This is a one-off by Elliot S! Maggin, Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito. It’s pretty much all action from page one as Spidey happens on a motorcycle cop chasing a speeding car.
Some real 1970s-appropriate extremes to nab his perps, here. That crazy cop is named Macone. Thanks to Peter Parker, he’s front page news the next day, and JJJ wants Peter to get more shots of him at home. but when Peter arrives at the house, he hears Mrs. Macone yelling she’d rather be divorced than a widow as he knocks on the door.
I mean, most cops aren’t doing Hollywood stunts all day. While Peter gets out of there, we see a crooked cop go report to The Beetle that “it” is in a certain precinct house. The Beetle hires various goons to pull all kinds of jobs all over town to get all the cops to leave said precinct so he can sneak in and try to steal “it.” Peter happens to be walking by the precinct for some reason and sees the cops peeling out, and soon Spider-Man’s running off with them as The Beetle creeps in behind them. But the cops have talked Macone into staying behind since he’s had too much action lately, and thus, The Beetle finds the place being defended by the craziest cop in New York.
It’s Assault (By A Big Dopey Weirdo) On Precinct 13! Genuinely hard to believe this costume lasted so long. So silly. Some Ditko purists scoff at anything BUT this, but they’re nuts. I’ll give them that the big weird “fingers” are unique enough that maybe they coulda tried to salvage those in a future design, but the rest is terrible, and even the fingers are pretty dopey.
The superfolk scrap it out for a couple of pages as Macone watches, feeling helpless… until he happens upon the ultimate weapon: Heroin! Big bags of it stored as evidence. I hope Green Arrow’s sidekick isn’t around.
What a ridiculous, poorly-executed plan! But it gives Spider-Man the idea to try the same gag with his web fluid. He’s never had to worry about this in past battles. Who cares about the suction cups? Just rattle Beetle’s head around inside that trashcan helmet like you always do. Well, he can’t hear me, so he slops ‘em up.
“The Crime Syndicate!” Couldn’t even use the name of a regular Marvel one. Sometimes it’s doesn’t pay to be a rampaging Dirty Harry-type, I guess. This one really highlighted how wrong Spider-Man sounds under Len Wein & incoming writer Marv Wolfman. Both of their runs feature a Spider-Man who seems almost cruel in his jokes, really aggressive and almost never actually funny. Maggin’s Spidey is self-deprecating and more silly, like pretty much everyone else has written him before or since.