Man. Mountain. Marko. Those words made it out of Stan Lee’s head and onto a printed comic book that other people could see. Hard to believe, but true. The funniest thing, tho, is he kinda looks like romita drawing a mean caricature of himself. Speaking of Jazzy Johnny, the credits to this one are bonkers. What happened is Buscema and Romita collaborated on the plot, Buscema did layouts, Jim Mooney did full pencils and inks, and then Stan added dialogue. Look how the credits describe that:
Shameful, frankly. Anyway, a double dose of pretty pills. As Gwen takes her leave, Spider-Man drops down off the ceiling. George is fully justified in saying he doesn’t like his house broken into, but Spidey wants to ask him if Shocker left any clues about where he might’ve hidden the tablet. Stacy says no, but then remembers Shocker has a girlfriend who posted his bail a couple times, and she might be holding the tablet. “She called herself an exotic dancer,” he says, which seems like a funny thing to say, and he has an idea of what part of town she lives in, which also seems funny. I’m onto you, George! As Spidey leaves, Stacy tells him that if he runs into trouble, he should call the police instead of taking the law into his own hands. Uh… that’s kind of his whole thing, man. Spidey starts casing the neighborhood, unsure how he’ll find this mystery woman, until his Spider Sense alerts him to a fight.
It’s like Spidey’s fighting a giant version of Elvis from his Comeback Special (Kids, ask my parents, it’s not like I was around for that, either). Our man’s danger sense can lead him to the right place based on some angry words, but apparently doesn’t warn him of a giant fist zooming at his face. Marko leans in for another hit, but Spider-Man grabs his wrist and throws him across the room. He tries to get the still-unnamed girl to give him the tablet, but she’s (Understandably) terrified and not listening. Marko gets up and smashes Spidey over the head with a chair, his Spider Sense failing him a 2nd time in 5 minutes. Meanwhile, Kingpin’s man, Wilson, is bailed out of jail by Caesar Cicero on behalf of The Maggia. Like everyone else in New York, they want the tablet, too, and figure Wilson is their best bet at getting it, but he swears he doesn’t know where it is or what it’s secrets are.
Spider-Man hops on Marko’s back and starts wailing on him, but is shocked to do very little to stop him. Marko then charges them both into the wall, ducking so Spidey takes the impact, and then grabs the tablet out of the broken safe. It looks like he’s gonna get away, but he takes time to threaten the girl, allowing Spidey to recover and rejoin the battle. But we cut away to Joe Robertson’s office as The Bugle, where Randy has just told Joe he wants to quit school, and Joe won’t have it.
Robbie outright refusing to print JJJ’s lies for the first time. Good stuff.
That’s pretty jarring. Last we saw, Spider-Man was punching Marko in the face, now he’s got the girl dangling out the window and Spider-Man’s several feet away. How’d we get here? Spidey dives out the window and saves the girl, but…
It’s the first appearance of Silvermane. Yet another million year old character in Spider-Man who survives for decades of comics. It’s kind of funny. Marko bursts in with the tablet, and Wilson verifies it’s the real thing. Marko demands to know what its secret is, but if Silvermane really knows, he’s not telling. Meanwhile, our beleaguered hero swings for home, unable to find Marko and too tired to try. When he gets home, he remembers he randomly wanted to call Doc Connors about a summer job, but he instead gets Martha, telling him Curt just left “unexpectedly, with a couple of men she’d never seen before.” Well, that can’t mean anything for us, can it?
There’s a lot going on right now! This tablet thing has dragged in all sorts of people. And it kicks into a higher gear next issue. This month, we got a letter from Peter Sandseron, future official Marvel historian, as well as young Marc De Matteis, long before his name was appearing on the credits page instead…
Stan all-but admitting Romita plots the book now! Wild. It’s funny how some people didn’t know what they had with this book in the old days. People complained that Romita couldn’t replace Ditko when he left, complained that Gil Kane wasn’t up to taking over for Romita… Comic fans never change.