The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger 8 - Acts of Vengeance

Cloak and Dagger was a bimonthly series (ignore the cover dates on the issues discussed here) and so was always going to be limited in its contribution to the "Acts of Vengeance" crossover. However it managed to squeeze in an extra issue by adding the banner "Prelude to Vengeance" on issue #8 which came out before the start of the crossover, though it leads directly into issue #9, hence its placement in the order here.

The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger #8

Script: Terry Austin
Art: Mike Vosburg
Backgrounds: Don Cameron
Letters: Ken Bruzenak
Colours: Glynis Oliver
Bachelor-Editor-No-More: Carl Potts
Chief: Tom DeFalco

Unfortunately this was probably a mistake if the intention was to draw in extra readers. This issue is almost entirely the conclusion of an existing storyline that's somewhat difficult to dive into, not least because Cloak has been apparently killed off and his cloak of darkness is now warned by the villain Ecstasy. It's also not clear why these book is entitled "The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger" - in their origin they got their powers from a reaction to drugs and they're not so well known that the mutant connection is obvious. It feels as though Marvel was trying to capitalise on the popularity of the mutant titles by sticking "Mutant" onto as many covers as they could get away with.

Most of the characters seen watching on the cover either only appear in the last panel or not at all. Instead we get a tale on multiple levels as the original Cloak finds himself in a normalised world with a family and day job, but is haunted by seeing the same blonde woman everywhere he looks. Elsewhere Dagger is one of a group of hostages in a bank robbery led by the Crimson Daffodil, a swarve criminal with the power of persuasion but also an utterly inept group of henchmen. Meanwhile the Kingpin has hired an assassin called the Disciplinarian to locate and kill Ecstasy. The plot strands all converge on the bank in a showdown that sees Cloak and Dagger reunited. The "Acts of Vengeance" connection comes right at the end in an epilogue as visitors come to the church where Cloak and Dagger hang out, but it's entirely a trailer for events next issue.

As an individual issue of the series this is fairly okay, but an issue luring in extra readers because of a crossover really needs to do a lot more to explain what's going on and why the status quo is different from the best known. One suspects that "Prelude to Vengeance" got simply slapped on the cover in hope of a sales boost rather than the story being explicitly constructed for it. This is not one to go to great lengths to seek out.

The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger #8 has been reprinted in:

• Nowhere at all it seems.