Kaine's Costume

 

Kaine is one of those characters I could probably talk about a lot more. Specifically, I find his MC2 incarnation fascinating for various reasons. Today I wanted to take a look at something I’ve always found under utilized in his original Main Marvel Universe and only touched upon lightly in the MC2: Kaine’s weird costume during the Clone Saga.

I’ll let writer and editor Glen Greenberg explain Kaine’s suit in his own words from the brilliant Life of Reilly Part 9 (which can be found here and here):  

And here's a few things you probably didn't know about Kaine. First, that weird costume of his was actually a life-support outfit that stabilized the debilitating effects of his cellular degeneration. Kaine lived in constant pain, and that would only get worse as time went on, but the outfit slowed down the degeneration and prolonged his life. That's why Kaine wore the costume in most of his modern-day appearances, and why he didn't have it in the LOST YEARS limited series, which took place years earlier.

 

Glen continues:

 

Ironically enough, as Mark Bernardo - even to this day - has never failed to point out, NONE of the Spider-writers ever managed to work any of this information into the actual stories! Mark and I both felt that these were some of the most interesting aspects about Kaine - but as it turned out, the people in our little group would be the only ones who ever knew about them!

So, the writers had a logical explanation worked out for why Kaine was wearing the suit during the present-day parts of the Clone Saga and not the flashbacks seen years earlier in the Lost Years mini-series, this information apparently never made it’s way into the stories that were published at the time.

 

Now in both the Main Marvel Universe and the MC2-niverse we see Kaine on the loose shortly after the infant Mayday Parker is kidnapped by agents of Norman Osborn, leading to him pursuing Alison Mongrain and becoming directly involved in the events that follow. One area where things differ is after his apparent escape from prison in the Main Marvel Universe, Kaine is still somehow rocking his life-support suit that slows his clone degeneration. How he got access to it is unclear and makes little sense (Amazing Spider-Man #435).  Meanwhile what we see in the MC2 around the same time seems somewhat more likely: Kaine is wearing plain civilian clothes which evoke his attire during the events of Spider-Man: The Lost Years, the kind of thing he would have easy access to while on the run from authorities and trying to remain incognito (Spider-Girl #48-#49 and Amazing Spider-Girl #25).

It's only later on in the MC2’s history, during the time a young Reilly Tyne and later the body of the deceased Matt Murdock aka Daredevil are brought to Kaine’s secret laboratory, that we see Kaine rocking a new shiny metallic suit or armour (as seen in flashbacks from Darkdevil #1-#3). This is appears to be the same design in which he made his MC2 debut in Spider-Girl #12 and would continue to wear for the next few issues until his imprisonment at the end of Spider-Girl #17. Subsequently Kaine is shown in prison without this metallic suit and upon his release, only returning to it when he reappeared in the pages of Spider-Girl once more with Spider-Girl #45-#47, #48-49. From this point on, Kaine is seen alternating between either civilian clothing, his metallic suit, or a combination of the two. This brings us to the next point.

 

Kaine no longer seems to require his regeneration suit, a fact made clear in the Darkdevil mini-series not just through his prison stay without any special suit, but in the aforementioned flashbacks. Specifically, one which mentions Kaine mastered ‘arcane skills’ years earlier to prevent his degeneration. This apparently involved acting as a servant to the living spirit of vengeance known as Zarathos, and a mention by the spirit implies Kaine still suffers physical torment. However, Kaine notes in Spider-Girl #14 that after years of constant agony, his nerve endings simply stopped functioning, suggesting he can no longer feel anything.

 

This raises the question of why Kaine wears the metallic suit at all if he doesn’t have to rely on one to stave off his cellular degeneration and no longer seems to experience pain? We don’t have a definitive answer, but I have a theory that’s quite straightforward and deceptively simple: If Kaine can’t feel pain and has already been ravaged for years prior by his imperfectly cloned cells degenerating, he’s far more vulnerable to severe injury. Kaine has experienced severe physical trauma throughout his years and would probably have died years ago had he not used arcane methods to cheat death. Kaine remains mortal and is now at an advanced physical age, hence why he often relies on his metallic suit for protection: should he sustain a life-threatening injury, he would not even feel it and may not realize until it is too late.

 

Kaine wears the metallic suit less as time goes on, eventually wearing civilian clothing exclusively in his later appearances in Amazing Spider-Girl and beyond. While it does humanise him, it also leaves him vulnerable. Perhaps that is by choice? Anyway, let me know what you think or if you have any alternative suggestions. Kaine is such a great character and ripe with such potential for future stories should the MC2 ever make comeback.

 

Until I figure out Kaine’s whole Caribbean detour thing, I remain

 

frogoat