THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #157

"The Ghost That Haunted Octopus!"

• Writer: Len Wein
• Artist: Ross Andru
• Inker: Mike Esposito
• Print Date: June, 1976

Featuring:

Plot Summary:

This issue follows shortly after the last. It's evening, and the air is still crisp with late winter's chill. Though it's not exactly the sort of night anyone would choose to go swimming, Spider-Man is doing just that. He thinks to himself that he originally accepted the a promotional contract from Corona Motors with the intention of getting rich (Amazing Spider-Man #126), but now, under threat of being sued, he has to see what he can do to recover his "Spider-Mobile" from the bottom of the river which it sank (Amazing Spider-Man #141). Unfortunately, at the bottom of the river, he finds a side-view mirror from the car, but no sign of the rest of the vehicle. He doesn't think that the current could have carried it off and surfaces for more air. He's still in deep water though because two officers, gun drawn, await our hero when he surfaces. "You get your hands up-- fast!" he hears, but with two quick flicks of his wrists, he simultaneously pulls both officers into the water via two weblines while he hoists himself up on the dock. Apologizing to the officers for the dunking, he swings off into the night.

And since we've all seen Spidey do his web-slinging number a time or two before, let's slide on over to Manhattan's Upper East Side and join some other members of our sparkling cast. Flash pulls up to Harry who's leaving his therapy session. Flash offers Harry a ride back to their new pad, and Harry thanks him commenting on how exhausting his therapy sessions leave him. "How's the brain-drain going anyway?" Flash asks, and Harry replies, "Just swell... I still can't remember anything that happened during the weeks right after my father died..." Interrupting the conversation by knocking at the window, Liz Allen asks if anyone is still awake in the car. Liz stopped by to thank Harry (popular guy today!) for standing up to Mirage for her, and asks if Harry would like a cup of coffee. The couple wanders off leaving poor Flash with a puzzled look in the car.

While, in a pleasantly-decorated apartment in Forest Hills, Doctor Octopus, still scruffy and in his dirty derelict clothes, is still at Aunt May's. He thanks May for holding some of things all these months. While Doc Oct showers and shaves, he thinks of how lucky he is to have May Parker. With a good scrubbing and a fresh set of clothes, Doctor Octopus lives again!

On which note, we'll jump about an hour ahead and prepare to shift into high gear. Peter drops by Aunt May carrying a bucket of chicken from Colonel Chicken, and he's understandably shocked to see Doctor Octavius sitting on the couch having tea. The Doctor and Peter shake heads and make forced attempts as pleasantries while May looks on. Sending May out of the room to fetch his red sweater, Peter demands to know what Doctor Octopus is up to. Doctor Octopus insists he means May no harm, and says, "Please, give me a piece of that chicken -- and I'll explain everything."

Flashback: Hammerhead and Doctor Octopus face off inside a nuclear power plant on an uranium-rich island that Aunt May apparently inherited. Doc Oct warns Hammerhead that the slightest vibration could set off a chain reaction, but Hammerhead charges Octopus anyways. Predictably, he misses, and wedges his head in some reactor electronics setting off a chain reaction. Doctor Octopus flees in fear, and seeing a shielded escape tube, wedges himself in it surrounding himself with his indestructible mechanical arms. The reactor explodes vaporizing the entire island. Doctor Octopus awoke to find himself washed up on the mainland and returned to New York hoping to re-establish his criminal empire. But, something changed his plans...

May returns once she remembers that Peter doesn't own a red sweater, and Octopus and Peter cut their discussion short. Suddenly, the ghost of Hammerhead (believe it or not!) appears vowing revenge on Octopus for killing him. Apparently this is the mysterious shadow that's been pursuing Octopus for the past few issues. As May faints, Octopus panics and carries May off through the wall of her apartment building. Hammerhead's ghost fades away at that point leaving Peter with no choice but to change into his fighting outfit and pursuit Octopus.

Following a trail of automobile accidents, Spider-Man swiftly catches up to Octopus and charges. Ducking at the last second, Octopus causes Spider-Man to overshoot, crashing into a nearby apartment. Fleeing from an angry co-ed and her police dog, Spidey resumes pursuit. Tracking Octopus and his hostage along Queens Boulevard, across the 59th Street Bridge, and into Midtown Manhattan, Spider-Man finally overtakes the pair. Lashing out with his tentacle, Octopus catches Spider-Man in mid-swing and knocks him into a nearby wall. Recovering quickly, Spider-Man sprays Octopus with a glob of webbing in the goggles, swoops in to snatch May away from Octopus, and deposits the still-unconscious form of Aunt May on a nearby rooftop. As Octopus attempts to entangle our hero, Spidey grabs the two tentacles, and a stalemate of strength begins. Unfortunately Spider-Man's endurance isn't up to that of Doc's tentacles, and Spider-Man ends up tossed to the ground. As he struggles to recover, a bunch of would-be vigilantes, hoping to collect the Bugle's reward for capturing Spider-Man, mobs Spidey pinning him to the ground as Octopus absconds with May again.

As Spider-Man shrugs off his intended capturers, he follows Doc Oct up the side of the Pan Am Building. At this moment, both of Spider-Man's web shooters come up dry and he wastes precious time running up the building. Doctor Octopus' luck holds as a copter swoops in and lands on the building. Disposing of the previous passengers, Octopus drags May into the helicopter and forces the pilot to take off. At this moment, Spider-Man reaches the building top, and quickly swapping web cartridges, he manages to snag the departing vehicle with a webline. Dangling from the webline, Spider-Man is carried off outside the city. Instead of crawling up and continuing the fight in the helicopter, potentially risking Aunt May, he decides to hang tight until he finds out where Octopus intends on going. Unfortunately, at this point, Octopus has noticed the extra weight, and with a quick clip of his pinchers, snips the webline dropping Spider-Man into freefall a mile in the air.

Comments:

Well, the return of a classic villain and a not-nearly-as-classic Spider-Man can't be a bad thing, can it? Overall, it was an entertaining storyline despite seriously improbabilities. With System Of A Down's "Toxicity" playing in my apartment, let's see how part one of this three-parter stacks up. Oh, since this CD JUST ended, change of music. Talking Heads "Sand in the Vaseline" greatest hits disk #1.

Plot Analysis:

Ok, we start the issue with a mystery: "What happened to the Spider-Mobile?" Of course, the real mystery is "Why is Spider-Man afraid of being sued?" and "Who goes diving into the Hudson River in the late winter?" Unfortunately, we don't have answers for any of these mysteries, and I suspect the latter two will remain unanswered. We also see that Spider-Man is still not going to win any popularity contests as his accosted by two officers at the docks. They claim that Spider-Man is wanted for questioning, but he spends so much time wanted by the police, it's impossible to tell at any given moment what he is wanted for exactly. There's an interest bit of acrobatics as Spider-Man pulls himself on the dock and police in the water with a single tug of his weblines. At first glance, that looks impossible, but if you think of the weblines as elastic rubber bands instead of a rope, it is actually possible.

Ok, my next major upgrade to the site is going to involve setting up pages for Spider-Man's supporting cast. I don't think that it is going to be detailed as the villain's web pages (listing every appearance of every guest star), but it might at least reference major plot points with each. For starters, Harry Osborn (Dammit, I have problems spelling his last name) returned to the fold a few issues ago, and in this issue he and Liz Allen go out on their first date. Of course, true fans will know that Harry and Liz end up married and have a child before Harry's madness finally causes his death.

Why do the women fall all over Doctor Octopus? Well, you know what they say about a man who has large tentacles... Ok, I probably shouldn't have gone there. Actually, I suspect Aunt May is just in awe of a doctor that makes house calls. I haven't read the issues detailing Aunt May and Doctor Octopus' romance and near-marriage, but I'm looking forward to seeing what kindled their romance in the first part. I really have difficulties understanding what Aunt May would see in master criminal/madmen/super villain, but their must be a logical explanation. And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

And we come to the BEST part of the WHOLE issue. It's like a bad homage to "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" except Aunt May is no Katharine Houghton and Doctor Octopus would never be mistaken for Sidney Poitier. Anyways, Peter drops by and has a nice chat with the good Doctor. We have a nice flashback explaining how Doctor Octopus survived an atomic explosion while Peter tries to figure out how to start a fight without Aunt May getting hurt.

I have to say that it's funny and also annoying seeing Aunt May depicted as a doddering, senile, faint-of-heart elderly woman. Unfortunately the write saw fit to significantly include her in this three-issue storyline, but in all three issues her biggest contributions are fainting at the first sign of danger, and being ignore by the writer until it absolutely necessary to include her again. I can't count the number of fight scenes over the next few issues where she's present but completely ignored unless someone is pointing a gun to her head. But, strangely enough, she's the one driving the whole storyline. In this issue, she's the reason Pete finds out Doctor Octopus is still alive, and her kidnapping by Octopus is the major motivation behind Spider-Man pursuing Doctor Octopus onto a waiting helicopter. Well, her major appearance in this issue is wandering off to get Peter's red sweater at his request realizing at a convenient point later, "Peter, dear, I suddenly remembered you don't own a red sweater." She's reminds me of Al Gore when he was vice-president. You know that she's around, but you never really pay much attention to what she's doing because there's so much more interesting things happening elsewhere. In this regard, I think Aunt May would make a great master criminal.

Hammerhead's ghost makes a brief appearance letting us know what's been tormenting Octopus these past few issues. I think I liked it better in this issue when he was just thought to be a ghost instead of later in the storyline where it turns out that he was just knocked "out of phase" with the real world. I'll leave my rant for that until next issue though.

Finally, we get to the chase, quite literally as Spider-Man pursues Octopus and unconscious Aunt May (see what I said about her major contributions earlier???) through the city. I really liked how Octopus was shown to be a major threat instead of just a fat geek with a gadget. He fends off Spider-Man's attacks rather easily throughout this whole chase scene and makes off with Aunt May. Unfortunately, the ruthless, serious threat characterization doesn't hold up through the whole storyline, but here it's shown well. Another point in favor of the book is the character's goals and motivations are pretty clear, and you aren't left wondering "Well, why the hell would he be doing that?" Hammerhead apparently wants revenge for his death (Which turns out to be a ruse more than anything next issue). Doctor Octopus wants to escape from the ghost that's haunting him. Spider-Man wants to rescue Aunt May. Aunt May is a senile old bat which apparently excuses any amount of irrational behavior.

Art Review:

Ross Andru's art is solid as always. I love that fact that his backgrounds are detailed enough to give character to even the most briefly shown areas. For example, Spider-Man at the dock is a three-page intro story, but the two panels showing the dock area really give it some character. Actually, it reminds me of the docks of San Francisco in that it appears to be kind of a trendy "old world looking" shopping area. His small-scale proportions are on target, and even his large-scale depictions (which I've had complains about in past issues) aren't bad. Each character has their own distinctive appearance, and you aren't left trying to figure out "who's this again?" Plus, he does a decent job with facial expressions and such.

Action Factor:

Not much action in this issue, but of course, much of it was spent just setting up the story. The chase scene between Doctor Octopus and Spider-Man was a good battle, and it really displayed Doctor Octopus' speed, intelligence, and threat potential really well. And of course, we're left with the gratuitous cliff-hanger of Spider-Man plummeting to his death.

Spider-Villain lessons 101:

Tip #1:
Ok, there really wasn't much to say about this issue. Maybe a couple of small points. Doctor Octopus shows how to really fight Spider-Man effectively: keep him off-balance and at a distance. Octopus' arms are wonderful devices for keeping Spider-Man at arm's length (pardon the pun), and all-in-all if he was this effective a combatant all the time, Spider-Man shouldn't have a chance.

Tip #2:
If you're being pursued by a haunt who's completely intangible and threatening to have his revenge, at some point, you have to swallow your fear, confront the ghost, and ask, "How exactly do you intend to do that when you can't interact with the physical world? And, since I'm asking questions, how is it that you're managing to shout at me when your intangible vocal chords (like the rest of you) shouldn't be able to set off vibrations in the air anyway?"

Tip #3:
There's dinosaurs in Vietnam!! (Gratuitous Black Sabbath reference that has nothing to do with this issue)