PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #5

"Spider-Kill!"

• Writer: Archie Goodwin
• Artist: Sal Buscema
• Inker: Mike Esposito
• Print Date: Apr., 1977

Featuring:

Plot Summary:

We open in the bottom of an elevator shaft in an unfinished office building. It's just been rocked by a grenade burst... as have the costume combatants (Vulture and Spider-Man) caught within the shaft. The Hitman has come to interfere. He's been paid to rob the Vulture of his revenge by destroying Spider-Man himself.

Behind his red mask, Peter Parker hears, but he's stunned and unable to act. Unlike Spidey, the Vulture is most capable of acting, and he leaps to prevent the Hitman from spoiling his moment of triumph. As the Vulture and Hitman grapple and bullets from the Hitman's weapon scatter everywhere, Spider-Man recovers and charges between the two. Spider-Man dives outside as a volley of bullets heads his way and makes his way to the roof to recover from the electrical shock he received last issue. The Vulture and Hitman continue their battle until the Hitman sprays mace in the Vulture's eyes forcing him to take to the sky.

With both of his foes retreating, the Hitman calls in to report to his employer, Mr. Morgan, that the first encounter was not a success. However, the Hitman is still confident that he can pull this hit off, and to that end, he's planted a tracer device on the Vulture and on Spider-Man. Seeing the Vulture flee, Spider-Man decides that a hot shower is in order before pursuing his foes.

While Mr. Parker ponders that, let's look in on some of his friends and a certain restaurant we've visited before. Flash Thompson and Mary Jane are having dinner at a particular Oriental style restaurant and asking about Sha Shan - a girl that Flash met in Vietnam and he swears he saw here earlier. However, the restaurant owners insists that no such person works here. Annoyed, he heads upstairs in the restaurant to a certain private room where Sha Shan sits silently and sadly.

As MJ and Flash leave the restaurant, the discuss going to talk to Peter and get his thoughts on the mystery of Sha-Shan.

But at this particular moment, Petey's thoughts are elsewhere. As he retrieves his webbed clothes, he discovered he affixed them under a leaky pipe. His clothes are wet and frozen solid creating "a wash and wear bowling ball".

Meanwhile, in an equipment studded compartment, twin scanning screens are at work as is the Hitman as he studies them. Now that he's tested the Vulture's and Spider-Man's capabilities, he can modify his weapons accordingly. The rest is just a matter of waiting. The Hitman thinks back to the old days and how he could never teach "them" how to wait: "They were either naturals and knew it instinctively, or they never learned... and died for it."

Home! There's not place like it, and the Board of Health is immensely grateful! Despite the apartment's shortcomings, Peter muses that he's probably been happier here than anywhere since he, Aunt May, and Uncle Ben shared the old house in Forest Hills. He drops the frozen wad of clothing and goes to change. If only he had clean clothes to change into! Nothing can be salvage from the dirty laundry thanks to a mildew infestation. He's gotta go with what he's got, and he starts soaking the frozen clothes in boiling water. "KNOK KNOK KNOK" - Flash and MJ arrive. In costume and panicking, Peter covers himself up with a blanket before answering the door. While he greets MJ and Flash, smoke starts pouring in the from kitchen. He's semi-clean clothes have shrunk and are ruined.

Within his private jet, the Hitman sees that Spider-Man's blip has been stationary for awhile. The waiting is over, and he is ready for the hunt.

One hour later, the Vulture stares down at the snow-crested city thinking, brooding, hungering for a vengeance that has eluded him, become too complex. Then, a volley of bullets, fired from below, startles him off his roost. The Hitman speeds away from the scene on a motorcycle with the Vulture in hot pursuit.

Meantime, Peter convinces MJ and Flash to leave his apartment when the sounds of a wreck outside gets his attention. The Vulture has caught up with the Hitman and knocked him off his bike. As the Vulture gloats, the Hitman thinks to himself that the battle should they should be close enough if the battle is loud and long. A flare burst deters the Vulture for a moment, but Spider-Man enters the scene swinging in and ambushing the Hitman from behind. As Spider-Man prepares to put the Hitman down for the count, the Vulture swoops in. Spider-Man dodges and then snags the Vulture with a webline to go along for the ride.

Seeing his opponents leaving the scene, again, the Hitman fires a boomerang blade to his rifle, and with a well placed shot, severs Spider-Man's webline. Spider-Man breaks his fall with a quick web-net and realizes he can't fight both the Vulture and the Hitman at once. Before he can finish his thought, the Vulture comes back around and clocks him with a well-placed punch. Spider-Man has no time to recover from that before he falls under fire from Hitman. Hurting, Spider-Man leaps at the opportunity to flee the scene.

Hitman takes a moment to check in with Mr. Morgan and report that the plan is on schedule before moving on to the finale of the hunt.

Central Park, site of extensive subway construction and a last stand for Spider-Man. Spider-Man and the Vulture battle atop a crane. Spider-Man is obviously tired and faltering. His legs buckle leaving him open to the Vulture's attack. As the Vulture swoops in for the kill, a single shot rings out knocking Spider-Man from the crane. Spider-Man isn't finished yet and fires a web-line leaving him dangling and semi-conscious from the crane. The Vulture flies in for a finishing blow as the Hitman sights in for one final shot. As the trigger is irrevocably squeezed, Spider-Man springs to live. In a blur, he grabs the Vulture and swings him around putting the Vulture's power pack directly in line with the fatal shot. Without his power pack to keep him aloft, the Vulture plummets into the excavation below where the police can later claim him.

Spider-Man faces his final foe and swings his way through a wild burst of automatic gunfire. When Spider-Man reaches the Hitman's position, he finds nothing. With his hit spoiled, the Hitman decides against fighting for free. Spider-Man removes the tracer he found earlier, and heads for home before he has to explain to MJ and Flash how a clothesless Peter Parker could be out roaming the streets.

Comments:

Oh good grief. The Hitman. Who is this guy? He acts like the Punisher's less-fashionable and more immoral cousin. In terms of skills and methods, the two would be virtually indistinguishable. The Hitman's favorite method of attack is his automatic weapon (and apparently attachable gadgets), but he carries hand grenades, sidearm, Mace, and a flash gun for backup.

So, the Hitman was hired by a Mr. Morgan. Mr. Morgan was humiliated by the Vulture last issue, so he hired the Hitman to get his revenge. The best way for Mr. Morgan to get his revenge was to hire the Hitman to kill the Vulture's nemesis Spider-Man. The thinking is that doing so will deprive the Vulture the satisfaction of killing Spider-Man himself.

I'm not repeating this for your benefit, but for mine. That's such a convoluted (and ridiculous) plotline that I can't believe it actually saw print (much less spanned two issues).

The Vulture is a tough old bird. Tough enough that a grenade concussion (inside an enclosed elevator shaft) doesn't even slow him down. He wrestles with Hitman. The Hitman has his weapons, but it terms of hand-to-hand combat, the Vulture seems to have the edge in speed and strength. Their fracas gives Spider-Man enough time to recover. In an atypical move, Spider-Man webs the Hitman guns and starts swinging it around on a webline as a missile/improvised weapon. A blow to the head slows the Vulture, but the Hitman has the speed and reflexes to dodge. Ok, so the Hitman has the edge in reflexes.

Here's something that's bothering me. Mr. Morgan is, essentially, a two-bit "gang lord" hoping to become the next Kingpin. He's not there yet, so presumably he doesn't have nearly the resources that Kingpin would have. How does he afford a Hitman who, apparently, charges enough that he can afford his own private plane and high-tech toys like a two-way video communicator. Keep in mind that this is 1976 technology, and not today's.

Flash continues to harass the restaurant owner looking for Sha-Shan. I don't know the history here (but I do know how it ends), so I really can't say much about that.

I did like the "winter backgrounds" in this issue. There's several inches of snow everywhere. Spider-Man comes back to find his clothes wet and frozen into a ball of ice. It adds a feel to the city and provides something besides the generic "summer" season.

Spider-Man returns home to no clean clothes. In fact, no clothes in wearable conditions. It makes one wonder how long he's been putting off laundry if all his dirty clothes are infested with mildew. Actually, it makes one wonder how long he's been wearing the supposedly "clean" clothes if he's got nothing remotely wearable at all. On the other hand, Peter's a bachelor. A real bachelor would think nothing of putting on rank clothes and going out to do laundry in them. On the plus side, a true bachelor would probably come up with the creative solution of boiling his clothes on the stove to clean them. Having Peter stuck in his costume adds an artificial sense of foreboding when MJ and Flash come over and Peter is forced to answer the door with a blanket covering his costume underneath. The scene might've been better if we actually saw Peter dealing with trying to keep his costume covered, but instead we cut out and don't cut back until Flash and MJ are leaving. Hearing about Peter trying to keep his costume from showing for an hour is a lot less interesting than actually seeing the scene.

This whole issue really seems badly paced. The 'off-action' scenes feel like their tossed as filler and just something to 'get through' until we can get back to the fight. Indeed, we had 12 pages of fight scenes and only 4 pages of "other". And much of the other pages is just drek. Did we really need a page of the Hitman checking in, preparing weapons, and showing his private aircraft? I mean, some character development might've been interesting but these pages established nothing other than "Yeah, he's pretty much a Punisher-clone for hire."

And what is this about tracers? I can see where, rolling around the floor, the Hitman could've easily attached a tracer to the Vulture. Reading and re-reading this issue, the Hitman and Spider-Man were only in close proximity once when Spider-Man charged the Hitman and knocked him aside. If the Hitman had the tracer in hand, and had the reflexes and presence of mind to attach it, I suppose it could be possible that he got it attached. It seems a bit of stretch though, but it is a more plausible explanation than then Hitman throwing the tracer and hitting Spider-Man when he couldn't hit Spider-Man at any other time with his rifle and sidearm.

So, the Hitman is savvy enough to lure the Vulture to Spider-Man. Again, probably would've been easy to kill him, but this is a "creative" method of getting revenge. Apparently, the Hitman's motorcycle on snowy city streets is fast enough to keep him ahead of the Vulture - who is, by the way, FLYING and not subject to slippery patches of ice, turns in the road, traffic, traffic signals, pedestrians, or a hundred other things a motorcycle might encounter on the street. Oh wait, I missed it, his motorcycle has rockets attached. Well, that explains everything!

The Hitman underestimates the Vulture because the Vulture catches him one block sooner than the Hitman was planning. Do you get the sense I find it hard to believe that the Hitman could know the Vulture's speed, anticipate any traffic problems he might find, and plot the chase to within one block. Maybe that's something else he has in common with the Punisher - seeming omniscient and near infallibility.

Oh, and an ability to withstand crushing blows. Spider-Man swings down from the sky, completely blindsiding the Hitman, striking him with two feet to the back, and the Hitman not only survives, but is barely stunned. Apparently he had the foresight to pad his backside which probably helps to keep him warm in inclement weather.

Ok, I'm getting myself worked up way too much over the lameness of this character. If everything else wasn't bad enough, he shoves a "boomerang blade" into the barrel of his rifle, fires it, and manages to sever Spider-Man's webline with it at a range of about two blocks. OK, I can't take anymore. I'm covering my eyes and pretending this page never happened.

Later, we see the Hitman chasing Spider-Man away with gunfire. For a supposed "professional", this guy spends a lot of time intentionally scaring his prey with well-placed bullets. I'm thinking if I'm pursuing Spider-Man, the Vulture, or any other super-powered target with nothing more than an automatic rifle and my wits, I'm going to take any opportunity to finish the fight that I can.

In another waste of space - could apply to the majority of this issue - the Hitman spends half a page "reporting in" to Mr. Morgan (this is during the combat mind you) and viewing his 'tracer radar' on his bike.

When I first read this issue, I couldn't figure out why Spider-Man was so groggy. He's stumbling, falling to his knees, and generally not putting up much of a fight. Later, I realize that it was all a ruse. Spider-Man lured the Hitman in and maneuvered him AND the Vulture into a position where the Hitman SHOOTS out the Vulture's power-pack by mistake and takes him out of the fight. I don't think there are Chess Grandmasters who can plot ahead and predict their opponent's actions this well. Thankfully, Spider-Man's plan works (thus sparing us another issue of this inanity) and Vulture plummets helpless to the ground. The Hitman proves himself to be either very fast or very sneaky as he manages to flee the scene and escape capture in the few seconds it takes Spider-Man to get to his position.

And they all lived happily ever after.