Tuesday, April 09, 2024

Alarmingly few Neo-Nazis actually die this issue, the cover not withstanding.

From 1991, Web of Spider-Man #72, "Reckoning" Written by Danny Fingeroth, pencils by David Ross, inks by Al Milgrom, Keith Williams, and Andy Mushynsky.
This was the conclusion of a two-parter, guest-starring Silver Sable and Dominic Fortune; the latter of whom was trying to avenge the death of his son, who briefly took up the mantle, and find out what happened to his lost love, Sabbath. Sabbath's backstory gets a fair bit of page time, as she had been separated from Dom after a spat during WWII, married an anti-Nazi German and had a kid with him, but he was later assassinated and she was taken in by his Nazi-leaning brother. Her daughter was the spitting image of Sabbath, only Nazified.
Thematically, this all hits both Spidey and Sable where they live: Spidey had a bit of a complex, a need to save older mentor figures the way he failed to save Uncle Ben; while all of Sable's training and organization was built around crushing Nazis, this was kind of back-to-basics for them. Dominic gets around a lot, despite being on in years and having chest pains: he leaves a dummy in the hospital to get whacked, then trails the hitter back to the bad guy, who was going to leave town in Dominic's old riverboat! Cheeky bastard...(Actually, that might've been Sabbath's boat; he may have just lived there, but still.) In the end, the bad guys are wrapped up with a disappointingly low body count; Dominic and Sabbath are reunited, if maybe not back together yet, while the daughter seems to have gone full bad; and Sable still calls Spidey "amateur" even if she obviously respects him.

1 comment:

  1. Mr. Morbid11:26 AM

    Sounds like a fun 2-parter. I know I collected Web sporadically here and there, until the The name of the Rose saga, which I bought regularly. You should cover it some time. We did get two totally 90’s concepts out of the deal unfortunately; Blood Rose & Spidey’s all-metallic black & silver costume that thankfully only lasted one issue.

    I definitely enjoyed Dave Ross’s art was well back then, especially his brief run on Avengers West Coast.

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