So, Spidey’s still sinking in quicksand. As he’s been wont to do, Roy has the last bit of dialogue from last issue repeat on the splash here. Then there’s a one-page recap of last issue, and then we get to it.
Wah wah. Spidey continues to sink, and says the branch hitting him must have jammed his webshooter (Why he doesn’t, you know, use the other one is not mentioned), and then Ka-Zar swings in and saves him. Spidey is glad to see him, and says they need to team up to take down Gog, but Ka-Zar says he’ll do this alone.
Elsewhere, Gwen asks Kraven why he’s even here, and he obliges with a nice flashback. After Ka-Zar stunted on him in Astonishing Tales #2, Kraven was left in a foul mood. He decided he’d just have to go to The Savage Land, find Ka-Zar, and prove he’s the greatest hunter of all time. This guy loses every fight he’s in and still considers himself better than all the people who routinely demolish him. So, he flew on down to The Savage Land in a crazy, spaceship-looking thing all by himself to exact his revenge. But, instead of finding Ka-Zar, he found an actual spaceship, crashed in the swamp, and inside, he found…
Uh, ok. There was also an egg containing a female specimen, but it was cracked and she was dead. So, he did what anyone would do and put the weird little alien on his shoulder like a parrot and left. But he found the creature grew super fast, and soon it was a giant. He named it Gog, and it’s imprinted on him and obeys his commands. He plans to use Gog’s power to conquer first The Savage Land and then the whole world. Aim high, I guess. As Kraven has been regaling Gwen with his backstory, Spidey & Ka-Zar have snuck into the area and hatched a plan. Spidey swings in and gets Gog’s attention, getting him to chase Spidey away from Kraven & Gwen…
They get to fightin’, and as usual, Kraven starts cheating the second he’s on the back foot, hitting Ka-Zar with some kind of gas, and when that doesn’t work, he just zaps him with “electro-bursts.” That puts Ka-Zar down long enough for Kraven to grab a rock to bash his skull in, but Zabu the sabretooth tiger jumps in, giving Ka-Zar a second to recover. Then it’s fightin’ time again.
Kraven produces a rope from his belt and manages to get it around Ka-Zar’s neck. Ka-Zar says he has no honor, and Kraven says he doesn’t believe in honor. This… will not be something future writers cling to. Anyway, he tries to hang Ka-Zar, but that doesn’t work out, and then Ka-Zar kicks him off a cliff to his seeming demise. I’m sure he’s dead forever and we’ll never see him again. But what of Spider-Man? To his frustration, he’s still being chased through the jungle by Gog. He thought he could lose him and get back to Gwen, but it’s not going that way. Then he almost swings into the mouth of a T. Rex…
This leads to way more time than you’d think given to Gog fighting the dinosaur like in King Kong, a full page and a half, and Spidey didn’t bother to leave, so when Gog wins, the chase continues. Spidey feels bad about it, but leads Gog back to the quicksand he was stuck in earlier, and he flops right in.
She’s fine. Ka-Zar is rushing her back to the others as Spidey speaks. And even though he mentioned Spider-Man to her earlier, Ka-Zar now seems to be trying to hide Spidey’s involvement for him. Back at camp, JJJ and Calkin are just sitting around being sad that the young people got killed. JJJ says he’d give it all up to see Gwen or Peter again…
Then, out of the corner of his eye, JJJ sees Spider-Man swing by. But he can’t believe Spider-Man would actually be here. He’s starting to hyperventilate when guess who shows up?
Last issue, Robbie thought this expedition would kill The Bugle if it didn’t work. And it didn’t work. I wonder if this will even get picked up on? We shall see. “Carl Denham,” you may know, is the character from King Kong who brings the big gorilla back to the world. Kinda weird of Roy to dedicate the story to a fictional character. But, then, “kinda weird” pretty neatly sums up Roy Thomas’ brief time on ASM. A vampire story and a Savage Land story and he’s out. Stan Lee is back to writing for awhile next issue.