The Cobra...
... it wasn't so much that he would squeeze the breath from your lungs as it was that he would press his junk against your back.
You would think that there would be tons of characters that use or used the name cobra, right? Well, you'd be surprised. While the name is used all over the place, there's almost always a qualifier: Dr. Cobra, El Cobra, Cobra Commander, etc. There was a space pirate named Cobra who appeared in Space Adventure Cobra back in the 90's that was some sort of weird Japanese thing that all you kids seem to love these days, but other than that character and the Golden Age nemesis of Magno and Davey, I don't think there was another character who just went by that name. Anyone think differently?
Few remember Peter Parker's career on Wall Street...
The Tarantula returned in Amazing #233, 99 issues since his first appearance. As you may recall, he was the Jackal's badass enforcer back in the original "Clone Saga" storyline in 1974.
What a difference 8 years (and another writer) made...
Now, to be fair, I believe the Tarantula's memory of his weapons' effectiveness is a little skewed. I think the only time he had actually made contact with his little toe-stickers was when he either snuck up on Pete or Pete had his hands full doing something else. It's not like he was Bullseye with those things. But unlike past encounters, Pete takes him down in no time flat, even though the Tarantula has added finger blades to his arsenal:
Wow. That was quite a dis. But not unexpected, considering that the cover of the issue gave it all away...
Yeah, that pretty much summed it up right there. I probably could have saved myself sixty cents.
That's the first time I ever noticed one writer treat a character in a manner entirely different from another. I notice it all the time now, particularly when the Juggernaut goes from a raging trash-talker to having the vernacular of Victor Von Doom. Considering how scary the Tarantula seemed to be when I was six years old, it was very jarring to see that he was really a bush leaguer to someone in Spidey's class.
While I was researching this post, I came upon this great article that takes a look at the Tarantula's evolution from feared nemesis to minor annoyance. It also gave me another look at a page where I found this little bit of Fun with Out of Context Dialogue(tm!) that I had previously missed:
Heh.
See you tomorrow!
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