{"id":2592,"date":"2019-12-28T00:00:34","date_gmt":"2019-12-28T04:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=2592"},"modified":"2019-09-14T13:10:05","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T17:10:05","slug":"tac-231","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/12\/28\/tac-231\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC 231"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yes, it\u2019s Kaine! But also: Oh no, it\u2019s Kaine! Kaine, as I\u2019m sure this comic will awkwardly explain, is yet another clone of Peter, but a failed and deformed one that dressed extremely dumb and 90s and is dark and mean and whatnot. Yes, 3 Peter Parkers in the world at the moment. Ugh. What\u2019s weird is they will get it back down to a reasonable 1, and then go back up to 3 by 2016. Al Milgrom does finishes over Sal Buscema\u2019s breakdowns on this issue, which begins with Kaine waking up tied to a chair in a dark room. And as soon as he wakes up, a gang of the funniest looking \u201cedgy 90s people\u201d you\u2019ve ever seen attack him.
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I want to draw special attention to the guy in the top left, whose piercings have piercings and who somehow has 3 knives floating in front of his chest in perfect symmetry with no obvious means of attachment. also to the guy on the top right for shaving one side and the top of his head and letting the rest fly free. That is a bold choice. Here\u2019s this lame in action against them:
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KNIFE GUY\u2019S NAME IS PIERCE. This man has stunned me twice! Kaine gets PIERCE at a disadvantage and gives him \u201cThe Mark Of Kaine,\u201d meaning his puts his hand on him and scars him all up. \u201cNow that\u2019s not a Spider-Man power!\u201d you may be thinking. Yeah, well, he\u2019s a FAILED clone, so his sticking ability is so powerful and unpredictable (In just one hand, I think?) that he can mess up your face with his palm! So br00tal! 1995, baby!
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Incredible AND impressive! I do not recall this lady, but I assume she\u2019s appeared before on account of the arm. You might think we\u2019d get some much-needed exposition here, but you\u2019d be wrong, as we cut to Spider-Man swinging to work. When he gets there, Desiree Winthrop and her entourage sweep in behind him and literally push him out of the way. Here\u2019s a thing I\u2019m beginning to realize: Desiree Winthrop and Jessica the Photographer Whose Last Name I Forgot If It\u2019s Been Given are both college students. Undergrads I must assume. Peter graduated college in 1978. Granted, it\u2019s only been \u201cfive years\u201d Since 1975, but even so, I can\u2019t shake the feeling he\u2019s a bit old for these girls. Speaking of Jessica:
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Do what now? Why\u2019s he being like that? Who knows we\u2019re off to Tahiti! To the villa of a billionaire named \u201cJames Johnsmeyer,\u201d somehow, to be precise. He\u2019s a player in The Great Game, and he\u2019s just lost a bet in which his girlfriend was collateral.
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A delightful man! I\u2019m gonna let him explain The Great Game (To Muse, who knows all this already) since we\u2019ve not seen it previously:
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This idea has potential, actually. I could see it being in interesting about 10 years later in the hands of, like, Ed Brubaker or something. Here and now in 1995, less so. The improbably named James Johnsmeyer instructs Muse to treat Kaine like a king until he gets back to the states to make him an offer he can\u2019t refuse. He says this while blowing cigarette smoke in an employee\u2019s face, in case you weren\u2019t sure yet if he\u2019s a jerk after selling his girlfriend. Then this unintentionally hilarious page happens:
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Wut? Like… what\u2019s supposed to be happening here? The next page makes it obvious, but\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Terrible storytelling, guys. Also that last panel makes it look like Muse\u2019s whole head opens at the mouth like a Muppet. Halfway through the issue, someone finally gets around to explaining the beginning. Kaine was \u201ckilled\u201d in his last appearance, but these guys had been trying to recruit him for awhile, and after his \u201cdeath\u201d they found someone had put him in a Tube O\u2019 Stuff that kept him alive. We also learn the guy with the hair earlier is called MOSH, because of course he is. Then Kaine is shown to a meeting with James Johnsmeyer, and his best friend, Kurt Kevinsworth. I may have made that one up. But we cut away before they can talk to go see Ben.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fffffffart sound. Elsewhere, Jimmy Johnsmeyer gives a freaky fast rundown of what he wants from Kaine, to be his player in The Great Game, and Kaine just jumps over a fence and runs for it, which is kinda great. When some of the other jobbers get him at (giant 90s) gun point, Muse intervenes.
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That hair is insane. So there\u2019s a twist. What will become of Kaine and his aggressively accented new paramore? Well, given the name of this arc, I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll find out. First, though, this:
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They are doing a really bad job of putting the clone stuff behind them. But, yeah, there\u2019s a Spider-Skeleton at the bottom of the smokestack Spidey dumped his clone in back in \u201875. What does THAT mean? We shall see. Don\u2019t get too excited. The lore has it that Spider-Staff introduced this plot twist genuinely not knowing what it means themselves. Total chaos.
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Spider-Man appeared on 1 page of this issue. That\u2019s kinda wild. There\u2019s an old thing comics urban legend that says Jim Shooter decreed that there had to be a fight scene by page 8 of a Marvel Comic in the 80s. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true, but every comic certainly had at least one fight scene in olden times. Times have certainly changed by 1995.
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Yes, it\u2019s Kaine! But also: Oh no, it\u2019s Kaine! Kaine, as I\u2019m sure this comic will awkwardly explain, is yet another clone of Peter, but a failed and deformed one that dressed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[153,455,480,476,478,489,479,442,488,490,37,477,121,2,452],"class_list":["post-2592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-al-milgrom","tag-ben-reilly","tag-buzz","tag-desiree-winthrop","tag-devon-lewis","tag-james-johnsmeyer","tag-jessica-carradine","tag-john-kalisz","tag-kaine","tag-muse","tag-sal-buscema","tag-shirley-washington","tag-spectacular-spider-man","tag-spider-man","tag-todd-dezago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2592","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=2592"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4618,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2592\/revisions\/4618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}