{"id":2019,"date":"2019-10-18T00:00:06","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T04:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=2019"},"modified":"2019-05-26T22:11:55","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T02:11:55","slug":"tac-132","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/10\/18\/tac-132\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC 132"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The big finale! I mean, kind of. Hard to top your principal villain shooting himself in the face, but there\u2019s still the matter of Vermin running around, and also Spider-Man doesn\u2019t know Kraven is dead yet. Last issue, Zeck & McLeod were credited as \u201cartists,\u201d and this issue, Zeck is breakdowns and McLeod is finishes. I guess the schedule was out of hand. Zeck wasn\u2019t able to finish Secret Wars, either. But, like I said before, McLeod is a great penciler in his own right, so he\u2019s making the transition very smooth as we enter the home stretch.
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Spider-Man trudges through the sewer looking for Vermin. In his mind, he\u2019s reliving being buried alive as he goes, the dark tight space\u2026 sort of similar, I guess. Not as small, and wet, but whatever. This comparison is making him pretty scared, but he presses on, and we begin cutting to the same gravedigger from before working on a new one next to Spider-Man\u2019s for Kraven.
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Gonna need to get a shot. Not really in the headspace to be out superheroing, but Spider-Man can\u2019t walk away, even when the situation doesn\u2019t involve cannibalism. Vermin\u2019s army of rats appears, and Spidey leaps up onto a wall to avoid them while continuing to relive his recent horrors. Meanwhile, some cops have arrived at Kraven\u2019s building.
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Nice and tidy. Can\u2019t have Kraven\u2019s bodycount on Spidey\u2019s head going forward. Back in the sewer:
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Every time Vermin manages to pull Spidey under the water, he flashes back to clawing out of the grave. Not really a 1-to-1 comparison, but ok. They wrestle for awhile, Vermin constantly trying to drown Spidey, until he gets some leverage against a wall and kicks them both into the water, hard. When Vermin pops up, he can\u2019t locate Spider-Man. Spidey\u2019s up in the shadows now, collecting himself, while Vermin begins to freak out. Spidey webs him to a wall, and tries to convince him he doesn\u2019t want to kill him, but also threatens him not to call his rats again.
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Vermin doesn\u2019t want to go up into the light, and around then, Spidey just loses it. He runs away, thinking he just wants to be with his wife. Vermin becomes far more aggressive as Spider-Man begins to look like prey and chases him. But when he finds Spider-Man has gone up to the surface and decides to follow, things don\u2019t go so well for him. He\u2019s paralyzed by the light, and about to get hit by a truck.
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The cops are amazed that he\u2019s so compassionate after all Kraven did to him, and then we see today\u2019s Bugle is out. \u201cKraven\u2019s Confession!\u201d is the headline. So Spider-Man\u2019s in the clear for sure now. And just like that, he\u2019s Spider-Man again, his internal monologue reading like it normally would, thinking Kraven will probably have disappeared when he goes back to check that townhouse, as he swings for home.
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And that\u2019s a hard reset. Sun\u2019s shining, it\u2019s daytime, happy couple, all\u2019s well. Back at Kraven\u2019s estate, his grave is ready, and all his grim, silent, still very uncomfortable black servants lower him into it.
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One last hit of that ridiculous poem, and we\u2019re out. Guys, we made it! This goofy little grim-dark bid for legitimacy is over. I think the fact that it resets so cleanly is maybe its most damning characteristic. Put Spider-Man through hell, bury him alive for 2 weeks, but don\u2019t worry, he\u2019s fine in time to be crackin’ jokes again next month. I dunno, man. I think this has a lot in common with fellow famous grim-dark late-80s story Batman: Arkham Asylum over at DC. Both stories require you to just accept that no one in them acts like they have in any previous appearance before they can go anywhere. That’s a hell of a buy-in. This kind of thing is not for me. I just don\u2019t think this sort of wallow in misery is suited to Spider-Man. People have done plenty of dark superhero comics before and after this one, and some of them are good. Even Spidey has had some pretty intense stories over the years that worked. But this kind of thing\u2026 I just don\u2019t think it\u2019s what Spider-Man is for. I know at least one person who\u2019d sharply disagree, though, and unfortunately for me, he\u2019s got years and years of Spidey stories ahead. DeMatteis musta loved all this \u201cI am The Spider\u201d crap, because he will revisit it when he takes over ASM full time in the future. Yeah, man, look forward to that! But that\u2019s for later. Come back next time for something completely different.
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This is one of the most famous Spider-Man stories not made in the 60s. I\u2019ve had it in trade for decades. I assumed it would be tough to get the singles. I got the whole story for $9. Part 3 alone had a $5 price tag on the bag. Ebay, man. Crazy.
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The big finale! I mean, kind of. Hard to top your principal villain shooting himself in the face, but there\u2019s still the matter of Vermin running around, and also Spider-Man doesn\u2019t know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[191,270,125,45,394,21,213,121,2,165],"class_list":["post-2019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1980s","tag-bob-mcleod","tag-janet-jackson","tag-jm-dematteis","tag-kraven-the-hunter","tag-kravens-last-hunt-2","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mike-zeck","tag-spectacular-spider-man","tag-spider-man","tag-vermin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019","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=2019"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4560,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019\/revisions\/4560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}