THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #132

"The Master Plan Of The Molten Man"

• Writer: Gerry Conway
• Artist: John Romita & Paul Reinman
• Inker: Tony Montellaro
• Print Date: May, 1974

Featuring:

Plot Summary:

Winter in New York: There's a certain clammy chill in the evening air, a windy bite that can eat through the warmest clothing even the skin-tight costume of Spider-Man! Just when things seemed to be going right for our hero, he's coming down with a cold. Still, he's gotten things worked out with Aunt May, Johnny Storm has finally finished that awful Spider-Mobile, and he's put Doc Ock out of commission for good. Spotting two of New York's Finest outside the Museum of Natural History, Spidey investigates. It appears that someone smashed out through the front door, and smashed/melted their way in through a skylight, the metal and glass is scorched by some great heat. Apparently, all that's missing though is a couple of meteor remnants. Following footsteps, Spider-Man ends up face to face with the two officer who, of course, mistake him for the real thief and open fire.

Soon, high over the upper east side, in that section Manhattan where Peter Parker shares an apartment with Harry Osborn, Peter changes out of his web-slinging costume in the relative privacy of an alleyway. Worried about Harry's recent erratic behavior and paranoia, Peter's decided to play it safe and change outfits a couple of blocks from home despite the frigid temperatures. Lost in his own thoughts, Peter walks the three blocks Lexington Avenue to his apartment not noticing the mysterious female figure approaching him.

So much for the prologue, Act One begins now: In the Lower West Side off Ninth Avenue, a time-worn tenement is the location of a confrontation between a mysterious Mr. Raxton and his landlady. "Get out my room!" he shouts as he kicks her out of his hotel room. IN a fit of revenge after being treated so rudely, the woman immediately calls the Daily Bugle with a 'hot tip' about her rude tenant.

End Act One, Scene One: Now, it's time for Scene two which takes up where the prologue left off as our mysterious female is revealed as, none other than, Liz Allen. Liz approaches Peter with a matter of life and death, but her fears and confessions have to wait as she's nearly collapsed from exhaustion. Peter brings her to the nearby apartment of Mary Jane where passes out like a light. It's evident she hasn't slept in days and was on the verge of hysteria when she found Peter. Peter's mind flashes back over his history with Liz Allen, but I'll spare you the details (see Liz's page for a brief overview). MJ offers to keep an Liz and tells Peter to come back tomorrow.

So much for scene two, act one, let's take our leave of Peter, as he heads downtown and cuts to his intended destination, the offices of the Daily Bugle, where we pick up this last scene at the close of our first act. Ned gets directions and catches a cross-town cab to the Lower West Side. As he arrives, an explosion rocks the building. Curtain. Act two begins soon.

Ok, you've seen the prologue, you've seen act one, now it's time to lift the curtain on... Act Two: Within the smoking remains of the room rented to the man named Raxton, a shuffling figure moves. "Failed... Failed again," the figure mumbles. As the figure moves through the ruined building, wood sizzles and linoleum burns at his passing. Below, Ned Leeds hustles up the stairs to investigate the source of the explosion. Finding the stunned form of the landlady, he pauses only to be ambushed from behind!

At that moment, back with our hero, Peter stops in at the Bugle to check out their morgue on a certain villain he once fought, but instead, Robbie sends him out to get pictures of the tenement Ned went out to. Always looking for his next rent check, he changes into his costume and starts of across town.

In case you hadn't guessed, that was scene two. Come with us now to scene three where Spider-Man finds the unconscious form of Ned Leeds lying amid the rubble of a trashed tenement. Ned has some burns on his neck, but is otherwise unharmed and should be OK. Before Spider-Man can go for help though...

Spider-Sense: That uncanny ability to sense danger, peculiar to our wall-crawling protagonist producing a tingling sensation that warns him to leap aside -- just one second to late. Spider-Man turns and is swatted to the ground by the creature other men have named the Molten Man! Avoiding Raxton's burning form, Spidey hurls rubble at his foe, but the Molten Man has new tricks up his sleeve. His burning form easily reduces rubble to ash, and he follows up his initial blow with a flurry of powerful punches. Spidey's agility keeps him out of the Molten Man's grasp, and spotting an opening, he slams the Molten Man through the nearest wall. Exploding like a bursting bomb, smoke fills the darkened room, and in that smoke, something moves, rises, and snarls: "No longer am I the creature you once fought. My body has indeed evolved!"

Not willing to admit defeat, Spider-Man fashions a web-glove to protect himself from the heat and pummels Raxton with a powerful roundhouse. His blow hurt but didn't slow down the Molten Man, so he resorts to another familiar trick by smothering his foe's smoldering form in webbing. Between MM's strength and burning form, the webbing is torn like tissue, and Raxton charges. As Spidey dodges out of the way, Raxton's momentum carries him through the second-floor wall and out on the street. Landing a fire hydrant, the resulting cloud of steam covers his escape.

Act three, scene one: Spider-Man hoists Ned's unconscious form up and carries him to the nearest hospital. Peter changes into his street clothes, and he carries the still form of his friend into the emergency ward. He's stunned to learn that Ned is suffering from radiation poisoning. As Peter hears the news, his head begins to spin and he collapses to the ground. The radiation hits his own radioactive blood, eating at him, dissolving his energy, destroying him! Is this the end of Spider-Man???

Comments:

Whoo, I'm in Indianapolis this time enjoying happy hour at the Embassy Suites. Got some beer, popcorn, and I'm ready to roll. I'll be commuting down here a bit in the near future, so hopefully, I can get some serious updates done. It's ambitious, but it'd be nice to link up my two runs of Spider-Man (somewhere around issue #148). I have a feeling that this issues review is going to be somewhat short. The comic as a whole didn't strike me as particularly good or bad. In dedication to my friend Heather, I'm going to try to use the word "squeegee" at least once this issue.

Plot Analysis:

So, we start out with Spider-Man, swinging around in his tights in the dead of winter, complaining of a cold. Not much happens in the first couple of pages other than the writer uses Spidey's monologue to recap the last few issues: Aunt May rescued, Doctor Octopus out of commission, and the Spider-Mobile is finished. Spidey spots two officers investigating a break-in at the Museum of Natural History. This is no ordinary break-in though. The thief left melted holes in a skylight on his way in, a melted door on his way out, and a melted glass case. There's no explanation over why the Molten Man broke in through the skylight. I guess that's just the way things are done, and he didn't want to go against type. No explanation either about the meteor remnants that he stole either. I haven't read next issue yet (wouldn't want to spoil any surprises!), but I'd be surprised if any explanation was forth coming. Spidey comments several times that "only one man could have done something like this!" No explanation from Spidey over whether he's right or not, but I have to say, Spidey has a good memory. I don't believe the Molten Man has been seen in over a hundred issues of continuity.

Ok, silliness ensues when the two officers see Spider-Man. They immediately open fire on him. NO 'Halt'. No 'surrender'. And definitely no threatening moves on Spidey's part. I hope the museum's insurance policy covers random bullet holes as well as melted doors and windows.

Now, Harry's been acting odd, but you'd think Peter's spider-sense would warn him when he's being spied on. I don't why he's worried about getting caught changing in his bedroom. We'll have to see if his behavior continues over the next couple of issues or at least until we see Harry in his new alter ego. It'll be fun to see how Harry figures Peter's secret identity. Regardless, Peter walking on the street is a good way to re-introduce the nearly forgotten Liz Allen.

Skipping over to the Molten Man's current hangout, I'd like to point out a significant artist's mistake. He portrays the Molten Man 'in disguise'. The Molten Man looks like a slim man with dark hair, a goatee, and normal skin. I assume that he's wearing a disguise at least because it's never commented on in this issue. In any case, all the make-up in world is not going to change the Molten Man's build. The man we see on these pages is fairly slim and wearing a suit. However, as seen later in the issue, the Molten Man is big, bulky, and radiates a terrible heat that would be noticed by anyone close by. I have no clue what the deal is here. Plus, for all his intelligence (he used to be a scientist ), you'd think he'd be trying to keep a lower profile rather than drawing attention to himself by berating the landlady and making it obvious that he's got some hidden agenda. If he hadn't blown up the building later in the issue, this surely would've been his undoing as the landlady leaves his apartment and immediate calls the Daily Bugle to send a reporter over to investigate.

We're back to Peter and Liz. The writer has some problems here portraying Liz. At first, she approaches Peter with a matter of "life and death"! However, her and Peter retire to a nearby park bench where it's implied they have some sort of conversation re-hashing the past and getting caught up. Next, she's back to being portrayed as frightened out of her wits. Finally, in Mary Jane's apartment, exhaustion catches up with her, and she collapses into a deep sleep before explaining what the life and death matter was. All this occurs over the space of not even a full page. I think the characterization could've been handled much better.

We enter a brief flashback to explain who Liz Allen is and why she hasn't been seen in these pages in a long time.

Jumping over to the Daily Bugle, acting on the landlady's hot tip, Ned Leeds immediately takes off for the hotel. It seems that ornery tenants who value their privacy is worth investigating. No doubt that Ned probably would've gotten no where except he arrives just in time to witness a massive explosion coming from the hotel. Ned puts two and two together and comes up with the correct conclusion that the explosion and mysterious tenant he's hear to check out are related. Hustling up the stairs, he find the stunned landlady. Before he can get any further however, the shadowy and smoldering form of the Molten Man (still unidentified to the reader) ambushes him.

At that moment (probably some time earlier judging from the time lapse of Spidey's travels), Peter gets assigned to follow Ned to take pictures of the hotel. Peter's reaction is the same one I had when Robbie sent Ned to investigate this call: "Are you kidding?" Never one to turn down a pay-check (even if it means not following up on his investigation), Peter changes costumes and hustles over to the West Side. He finds the unconscious form of Ned, but the writer neglects to explain what happened to the landlady. I like to think that the Molten Man finished her off, but that's not covered 'in issue'. (That'd probably a little dark for the Comic Code.) Peter also comments about the lack of police and firefighters at the scene 'in a neighborhood like this' it figures that the cops don't hurry to investigate mysterious explosion. He does finish the thought of with a '...but this is ridiculous'. I dunno how bad that neighborhood is supposed to be, but I have to imagine that an explosion powerful enough to blow the second-floor of an old brownstone in the middle of the afternoon is going to attract all sorts of attention. Finally, the villain of the hour is revealed, and the real action of the issue begins.

Overall the Molten Man is a pretty worthy adversary. His invulnerability makes him tough to put down, and his scorching heat and strength make him a contender. Spider-Man is depicted as being fairly strategic in this fight. Instead of taking the Molten Man hand-to-hand, he tries to maintain distance from his foe. When attacking with a barrage of rubble fails, Spidey goes into defensive mode, avoiding the Molten Man's blows with ease. Webbing himself up for protection against the intense heat allows Spidey to get a couple of good shots in, but these have no other affect than to anger Raxton. Finally, Spidey resorts to smothering his foe with a massive amount of webbing, but even this is ineffectual as the webbing is burned and ripped away with ease.

During the battle, Raxton rants about completing his master plan, but no explanation of said plan is forthcoming. It should also be pointed out that, if he had the stolen meteor fragments in his room, he takes off without them at the end of the fight, and only a brief mention of them is made at the end of the issue. With any luck, the Molten Man's master plan is revealed next issue, but we go no clues to what it is in this one.

Finally, the fight ends when the Molten Man crashes out of the aging building, crushes a fire hydrant, and escapes under cover of the resulting steam cloud. Spider-Man returns to rescue Ned (still no mention of the MIA landlady), and swings him off to the hospital. Finally, we get a second mention of Spider-Man's cold. He discussed this on page 1, but it hasn't be brought up (not even a sneeze) since then. The cold seems to be sappy our hero's strength though as Ned fallen form becomes a heavier and heavier burden until it's all Peter can do to get him in the emergency room. At this point, the stolen meteor fragments are mentioned again. Ned is suffering from radiation poisoning though, if my memory serves, it would take a massive amount of radiation to affect him so much that it's this obvious this early. Peter speculates that the stolen rocks must've been radioactive, but I can't believe that the museum would've displayed them if they were that radioactive. Chalk the whole last page up to pseudo-science that's often found in comic books. Finally, the issue ends with Peter collapsing leaving the reader to speculate over whether it's due to his cold or radiation sickness. Is this the end of Spider-Man? Tune in next issue to find out.

Art Review:

The art was pretty hit and miss this issue. Overall it was a bit sloppy, and I noticed that the art was a collaboration of John Romita and some Paul Reinman. I'm speculating, but I wonder if Andru got a bit behind schedule, and the editor pulled in these two to spit out the issue real quick. In any case, two particularly bad scenes stand out. The first is Mark Raxton in disguise back at the hotel. I'm sure it never occurred to anyone to wonder how the Molten Man could alter his form that radically to go incognito, but it sure made me wonder. The second scene was the scene where Ned arrives and building explodes. The view point of the panel is above and facing the building, but the angle and scale of Ned standing to the left of the panel seem really wrong. I did like the portrayal of the Molten Man this issue though: His gold metallic skin with a bit of tarnish to him, and constantly smoking and smoldering. The backgrounds of the fight in the destroyed building lent good atmosphere as well.

Action Factor:

The action took a long time to get too, but when it arrived, it was worth the wait. The issue only featured one fight instead of the formulaic two fights that past issues were featuring. After that, we're treated a full-length (6 pages) of battle, and both combatants acted fairly intelligently. Both played to their strength. Spidey tried to keep the fight at a distance, and when he did get close, took pains to protect himself from Raxton heats. Raxton tried to get the fight in close and hand-to-hand knowing his strength, boiling heat, and metallic skin would give him the edge if he could get Spidey in his clutches.

Spider-Villain lessons 101:

Tip #1:
Spider-Man is apparently very vulnerable to radiation which probably has something to do with his radioactive blood. However, the affects of radiation only affect him for an issue or so.