BHOC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #189

The next week brought another issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, this one sporting a welcome fill-in art job from John Byrne. Byrne was already becoming a favorite based on his work on X-MEN and elsewhere, and he was fast enough that he could often be called upon Jack Kirby-style to layout a fill-in art job when the regular penciler of a series got behind the eightball. In this case, finishes were provided by Jim Mooney, who had been an on-again/off-again inker on the series back to John Romita’s days, and who kept everything looking on model. John’s real value, though, was in his storytelling, and in that capacity he was the equal of the greats of Marvel’s past. He hadn’t yet made the leap to wanting to write his own material, but you could see his storyteller’s instincts at work by how he composed the events of the story. In this era in which the artists were in control of a lot of the minutia of the plotting and pacing of a story, these were important qualities to have.

In later years, writer/editor Marv Wolfman has spoken about how he was trepidatious about taking over AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, feeling that he wasn’t going to be able to replicate the character’s patter and sense of humor, and feeling more comfortable on his other assignment, FANTASTIC FOUR. But in practice, Marv was probably more successful on ASM, where he brought back a strong sense of soap opera and issue-to-issue continuity. He strove to have every issue include some meaningful change-point for Peter Parker or his supporting cast. Under Marv, the books began to once again feel like it was the ongoing chronicle of Peter Parker’s life–the addition of MARVEL TEAM-UP and PETER PARKER, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN as other regular titles starring the web-slinger had blunted that feeling for some time.

The big development that opens up this issue also served as a bit of set-up to Marv’s gradual build-up to the not-too-far-in-the-distance ASM #200. Namely, Peter Parker’s Aunt May is moved into a nursing home due to her ongoing medical woes. Peter’s often been caught up in his responsibility as Spider-Man to where he’d miss appointments to visit his Aunt, and here one of her physicians makes a snide comment in Parker’s direction about this. Peter loses his grip and almost totals the guy for it, then comes to his senses and realizes that he’s acting like a bit of a jerk. It’s a good little moment.

Elsewhere, J. Jonah Jameson is dealing with his own pressures. His son John Jameson has been abducted from the hospital, and the word Robbie Robertson has picked up from his sources indicates that the party responsible holds a grudge against both Jameson and Spider-Man. Marla Madison, the woman who built the fourth Spider-Slayer for Jonah and who would one day marry him, comforts him as he grapples with his helplessness. Back on the streets, Spider-Man comes across a robbery in progress and crashes in. But just a second later, a S.W.A.T. team simultaneously bursts in, and Spider-Man’s involvement almost causes a tragedy to happen. The S.W.A.T. leader tells Spidey to vamoose, that they don’t need the help of blundering amateurs. The wall-crawler may no longer be actively wanted by the police but that doesn’t mean that his relationship with them is rosy.

In the days that follow, unhappy with the results that D.A. Blake Tower is getting in locating his son. Jameson acts on his own, offering a 1,000,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of John Jameson and the capture of his kidnapper. The underworld is all lit up about this offer, with stoolies across the city hoping to cash in on the reward. And in a secret lair, the malefactor behind what’s been going on readies his operative, a gigantic figure swathed in bandages. He dispatches this mummy-man to kill both Jameson and Spider-Man. Elsewhere, Betty Brant shows up at Peter Parker’s apartment and continues her aggressive attempts to woo him. Peter is conflicted, but he’s always had feelings for Betty and never really liked her husband Ned Leeds.

The camera cuts away from Peter and Betty at this point, and picks Spider-Man up a few hours later, swinging across the city and contemplating where he stands with Betty. But as he crosses town, he comes across a figure scaling the outer wall of the Daily Bugle building towards Jonah Jameson’s office. This is the mummy-man, and Spidey gets the drop on him, bursting in just as the gauze-wrapped minion attempts to grab Jonah. This leads to a running fight across the rooftops in which the wall-crawler can’t seem to put down his silent foe (despite the balloon on the cover, the bandaged figure never speaks within the story proper), and Jonah isn’t entirely sure who he should be rooting for, a common Jameson trope at this point.

As the battle goes on, Spider-Man winds up tearing aside his enemy’s bandages, revealing his true (and obvious) identity. The wall-crawler is surprised, though, and that gives his mummy antagonist the opening he needs to clobber Spidey into unconsciousness and resume his pursuit of his original target. And as the figure similarly incapacitates Jameson, we finally learn his true identity. He is, of course, John Jameson himself, in his bestial form as the Man-Wolf, and under the mesmerized control of some other individual. To Be Continued!