Captain America? That’s right, because looks who’s on the cover with him! This begins a 2-parter with our favorite wallcrawler. I’ve actually had Cap 266 for many years. I must have bought it at a comic store at some point. Cap & Spidey together on a Mike Zeck cover would’ve been hard to pass up. But I only recently got part one of this tale and I’ve never read it, so let’s see what’s up. This one’s written by David Anthony Kraft, with line art by the top notch team of Mike Zeck & John Beatty and colors by Bob Sharen. It begins with Steve Rogers, freelance artist, walking home from a publisher’s party when he’s ambushed by several wannabe muggers. As they lead him into an alley to rob him, Peter Parker sees it going down, having just come from the same party. He thinks he needs to spring into action, but then sees one of the goons thrown back out of the alley.
Boy oh boy, that dialogue. We may be in for a rough ride, here, this is the worst way to write Cap. As the last of the thugs runs off, Peter says the pictures he just took will make “that artist” a hero when they’re in the paper. Steve politely demands the film. As they part ways, Peter’s Spider Sense goes off, so he switches clothes and swings around the corner just in time to see Steve Rogers making a phone call. Except…
Spidey is accosted by two yellow-suited goons who demand to know what he did to the man at the phone booth. As Spidey defends himself, one of the goons flies right through a brick wall like it wasn’t there. Meanwhile, Steve has materialized elsewhere. He expected the pay phone to clear him to enter SHIELD headquarters, but instead he finds himself being shot at.
This is the kind of writing that makes people hate Captain America. Oof. Switching to his uniform, Cap does his best, but the robot things can put themselves back together if he damages them, and they eventually overwhelm him and take him to their leader, as it were. But we’ll have to wait a second to see who it is (I mean, prrrrrrobably the guy on the cover), as we check back in with Spidey, who’s pretty sure that wall is a hologram, so he musters all his scientific training to test his hypothesis, tossing the other guy through it. When he also disappears, Spidey goes in after him, but he finds the 2 guys up and ready to fight.
The two guys are SHIELD agents, of course, and the fight gets broken up by Nick Fury himself. He lets Spidey know that guy he saw vanish was Captain America (Rough day for Cap’s secret identity), and then there’s plenty of exposition…
SULTAN, huh? He makes Cap’s dialogue seem natural. Cap tries to talk SULTAN out of his mad scheme, but he’s obviously not going to go for that, and instead begins the process of launching a nuke at Washington DC. Meanwhile, nearby, Spidey & Fury are driving toward the signal of Spidey’s tracer when they get attacked by the SULTAN’s goons and give up immediately so they can be taken to Cap. This plan works, and soon the gang’s all together. Spidey tries to use his trademark annoying patter to make SULTAN do something stupid, but instead he just accelerates the rocket countdown. So it’s time for Nick Fury to use the funniest move in his arsenal of spy tricks…
You may be able to defeat Nick Fury, but can you defeat… his shirt??? Our heroes leap into action, and Cap continues to yell corny patriotic nonsense as often as possible…
SULTAN doesn’t want to hear this any more than I do, so he cancels the countdown and just launches the rocket (One wonders why have a countdown at all, then?). Fury latches onto the rocket as it takes off, and Spidey grabs Cap so they can beat a hasty retreat from the endless wave of “biotrons,” and all 3 heroes discover the absurd truth:
So the whole mountain is flying away as the missile heads for DC. But don’t worry, Cap, Spidey falls out of the sky so often he’s certainly got this under control. Come back next time for the probably silly finale.