The sticker on this really weird case sez $30. No, sir, I did not pay it. $9.99. eBay is magic. This is a recent acquisition, and the period it’s from has already been covered, so we’ll call it a flashback. Behind that Sal Buscema cover, we got a story by Gerry Conway, the great Gene Colan, and Tom Palmer. This takes place after ASM 95, and it’s a story, at least in part, about two dudes bein’ sad about ladies, as we see on page 2…
Jeez, guys, take the self-pity down a notch. While DD arrives home still feeling sorry for himself, Foggy Nelson is woken from his sleep by some goons! That seems bad, but we don’t dwell on it, instead following Spider-Man home to keep moping about his own lost love. As he changes to Peter Parker, wondering why Spider-Man is hated and Daredevil is beloved, things get weird, as the colorist apparently has no idea what the Spider-Characters should look like.
Not entirely sure I’d understand what’s happening there even if they were colored correctly, though. Elsewhere, Daredevil senses some kind of strange glow powerful enough for him to notice it very far away, and decides he should investigate. It turns out to be a big gold object. The cops are trying to cordone it off in case it could hurt someone when it starts demanding to see Namor. Lucky for us, he happens to be in the crowd.
In typical fashion, Namor starts yelling demands at the thing, which has gone silent, as DD shows up. He naturally assumes Namor has done something uncool, so it’s time for Ye Olde Two Heroes Fight Over A Misunderstanding.
Namor just beats the crap out of DD while insinuating he’s got his own business to mope about (We’d have to check out Sub-Mariner 39 to know). They keep on beating on each other, DD internal monologing about how all these superheroes are just regular people on the inside, when….
So now we got the rare Three Heroes Fight Over A Misunderstanding! Harder to set up, harder to drag out! Good of Spider-Man to just start raging with no attempt to figure out what’s going on first. But wait, it gets worse!
Spidey webs up Narmor, who’s finally lost his temper, and rips a tree out of the ground to smash the bumbling heroes, when the gold thing that brought them all here explodes. We don’t see what happens yet, though, as we cut to Karen Page returning to New York, wondering if Matt Murdock still cares about her. She’s an actress now, and she knows he’s DD, and she doesn’t want to get involved with a superhero. So, like Spider-Man, Daredevil’s biggest romantic problem is is double life. Back at the misunderstanding…
Wait, what? Spidey & Namor vanish, and DD goes home to call Karen, who doesn’t answer. We’re told this continues in Namor’s comic! I didn’t know that! I don’t have it! Well… I guess I gotta get that now. This issue features a letter from one J.A. Salicrup, and I bet that’s future Spider-Man group editor Jim Salicrup. Jim would preside over the era I came in on, so that’s pretty fun.
I guess this is Gerry Conway’s first crack at writing Spider-Man. I wonder if it was a test. Conway was all of 19 years old when he was writing this. Can you believe it? Imagine being handed the keys to a beloved Marvel series at 19! Not the craziest story of a young person in comics (Jim Shooter sold his first story to DC at THIRTEEN) but still pretty impressive.