This whole block up to this point has been recent purchases, but here we have a random issue I’ve had for a long, long time. And I have no idea why. Most of the older comics I have, I at least know why I have them. I don’t necessarily know when I got ASM 90, the oldest one I had for most of my life, but I know I got it because it was the death of Captain Stacy and I saw it cheap. I know I got ASM 274 because it has a really striking Romita, Sr. cover and I saw it in a store. This one? This random issue that’s almost certainly a fill-in from 3 years before I started reading comics regularly? No clue. But it’s a quirky one that I have fond memories of. It’s Peter David writing, Bob Mcleod penciling & inking, and Bob Sharen coloring. The absence of the usual creative team suggests a fill-in. As we open, Spider-Man is lamenting that those goofballs all teamed up last issue, and his run-in with Doc Ock, and the fact that he’s coming down with a cold. He doesn’t notice The Human Torch flying by and seeing him, worried that he’s been repossessed by the alien costume. They skip Two Heroes Fight Over A Misunderstanding and Spidey catches Torch up on recent events in his life.
As this was one of my first exposures to the Spidey/Torch relationship, their much more angry rivalry of the 70s was really shocking to me when I got there. I like them as super-buddies.
Bob McCleod’s render of the black suit is terrific. The guy jumps a turnstile and gets onto a subway car right as it pulls up. Spidey gets a tracer on him, but then the cops are after him for not paying to enter. The guy gets to Grand Central Station and escapes. Spider-Man gives up the chase, planning to look for him tomorrow. Then we follow both men’s lives as Peter Parker spends a lonely night at home while the burglar, Ron, goes home to his wife, who knows he’s a thief, has dinner, gets news of his daughter at college, and seems pretty happy. The next morning, Spider-Man is up and out before Ron ever wakes up.
Way back when, Spider-Man used a machine he invented to track his tracers before the less reasonable but more convenient idea of them triggering his Spider Sense was tossed in. This was my first time seeing the old tracer. It leads him out of the city and onto a train off into the suburbs. Way out of his comfort zone. He tries to jump up into a tree since there’s no buildings to swing from, and then there’s comedy business as the tree falls over under his sudden weight.
Hey, this is a Mark Jeweler’s variant. I didn’t know that was a thing any previous time I read it. The wife decides to get in on feeling Spidey up, and he loses his temper and webs to them to their car. He angrily hops on top of a bus to his destination, but the driver sees him and stops to demand a fare. He’s got no pockets, so he’s got no money, and soon he’s awkwardly just walking down the street, wondering why he’s bothered to do this as the neighborhood looks on.
Pretty wacky. That guy Ron does some laundry, and as Spider-Man is finally homing in on him, he finds the trace Ron his shirt and smashes it. Ron panics, tossing a bag of money in his car and intending to run for it, but Spider-Man’s outside, and Ron tries to run him down. If he’d just stayed in the house, he woulda got away clean. Spidey webs the fleeing vehicle.
Spidey hops on a passing cab. The driver mostly only speaks Spanish, but knows “follow that car” and has clearly been waiting his whole career for someone to say that to him. Soon he’s driving recklessly through the neighborhoods after Ron while Spidey freaks out.
“Old home week” is a cliche that cartoons and comics like this taught me as a kid, that I absorbed into my vocabulary, but that I have no idea what it actually means. A pretty silly one, but a good time, this. I read it many times as a kid. But why? How did I get it? I really don’t know. As you can see at the bottom, there, Secret Wars II is about to hit the Spidey titles in a big way. But first, something else.