Issue(s): Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #69, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #70
Cover Date: Aug-Sep 82
Title: "In darkness seldom seen!" / "The great Cloak and Dagger hunt!"
Credits:
Bill Mantlo - Writer
Ed Hannigan - Penciler
Al Milgrom - Inker
Tom DeFalco - Editor

Review/plot:
This issue starts out with some pretty offensive attempts at capturing a "black" dialogue: "Mouse, yo' is a liar from the word 'go'! The brothah done seen yo' squeal!" and so on. Not sure how the "yo'" is supposed to be pronounced.

Spider-Man tries but fails to stop Cloak & Dagger...

...from killing Silvermane.

Cloak & Dagger initially just wanted vengeance on the mobsters that were directly responsible for the experiments that gave them their powers, but now they are working their way up the food chain.

Anyway, it turns out that Silvermane isn't really dead. His mobster scientists retrieve his body and place it into a silver mechanical exoskeleton that gives him great strength.

Cloak & Dagger show up later to finish the job...

...with Dagger seemingly killing him this time.

It's confirmed that Debra Whitman definitely knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. But it looks like Mantlo is going the route of giving her a psychological break-down.

Pretty bad writing, overall, but it is interesting to see 'heroes' that are willing to kill.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - second appearance of Cloak & Dagger

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Spider-Man spends a little time going through some stuff in his Aunt May's house (she's currently living at a retirement center) and he thinks back to Amazing Spider-Man #200, which had the awful story where it was revealed that the burglar that shot Uncle Ben had been looking for a 1930s mobster's hidden treasure, which had subsequently been eaten by silverfish.
  
• Cloak & Dagger got their revenge on the drug runners who experimented on them in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #64.
  
• Silverman broke every bone in his body in Amazing Spider-Man #180 (which ignores Silvermane's appearance in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man annual #2.
  
• Spider-Man gets info regarding Silvermane from the Kingpin. While he's there, he asks if it was the Kingpin who sicced Boomerang on him a few weeks ago in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #67. Kingpin doesn't answer.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

I am becoming more and more convinced that Cloak and Dagger were Bill Mantlo's idea of introducing new Steve Ditko-type characters to Spider-Man. Black-and-white morality, literally in their case. Updated for the 1980s, willing to kill for their cause, horrible origin, and subtext between the characters that just doesn't work no matter how you look at it.

These were also two of the very first comics I ever read, so they are wonderful by definition.

I'm looking through the Silvermane appearances, and find it weird that when he appears here, he suddenly is an old man again, especially when they made a big deal that when he revived prior, he remained "young". But hey, it's funnier I guess to have an old guy in a robot exoskeleton than a young one; sort of gives him a "Vulture" vibe of a powerful old guy taking on Spidey and the like.