Another one from ya boy, Bill Kunkel. I looked it up this time, and he was pretty interesting, actually. Apparently, he just met legendary writer/editor Denny O’Neil at a party one time, and that got his foot in the door for comics. He did a little for DC and a lot for Harvey (Makers of Richie Rich and Casper and such), and for Marvel, his entire catalog is Marvel Team-Up #71 & 78. He then went on to a long career in wrestling journalism and later video game journalism, eventually becoming the editor of EGM for awhile and writing a bunch of strategy guides. How bout that? Anyway, it’s him, Don Perlin and Frank Giacoa for this one. And they set it off weird:
MURDER BIRDS! Spidey drops down to a rooftop to try to stop being pecked to death, and then they all turn around and fly off. Spidey says someone clearly wants to get his attention, and he takes the bait. Then we move to Avengers Mansion, to see Wonder Man. Simon Williams is a long-standing Avenger and also a Hollywood actor sometimes, with the powers of flight and super strength. He’s always had some weird baggage. He was turned super by Ultron, to use against the Avengers, and died, only to come back with a crippling fear of dying again. He’s past that now, though, I think, at this point. Here we find him in his infamous jacket-and-turtleneck costume, reading a book when he hears a crash. Going to investigate, he finds…
The Griffin. Not the coolest villain. I mean, look at him. But he’s here so we’re doing this. Simon and The Griffin come to blows, and the Griffin calls him a “stupid jerk,” which is kind of hilarious, and then Spider-Man smashes through a window, presumably led here by those birds. They fight a bit, but then…
And he’s off. Spider-Man and Wonder Man exchange introductions, and then Spidey tells him about his previous encounter with the Griffin, fighting him with The Beast in MTU 38. Spidey swings off after their foe and tells Simon to get in touch with the other Avengers.
Get it together, Wondy! He goes for Iron Man’s “prototype Astro-Fighter” to fly off into the fray. So we catch up with Spider-Man, still hot on the Griffin’s trail. But he stops and thinks and realizes the Griffin is mutating in responds to his encounters with superfolks, getting stronger, and that must be why he wanted to fight Spider-Man and the Avengers so bad. He realizes this just as Griffin turns around and decides to fight some more. Bad timing.
It looks like curtains for our hero when Wonder Man shows up in the Astro-Fighter, zapping away. And Griffin calls him a jerk again, which I am loving. Spider-Man tries to warn him not to shoot, but he’s too late, and after a couple zaps from the Astro-Fighter, Griffin begins to change even further…
Griffin lands on the ship, smashes in and pulls Simon out as Spidey regains consciousness on the ground. He keeps trying to tell Wonder Man not to fight back, but also realizes he doesn’t really have any other options, so when Wonder Man goes for the guns on his wrecked ship, Spidey just helps get Griffin in position, and they let ‘im have it. Spidey was betting that the serum that mutates him might have limits, and he was right.
Spider-Man… really intuits a whole lot of what’s going on here… Another pretty abrupt ending, and our farewell to Bill Kunkel, off to go write about wrestlers, I guess. Wonder Man would go on to die and come back so many more times it’s absurd. He also trades that outfit for something more superhero-y. But that’s for some Avengers blog to handle. Griffin is, of course, 100% dead, and will never appear in another comic. Definitely. For sure. And on that strange note, we take our leave of this era. Next post, we leap ahead to 1980 to see how things are going there.