One Moment In Atlantis
The Serpent in the Shadow is part 6 of Atlantis Attacks and is written by Gerry Conway with art by Dave Ross. It stars Spider-Man and Cloak and Dagger as they got up against Tyrannus and his snake-people.
It really seems weird that the last 3 parts of Atlantis Attacks have featured very little Atlantis and instead of being going on a tangent about Madame Hydra's serpent serum. It feels like two stories crammed into one crossover. Anyway, yes, following on from the Punisher story and the Spider-Man story with Liefeld art, Tyrannus and Madame Hydra have set up various "drug clinics" which are a front to inject people with the good Madame's serum that transforms people into serpentine monsters. As I've said, this really seems irrelevant to the stuff with Ghaur and Llyra and in this issue it even has a news report about Atlantean forces attacking off the coast, but the issue concerns itself with the Serpent stuff instead. It's just kind of, confused?
Anyway, yes, Cloak and Dagger are also there. I don't like Cloak and Dagger. I really don't like Cloak and Dagger when they're written by anyone other than Bill Mantlo. Cloak has always being a massive ignorant jerk and Dagger has too often just been the helpless blind girl. That approximation is entirely true of this issue with Cloak being a consistent ass to Spider-Man and Dagger doing literally nothing the whole issue except be captured. I'd like to say Cloak was at his absolute worst this issue, generally being unsociable and just an outright dick to Spidey throughout but I'm sure there will be another issue somewhere down the line where Cloak one ups his all-star bastard performance here.
The issue is nothing spectacular despite it being an issue of Spectacular. There was a weird bit of padding with Spidey following a guy and repeating the same exposition about noticing the guy's Serpent tattoo three times. In fact, the whole issue kinda stunk of padding and in retrospect not a lot happened other than Cloak being a dick. Of particular note however is that this issue ends on a cliffhanger. And I mean an actual cliffhanger rather than a little tease for the next chapter/rest of the story. Basically, we have Spider-Man being captured by Tyrannus. We also get a classic example of "Cloak is a jerk": Cloak just watches this and decides he's not bothered about saving Spidey and leaves.
As a whole, this is another kinda run-of-the-mill issue. Cloak and Dagger are boring as ever and they're really the centerpiece here, there's little Spidey action. There are occasional references and teases towards the main plot of Atlantis Attacks and small appearances of Ghaur and it seems the serpent serum stuff is actually shaping in to being relevant rather than just a random aside. Hopefully it will actually come to something important, when I first read the Punisher story I assumed it was just like a one-off plot to get the Punisher involved in the crossover, but from the looks of things, this is going to be a larger part of Atlantis Attacks - even if I still don't know how or why the hell Madame Hydra's serpent serum is relevant to Ghaur wanting the Serpent Crown. Did the editors literally just decide to link two things because they both have "Serpent" in them? We'll wait and see.