Kicking thing off with a weird cover and a weirder splash page:
Yes, the Giant Ghost of Spider-Man is warning Peter he’s gonna have a rough day! Alright, then, here we go. The District Attorney has called a meeting of the press to unveil the previously mentioned computer that will “catalog all worldwide habitual offenders.” So a database, then. Y’all built an entire fancy computer and one man has already died to make… a database. But when he takes them to the computer room, the other scientist, Dr. Armstrong Smith (Excellent name), won’t answer. A cop shoots the lock, and…
I feel like maybe they weren’t just putting corpses on the front of the paper back then, or even now, but what do I know? Robbie says Smith was killed in a locked room by a bullet to the head, but they couldn’t find a bullet or a gun. Peter figures it’s time for Spider-Man to look into this. He breaks into the police station, complaining that the cops are afraid to disturb the crime scene as he barges right in, then he has the computer… produce a list of the men most likely to have done this. I am really dubious of this machine. He gets results:
More excellent names! It’s some cops, of course, who don’t like finding a wanted fugitive in their crime scene, but Spidey handily evades them and sets out to find the 3 guys the computer accuses of this murder. His first stop is an informant he knows named “Weasel.” No, really…
When Spidey’s web dissolves, that man is going to fall 3 stories. That’s not very heroic. Also, that seems to be the homeless dude who’s appeared in recent issues leaning on that lamppost. Spidey enters the bar and starts roughing people up like this is a Daredevil comic, but once he finally gets someone to tell him where Jason Sledge is, well…
That computer really knows its stuff. As he swings to his next destination, Spidey exposits that Leroy Tallon is a master safe-cracker who got caught in a blast awhile back, but could be back in the game. Tallon is meeting with his gang in an abandoned warehouse when Spidey busts in.
Sweet Mama! These guys aren’t too interested in answering questions, and when one goon drops a big crate on Spidey from above, it’s fightin’ time. Spidey does as well as you’d expect with Tallon’s boys, but then…
That was a poor choice by that doctor-dude. Tallon starts choking the life out of Spidey, but he gets punched in the head for his trouble, and goes spilling into a crate…
Strike two! Spidey spends hours looking for Conrad Fox, talking to people, swinging around, looking in a phone book (hilarious), until he finds the truth:
I mean… was it the computer? Oh my God, it was the computer.
I’m… speechless.
IBM-becile. Loonivac. Wein is out of control. The computer keeps trying to zap Spidey while claiming that, as a “perfect compendium of the criminal craft,” it will become the undisputed ruler of the underworld (From a room in a police station in the age before the internet??????), but Spider-Man webs up the cooling vents on the computer, so eventually…
That last panel was too much. This was absurd. How has Len Wein never heard of a database? That’s what I come away really wondering. This is not a far-future computer concept. Sheesh! What nonsense. Still no answer on the mysterious homeless guy. But next issue, it’s the long-awaited wedding of Betty Brant and Ned Leeds, and the debut of the villain Mirage.