 10 years (of comics), here she\u2019s talking like an old pro, saying she\u2019s been in situations like this dozens of times. Inside, they find the kidnapper beat up \u201ca couple dozen\u201d cops. Then we hope back to the present, as 3 goons running through an alley are brutally dispatched by the still-unseen Cat. One of the manages to say he heard they took the kid to the piers. Then, back to the recent past, as Peter & Betty examined how the kidnapper ripped doors off their hinges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wait a sec, I\u2019m remembering this\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yeah, ok. I wondered at the time if this story originally featured Shang Chi and someone refused to let this guy be him, so Shang Chi became \u201cShen Kuei.\u201d But now, I have the internet and wikis, so I know The Cat is actually a character created in Master of Kung-Fu back in 1976. It appears this was his first appearance since a brief stint in Marvel Comics Presents in 1988, before which he\u2019d not been in anything since a 1982 issue of Master of Kung-Fu. 2 deep pulls in a single issue. The Cat is so fast Spidey can barely stay out of his way as he tries to explain he\u2019s here to help. Cat says he doesn\u2019t need help, but Spider-Man\u2019s danger sense proves otherwise as he dives them both out of the way of a huge zap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Razorfist, one of comics\u2019 goofiest villains, who previously had his hands replaced with big blades until the redesign in this very issue, drops down to kill The Cat. Spider-Man pretends to flee the scene so he can go save the boy as the martial artists start fightin\u2019. Shockwave sees Cat isn\u2019t just allowing himself to be cut to bits and lights up his hand to remind Cat he could still kill his son. So Cat leaves himself open to 2 big slices from Razorfist, but back upon the roof\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back to being handless for you, Dopyefist! Cat further beats up his foe, saying he\u2019ll let him live to tell his mysterious employer that The Cat plans to stay in New York and prosper. Hearing that, Spider-Man worries he\u2019ll be fighting The Cat soon, but for now, thinks if he can prevent any parent from suffering what he and MJ did, he will, always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That last panel is complicated by Jack O’Lantern’s dumb cat in TAC. I don’t think that’s who it’s supposed to be, but who knows? I just can\u2019t believe they don\u2019t power right past this stuff. I mean, sure, Peter & MJ should be forever changed by this experience, but it\u2019s something no one wanted to do in a Spider-Man comic, and it seems like you\u2019d just rip that bandaid off and throw it away. I thought that was the point of jumping ahead several months. I think some of these moments are really well done, but still, I think it\u2019s weird they happen at all. This issue is still more excerpts from letters about SM 75, as they said they\u2019d run part of every letter they got. Still people mad and happy about most aspects of it. It surprises me I never see the names of future comic pros in the 90s comics. All through the 60s, 70s and 80s, people who would one day get into the business were getting letters printed. Not so much in the 90s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cat! Not.. not the most interesting name. Is one of those guys Cat? I confess I don\u2019t remember. The first \u201cThe Cat\u201d was a lady, and eventually became Tigra, leaving the name…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[11,275,415,118,21,1257,417,1258,2,88],"class_list":["post-14353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-betty-brant","tag-gregory-wright","tag-howard-mackie","tag-john-romita-jr","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-razorfist","tag-scott-hanna","tag-shockwave","tag-spider-man","tag-the-cat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14365,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14353\/revisions\/14365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}