This is one I didn’t have last time I read this batch, so that’s nice for me, an actual new story. Not that I’m expecting much from this one. Tom DeFalco tags in to write as Jim Mooney handles pencils & inks and Ben Sean colors. DeFalco’s earliest stabs at Spider-Man have so far proven his very worst, so I’m kinda dreading this, but who knows. Spider-Man is headed to ESU to drop off a paper.
Well, maybe you should’ve done the work on time, Pete-O.
He might as well. Repeat offending swiper Jim Mooney swings for the fences swiping the cover of ASM 68, an image so famous I didn’t have to look it up. I wonder if it’ll be the last. The cops and shortly there after Spider-Man find a huge hole blasted in the side of a building “currently housing an exhibition devoted to the applications of microwave energy.” It’s The Meteor Man, the once and future Looter, not seen in continuity since MTU 34, ranting at himself inside about how he’s gonna use this technology to increase his power. Soon he receives a free kick in the back from Spider-Man, and a pitched battle begins. Nearby, famed biochemist Dr. William Foster, perhaps familiar to viewers of Ant-Man And The Wasp, is al set to give a talk on nuclear energy when students rush in talking about the fight. They seem pretty excited.
“Agonizing alter ego?”
Foster, the one-time “Black Goliath,” then Goliath, now Giant Man, used to work with Hank Pym. Not the best suit. Not to cast aspersions, but I wonder if anyone’s ever done any real investigation into the fact that, with the exception of Black Panther, black characters always showed more skin than their white counterparts in the old days. Think about how every male character– Falcon, Luke Cage, DC’s Black Lightning, our friend Giant Man here– every one of them has at least 1/3 of their chest exposed. Think about how female characters like Storm and Deadly Nightshade barely wore anything at all. And so on. It seems too widespread to be a coincidence. But, what do I know? Ol’ Norton managing to fight off two superheroes at once for a 2nd time still feels really unbelievable.
Alrighty. With some privacy, Spidey and GM review Looter’s plans, and Giant Man finds them to be so wildly inaccurate that he could kill himself and anyone around him with the stunt he’s about to pull. So, the heroes are in a race to find him before he can do anything. And at his lab in Hell’s Kitchen, he’s talking to his meteor collection and preparing to do something. But first, he has to recap his origin, and as I think we’ve seen it before and we’ll be seeing it in the 60s not too long from now, I’m gonna skip it. Hours later, Spider-Man picks up his tracer, and signals GM to follow him into a ratty old building. But when he finds Meteor Man, he’s already glowing, having already begun his doomed process.
Is… is that Popular Mechanics line supposed to be funny or not? I can’t really tell. Spidey’s pretty badly hurt as Giant Man rushes in, and is happy to leave the still-growing Meteor Man to the Giant Man as he tries to tamper with the equipment. But when he gets close, it zaps him, sending him flying across the room. Meteor Man is now twice as tall as Giant Man and they’re duking it out. GM keeps growing to match Meteor Man while he can as their fight pushes up through and onto the roof. Spidey recovers a little and rushes upstairs, hoping to surprise is foe, but…
Goodness, what a rushed and terrible ending. “Come on, GM, we just watched a man die, let’s call it a night!” “KA-BLA!” really sums this one up. We’ve seen Looter’s next appearance in WEB 39 already, but it didn’t do anything to try to explain how he survived blowing up, or got back to normal size. Ah, well. That’s comics, I guess.