It was not $8, but I no longer remember where this one came form or how much it cost. Never woulda paid $8 for it, tho, that’s nuts. I wanna say this isn’t the only book I have with a big postit note inside the bag with a price on it? It’s now been awhile since The Great eBay Hysteria of 2018, harder and harder to remember. I’ve had a reprint of this issue in Marvel Tales #239 since 1990, behind a slick, of-its-time McFarlane cover, but got this copy more recently. With Conway’s abrupt departure, MTU is suddenly without a writer, and like most Marvel titles suddenly without a writer in the 70s, is now in the hands of Bill Mantlo. Sal Buscema just does layouts on this one, with Mike Esposito providing finished line work. As we have seen, this team will hang around for awhile, including a ridiculously long 8-part time travel story. This one opens with Spidey swinging home in the rain in the middle of the night, when suddenly he sees a man falling through the sky. He’s really high up, so that’s weird, and he rushes in to catch him…
Mantlo’s writing way too much dialogue throughout this issue. Everyone knows Spidey talks to himself a lot, but he’s writing a novel this month. Anyway, luck is not with our hero tonight, ad try after try, he can’t stop their fall. Eventually he manages to latch onto the smokestack of a ship below, but by then the momentum they’ve built up just smashes them right into it, and the fall into the river.
Lungs, I love you! Between Spidey & The Beast, the word count in this issue is gonna be off the charts.
The Griffin shoulda been a country singer with a name like” Johnny Horton.” He fought The Beast & Angel when Beast was starring in a comic called Amazing Adventures. Locked up after that fight, he kept mutating, and eventually became so powerful he easily broke out of jail and came looking for the doctor who created him for revenge. Thusly did we meet him falling to his doom. And all that action was too much for him, as he dies almost immediately.
Kinda glib standing over a dead dude there, pal. Turns out, The Griffin can now mentally command all flying animals (Uh, ok?). Spider-Man does his thing, distracting The Griffin by being annoying, which gives Beast a chance to jump up on him and try to take him down. Doesn’t work too well, though, as Beast soon finds himself being drowned by the big weirdo.
Spidey succeeds in saving Beast, but then The Griffin flies away, Spider-Man still on his back, faster than Beast can keep up. Griffin decides to fly them up high enough that the fall will kill Spidey as Beast bounds across town trying to catch up with them.
I like that tail joke. Griffin drops Spider-Man, but he just webs onto the bridge below and lands safely. Too bad he couldn’t do that earlier. For no obvious reason. Now he’s standing in traffic on the bridge (Surprisingly busy for being like 1am now), upsetting all the drivers, when Beast catches up, just in time for Griffin to divebomb them. This proves a mistake.
The boys keep quipping more than a late-period Bendis comic as Griffin falls to the bridge. They go down to make sure he’s out as the cops arrive. The cops are unusually nice to Spider-Man, but then…
Komedy. And we’re out. Not much of a comic, but I assume it was done on a very tight schedule. Sometimes product just had to get out the door…