BHOC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #172

This was the second issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN that came in the SUPERHERO GIFT PACK that I was given for Christmas in 1978. This was another issue where I had read the concluding chapter already, so this set-up part was just a little bit perfunctory. This was the issue that introduced the Rocket Racer, a bit of a throwaway character in this tale who proved to have a much longer shelf life than you would have imagined back in the 1970s. In this first story, especially as depicted by artist Ross Andru, the Racer comes across as a lot older and more malevolent than he would actually turn out to be.

I mean, just look at him on this splash page. That guy is in his mid-thirties and older than Peter Parker, right? Not so, not as later stories would reveal. But that’s the way it goes with character development sometimes. This was the only Rocket Racer story that creator Len Wein wrote before leaving the book, so it was other hands who filled out the Racer’s persona and backstory in later issues. For this issue, though, the Racer’s only there to provide the necessary quotient of action, and he’s caught and dispensed with by Spidey in four pages–not the most auspicious debut ever.

And then we begin to get to the crux of the issue, which doesn’t concern Peter Parker so much as it does members of his supporting cast. In this period, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN had just about the best cast in comics, a whole slew of regular people whose lives intersected with Peter’s and who gave his world texture and flavor. As the page above shows, over the last couple of years, writer Len Wein had made a couple out of early supporting player Liz Allen and the son of the Green Goblin, Harry Osborn. They both originated during different periods in the strip’s history, but this seemed to work, and gave a bit of a reason for Liz to constantly be hanging around with the gang. Here, Liz, who works as a nurse, is spooked by a mysterious figure in her apartment. A figure whose identity is really no mystery to those who are familiar with her past history.

Speaking of that expansive cast, a good portion of this issue is dedicated to them. Peter heads over to the Daily Bugle to score some scratch for photos of his costumed alter-ego taking down the Rocket Racer. Jonah is interested in them until secretary Glory Grant tells him that Dr. Marla Madison is there to see him. Jonah met Marla when he hired her to build yet another robotic Spider-Slayer for him so that he could track down the wall-crawler, but since that time, the pair has grown steadily closer. In other words, just like Harry and Liz, Marla was now an extended cast member as well through her relationship with Jonah.

But it’s time to start getting down to plot, and so Peter receives a call at the Daily Bugle from Liz Allan, who has been arrested. He heads down to the police precinct and learns that Liz was caught stealing drugs and chemicals from the hospital at which she works. What’s more, despite having summoned Peter (not wanting to upset her boyfriend Harry), she’s still remarkably tight-lipped when Peter asks her what’s going on. So he figures that this is a thing for Spider-Man to look into. Web-swinging over to Liz’s apartment, he finds his first revelatory clue in a series of footprints that have literally been burned into the floor. That tips the wall-crawler off as to who he’ll be facing.

it is, of course, the Molten Man, Liz’s step-brother who was turned into a Spidey villain some years ago, and whose metallic body is slowly immolating itself. He’s trying to work out a cure and he needed those chemicals Liz was swiping to affect a cure. But he’s also half-mad from his condition, and so when Spidey finds him attempting to pilfer from the hospital himself, it very quickly turns into a throwdown–this being a Marvel title, no less would be acceptable. Their battle swiftly ignites the area around them, and suddenly Spidey is needing to find a way to put out the fire before the whole hospital burns to the ground.

And Spidey is able to smother the flames with his webbing. But this gives the Molten Man the opportunity to clobber him with a heavy supply shelf and make his getaway. It takes a second for Spidey to extricate himself from his position–and by the time that he does so, hospital security has turned up, guns drawn. The web-slinger is clearly going to be on the hook for attempting to burn down the hospital. To Be Continued! This issue is a good example of the qualities that made Spider-Man so popular throughout the 1970s: a cast of characters whose lives you cared about, a more ground-level urban perspective than most other comics, and a hero who was constantly having to struggle for his victories, in both his personal and super hero lives. This isn’t the best issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ever, but it does feel emblematic of the period and the sort of material that was being served up. And all in 17 pages at a shot.