ASM 036

The number of old comics I’ve wound up with with that library stamp on the cover is very curious to me. Who stamped them, and why? I’ll never know. Shout out to Jim Matosian, presumably the original owner of this book. After a splash of Spidey and Looter fighting, we get to it.

What an odd setup! The brevity of the first 3 captions are very out of character for Stan. And then we just have some crazy man trying to get famous by maybe the most circuitous route possible. Did Ditko intend for this? Was his conception of the villain at least an actual scientist?

Good ol’ meteor gas. One wonders why they didn’t go with The Meteor Man instead of The Looter. Ol’ Norton keeps testing his new power, and begins planning a robbery immediately, and then we turn our attention to Peter Parker, heading to campus, worrying that he’s missed a lot of class and the chance to get to know people due to all his recent Spidey-ing. He resolves to try to fix the social part.

Sally Green, eh? She sure didn’t hang around. She even looks a lot like Betty. I can see why Romita & Lee would go a different way. The Looter uses his “dazzle light,” which I guess is just a strobe light, to confuse everyone as he runs out. He thinks to himself that he clearly failed as a scientist because his true talent was in crime and he was born to be a master criminal. We’re quickly told he robs a bunch more places in the coming days, and then we find Spider-Man looking for him… to no avail. He’s as eager to put this deadly criminal in prison as he is to find out how his “dazzle light” works, which is some excellent character detail. Meanwhile, Looty is at home, worrying that his meteor isl literally out of gas, and thinking he’s got to find another meteor just in case his powers ever go away. Oh, sure, I’m sure that’s tons of gas meteors all over the place. Then we hop ahead another few days to Peter Parker at a space exhibit, which also happens to be attended by Gwen Stacy. She thinks this is her chance to try to get to know Peter. Her interest seems really hard to buy, frankly, but hey, it’s comics.

I wonder if anyone’s done a bit about Looter being addicted to meteor gas in the intervening years. Seems like an easy joke.

Weird head on Spidey in that 5th panel! The boys start dukin’ it out, and Looty knocks over some expensive equipment to goad Spider-Man into catching it so he can flee. And then, perhaps a sign of his growing discontent, Ditko recycles a Spider-Man figure from page 10 on page 12:

And not even a particularly good one! Spidey just closes his eyes and uses his Spider Sense to keep following, which makes Looter panic. He knocks over what is clearly a rocket, but which Stan has Spider-Man identify as “that giant iron ship model,” once again forcing Spider-Man to catch a big heavy thing so he can flee. Righting the rocket, Spider-Man finds Looter escaped, and then disappears himself, and soon Peter Parker is walking out of the exhibit. This time, he does see Gwen, and tries to talk to her, but she’s disgusted by what a coward she thinks he is (“It’s hard to believe that anyone so manly-looking could be a coward!” Wut), and Peter has no idea what he did to upset her as she leaves. Elsewhere, Fester is thinking he’ll have to, like, have a plan next time he goes for that meteor. Good idea, buddy!

However, Looter doesn’t make a play for the rock for a week! This issue covers so much time! They coulda done a year of Untold Tales during this issue alone. But when he finally does make a move, it’s because they’re moving the exhibit, and he plans to snatch the rock right off the pallet it’s being moved on. But Spider-Man has been watching all week for this return trip, and is on the case.

Spidey easily webs onto Looty’s balloon, but he’s being forced to fight with one hand while holding onto the web, and eventually gets kicked loose.

Some really good Spidey banter on this page.

And that’s that. He’s not the best villain ever, but he’s still kinda snappy looking under Ditko, and The Loot maybe could’ve been a decent B-tier villain. I almost have to wonder if Stan was trying to sabotage him since he & Steve were so estranged. Giving him such a bad super-name, making him this weird loser character. It’s really unusual. This month also saw release of Fantastic Four 51, “The Man… This Monster!”, widely held to be one of the single best issues of the series and in all of Marvel history. And finally this post, we have… this letter…