{"id":9818,"date":"2021-07-21T00:00:30","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T04:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=9818"},"modified":"2020-06-24T12:35:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T16:35:00","slug":"redemption-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2021\/07\/21\/redemption-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Redemption 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

That\u2019s right! It\u2019s 1996 again, but by (Ever-so-slightly) fudging the publication orders of both series, I\u2019ve managed to line up this sequel to Lost Years right after it. While DeMatteis has moved on from ASM by now, as we know, they got him back for this, and since John Romita, Jr. was already busy with Spider-Man, they reunited DeMatteis with almost the whole art team of Kraven\u2019s Last Hunt in Mike Zeck & Bob McLeod. Christie Scheele hangs in there from Lost Years to round out the book. I\u2019m sure not gonna say \u201cno\u201d to such a dynamite art team. Originally, the Spider-Office had hoped to do a series of Lost Years minis. Once a year during the long, illustrious, totally permanent career of Ben Reilly as Spider-Man, they\u2019d have a different team examine more of Ben\u2019s time on the road. Instead, it\u2019s just this, a sequel that takes place mostly in the present (of 1996). And it opens with Kaine looking at someone in a casket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I am super fascinated by Zeck\u2019s Kaine. It is crystal clear he has only looked at John Romita, Jr.\u2019s Kaine. And it would make sense that he looked at Lost Years, he\u2019s doing a sequel, but he\u2019s also drawing the Romita version of the silly Kaine supervillain suit specifically. No way he bothered to keep up with or catch up with the whole clone nonsense. But it appears his brief, self-imposed or otherwise, was \u201cfollow Romita, Jr.,\u201d and buddy, he\u2019s doing it. But their styles are so different that his Kaine kinda looks like a Muppet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Romita\u2019s Kaine could have a giant face because it made sense in context, but facing down some totally 80s comics looking cops, he looks hilarious. Kaine tells one of the cops he could redefine hurt for him, and almost \u201cmarks\u201d him, but then does it to his own face. Kaine has clearly gone round the bend since last we saw him (Which was him being betrayed by that whasthername working for Jimmy Johnsmeyer, because all Peter Parkers are a sucker for redheads). Why was Kaine even looking at that casket?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh, ok. What? Kaine not even bothering to summarize how he\u2019s alive is so funny. Honestly, I wonder if DeMatteis even knew, having left the Spider-Office. Why bother to do the reading? I wouldn\u2019t blame him if he didn\u2019t. Also the drop in paper quality from Lost Years is kind of jarring taking these series back-to-back. Lost Years was in the so-called \u201cMarvel Select\u201d format, which meant glossy paper, a higher page count per issue, a cardstock cover and a high price tag, but this is just a comic. The other thing Kaine knew during his very Romita-influenced rain pout is he had no intention of dying alone, and we cut to Ben Reilly at the graves of Norman & Harry Osborn, having his own rain cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cSee the bad guy in the lightning\u201d works pretty well in comics, as it turns out! Mike Zeck & Bob McLeod still render a top-notch Spidey, eveni n this stupid suit. I actually hadn\u2019t considered that Ben had no time to process that Harry was dead before he came back. I guess it would matter more now that he believes he\u2019s the real Peter and therefore Harry was really his friend. Ben swings around recapping his deal and thinking he probably put off mourning Harry because that just meant mourning his whole life as Peter. Then he gets\u2026 weird\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI\u2019m so sad my friend\u2019s dead I wanna put the moves on his widow!\u201d Meanwhile, a redheaded stranger is riding a train, internal monologuing about Ben Reilly, so you know, guess who. Ben has gone home and fallen asleep on the couch. He jolts awake to go drinks oem milk out of the fridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that\u2019s just weird. As they stare each other down, Kaine thinks a bunch of metaphysical stuff about how they\u2019re linked and Ben knows he hasn\u2019t come to fight, just to warn him that he\u2019s declared a war that will destroy them both. Then he rips a bit of the wall out, hits Ben with it, and disappears out the window. Ben starts recapping Kaine\u2019s origin and stuff as he wanders to a local bar, thinking about Janine, calling her his greatest love and his greatest loss. He sidles up to the bar next to the only other patron and orders a club soda. That patron? Flash Thompson. What\u2019re the odds??<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You know, Flash has been allowed to grow and change more than anyone in the Spider-Man canon, when you think about it. People like JJJ and Robbie never change. People like Aunt May and Betty change a little. MJ got to evolve and become a 3D person, but there\u2019s still really 2 MJs, before and after ASM 258. Flash, tho. From Peter\u2019s bully to Peter\u2019s good friend. Football star to soldier. Got married, cheated on his wife, got divorced. Tried to be a pro football player, worked at the YMCA, tried to be a boxer, worked at a youth center. He\u2019s gone through some real times in the last 30 years here. And that\u2019s all before he goes to war a 2nd time, loses a leg and eventually becomes a heroic new Venom for a time. Really! He was a Guardian of the Galaxy! Who has a history like that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kaine implies Janine\u2019s sudden return is part of his scheme as he finds a biker bar and fights everyone in it, trying to take out his rage on them. But, he thinks, he\u2019s never killed someone without a reason, and he doesn\u2019t want to start now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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She looks like 10 years old in that one panel. There follows a montage of them enjoying weeks of happiness together, the whole ongoing plot just on hold, I guess. I wonder what Peter was doing. Both of them had a lot of questions about their situation, but neither wanted to ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As they fight through some kind of mannequin warehouse, Kaine says Ben had to feel great joy in order to feel great sorrow, and that\u2019s why he lured Janine to New York. Then he tells him men like them can never hold onto love. Ben finds Janine in a pile of mannequins as cops enter the shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boooooooo!! Throw things at them! Ugh. In case it\u2019s not clear, I don\u2019t remember one page of this book. I kinda can\u2019t believe I bought it, but\u2026 Mike Zeck & Bob McLeod. Ugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That\u2019s right! It\u2019s 1996 again, but by (Ever-so-slightly) fudging the publication orders of both series, I\u2019ve managed to line up this sequel to Lost Years right after it. While DeMatteis has moved…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[455,191,332,125,488,213,943],"class_list":["post-9818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-ben-reilly","tag-bob-mcleod","tag-christie-scheele","tag-jm-dematteis","tag-kaine","tag-mike-zeck","tag-redemption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9818","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=9818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9832,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9818\/revisions\/9832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}