BC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #136

This issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was another one that I read courtesy of my grade school friend Donald Sims, who lent me his copy for a day or two. Already by this time, the Green Goblin had become somewhat legendary as Spider-Man’s greatest foe, his reputation somehow enhanced due to the fact that he wasn’t around any longer. So this development, one that writer Gerry Conway had been building up to in the series for several months, seemed incredibly exciting to me–even though I knew in general already how all of this worked out. The great John Romita cover certainly does a lot to sell the momentousness of this particular issue.

I have a lot of fondness for the Gerry Conway era of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, even though the strip during this period had only the loosest connection to the formative Lee/Ditko days of the character. Possibly because he was around the same age as Peter Parker when he was writing these stories, Conway’s Spider-Man always felt genuine to me. It was clear that he was trying to follow in the footsteps of Stan Lee, not by simply imitating what Stan had done, but by pushing things forward in new directions. Gerry did the same thing on FANTASTIC FOUR, but there his innovations felt counter to the appeal of the strip, particularly in the form of the marital strife between Reed and Sue Richards. But in ASM, Conway dedicated a good amount of time to building up Peter Parker’s burgeoning relationship with Mary Jane Watson following the death of his earlier girlfriend Gwen Stacy. Parker was more angst-ridden in a Woody Allen manner in this period, but that seems very 1970s to me, so it fit the times.

And Peter had good reason for his anxieties in this period, as Conway kept continually hitting him with one thing after another. Case in point: this issue opens with Peter and MJ returning to his apartment after a Sunday out doing things together. There’s a sense in-between the lines that this may be the moment when the two finally get together. But this lasts right up until MJ puts Peter’s key in the door lock, and Pete’s spider-sense goes off. And then, the apartment explodes, and MJ takes the brunt of the blast. With his usual sense of priorities, Peter cursorily checks to see if MJ is all right, then he races into the demolished apartment to grab and stash his spare Spidey outfit before the cops and the fire department can respond to the explosion. The man has priorities, and MJ doesn’t entirely seem to be one of them.

Hours later, after a grilling from the cops, Peter is still at the hospital when MJ comes around. Seeing her injured in the hospital bed conjures up memories of Gwen Stacy for him, which makes him think naturally of the Green Goblin. Clearly the explosive at the apartment was meant for him, and the Goblin was the only foe of his who knew his true identity. So Pete’s got a sinking feeling that he knows what’s going on here, as unbelievable as it may be.

Presumably to make the pagination work for the upcoming double-page spread, the first half of the two page THE SPIDER’S WEB letters page runs at this point. It was odd to find a Marvel letters page this early in the book, let along broken across the magazine, but I expect it was necessary in order to get the spread onto two facing pages.

And here it comes, the big moment! Leaving the hospital, Spidey suits up and heads over to the abandoned warehouse that Norman Osborn used as a base of operations when he was the Green Goblin. The place appears to be untouched, but Spidey realizes that the dust covering the place is actually the material used in films to replicate the look of dust. So he sets himself up in a web hammock to wait. And wait he does–until finally, in the dead of night, in this big two-page spread, the Green Goblin soars into the place in all his glory. It’s a great shot, one that would be pulled as pick-up art for licensing purposes, appearing on any products that featured the Goblin.

This, of course, isn’t the genuine Green Goblin, but rather his son, Peter’s roommate Harry Osborn. Having gone ’round the bend thanks to a bad drug trip and the grief from his father’s death, Harry worked out Peter’s true identity and adopted the Goblin identity to revenge himself on the man who killed his father. Now, Harry doesn’t have his father’s Goblin-serum enhancing his physical strength, yet he’s able to go one-on-one with the web-slinger anyway. This was a common thing in the 1970s, when writers would downplay just how strong Spidey really was. Either way, the pair engage in a multi-page pitched battle, one that Spider-Man is hesitant to go all-out in as he realizes that Harry is sick and not himself.

So ultimately, with the help of some drug-laced smoke, the Goblin defeats Spider-Man and is ready to lower the boom on him. But at that instant, like a reverse Parker Luck moment, the Goblin’s finger-blasters run out of charge, and so he’s unable to kill his hated enemy. So Harry flies off, threatening to put an end to Spider-Man one way or another–by killing him in a return match or by revealing his true identity to the world. And all Spidey can do is watch his former friend soar away. The final four panels of the book read as strangely to me now as they did back then. It’s the following day, and Peter is at the daily Bugle and pissed off. J. Jonah Jameson refuses to give him some time off, and Peter is so upset about this that he practically takes Betty Brant’s head off. I can remember thinking as a young reader that this maybe had something to do with the gas the Goblin hit Spidey with, especially as the final captions hint at there being something behind Peter’s bad mood. But nope, when I finally tracked down the second part, there aren’t any extenuating circumstances–Peter is just being an asshole here.

and since I showed the first half earlier, the final page in the issue runs the back half of THE SPIDER’S WEB letters page, including a huge ad for a couple of different Conan projects and the dreaded Marvel Value Stamp, this one of the malevolent Mole Man.