The art team of Jim Starlin and Bob McLeod jump into this one to help tell a story of ol JJJ sending Peter to cover a mysterious military action with a press blackout. Switching to Spider-Man, he finds a whole neighborhood full of security around The Indian Point Power Station. He easily infiltrates the security perimeter, and spends a weird time leaping among the rooftops for no apparent reason thinking about Mary Jane before he’s attacked by Captain America!
Cap only wants Spidey to leave, but our man throws a fit and decides Cap can’t tell him what to do, because we have to have the heroes fight. Cap eventually does get Spidey to leave, largely by beating him up, but then is glad he left for his own safety. Then we learn that the son of famous movie star, uh, Robert Starr was kidnapped and brought to this place while on his way to get life saving medical treatment. But it’s worse than that…
His kidnapper turns out to be Electro, who is also going to blow up the power station? Too many schemes at once, man, pick one! He gets the drop on Cap and zaps him. Lucky for him…
Naturally. Electro can be trouble for one hero, but two of the best have him panicking in no time, so he grabs up the kid to use as a hostage. Then Cap reveals all his cards:
The Plague! Electro totally freaks out and decides the best thing to do is syphon all the power out of the power station to burn away the plague. I mean, I guess there’s some logic there. But he finds he can’t disconnect from the power, and ends up blowing the place up with himself in it. Hey, mission accomplished, buddy!
I love the casual reference to Dum Dum’s time chasing Godzilla around in Marvel’s short-lived Godzilla comic. It seems so insane from here, but it was just good continuity at the time. Apparently, this was envisioned as an issue of MTU well before it ended up being ASM 187. That explains the unusual art team and the total lack of Peter Parker story besides a quick flashback to him being sent on the assignment.