PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN had settled into a nice rhythm. It wasn’t a great comic book, but it was solid and reliable. In the hands of its now-regular creative team of Bill Mantlo and Jim Mooney, it had built up a cast of characters around mainstay Peter Parker, a cast that existed in addition to the major players in Peter’s life that were being featured in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. What’s more, it felt like it had a trajectory, that it wasn’t merely a repository for throw-away self-contained fill-in style adventures. The book was still a younger cousin to AMAZING, but it had begun to feel like a title that could hold its own. crafting more multi-part stories and setting up subplots had been a big part of that transformation.
This particular issue featured the wrap-up to a three-issue sequence introducing the Iguana, yet another evil reptile-man spawned by the work of Curt Connors, the Lizard. As in the past in stories featuring Stegron, Connors had once again become his cold-blooded alter-ego in order to do battle with the newcomer, placing the web-slinger in-between two fires. As the story opens, the two reptilian villains confront one another atop a Manhattan building, with the Iguana dangling Spider-Man off the edge from his tail.
The reason that Connors has become his evil alter ego once more is of course to protect his family, wife Martha and son Billy, who were imperiled by the Iguana. The opening is pretty much an extended fight sequence as Spidey inserts himself between the Iguana and the Lizard, trying to prevent either one from killing anybody, including each other. At a key moment in the bout, the Lizard is distracted by a cry from his wife Martha, which gives the Iguana the moment he needs to knock the Lizard off the building. Not to be undone, Spidey proceeds to kick the Iguana out into open space as well–then he dives down after the two falling monsters, hoping to be able to save the Lizard’s life. But the wall-crawler needn’t have worried: the Lizard and the Iguana are able to break their fall with an awning, and they crash down into the sewer system. By the time Spidey can get down there, both creatures have disappeared into the network of tunnels.
In the aftermath, Spidey confabs with Martha and Billy Connors about Curt’s recent state. It was Connors’ invention, the Enervator, which had once been used to save Spidey’s life in a bout with the Kingpin, that began to leech off Connors’ own Lizard intellect, ultimately discharging it into a lab iguana and turning it into a similar creature. From Martha’s account, Spidey has an idea of how he might be able to reverse the process, but he’s going to need to access Connors’ research notes and equipment. That means heading over to Empire State University, where Peter Parker is a grad student. Switching back to his civilian attire, Peter bumps into department head Professor Sloane, who has his own mysterious reasons for being in the lab this early, a note that sets up another future plotline.
In Connors’ lab, Peter studies the Enervator, ultimately deconstructing it and transforming it into a portable unit that he can wear on his back. He’s sure that he can use it to devolve the Iguana and restore Curt Connors to his human persona. Unfortunately, as a grad student, he’s got a class to teach. Peter tries to convince the shrewish Marcy Kane to sub in for him, but she’s only too delighted to see the science wunderkind in a bind. But Pete gets some good luck, in that Professor Sloane intercedes, telling Kane that Peter had been at the lab super=early that morning, so she can certainly help him out this once. With no other recourse, Marcy agrees–allowing Peter to dash off to become Spidey and chase after the twin lizards. But it’s one more thing that Marcy Kane has against Peter.
The Web-Slinger heads out towards the city’s Water Purification Plant, reasoning that that’s where all of the sewer lines converge, and that it’d be a great place for the Lizard and the Iguana to hole up until night–in particular the Iguana, who has an aversion to sunlight. And Spidey is correct, as he’s jumped by the Iguana as soon as the enters the plant. What’s more, the two monsters have used their time together to set aside their differences and work together in common cause. In other words, Spidey has to face both of them at once. Fortunately, he’s packing his portable Enervator, and so after the pre-requisite amount of punching and kicking, he zaps the two critters with it, and it begins to drain even more of the Lizard persona out of the Lizard, transferring it to the Iguana while Connors resume his human form.
That’s good news for Connors but maybe not for Spidey, as he’s just made the Iguana a lot more powerful. But Peter’s calculations took that into account as well, and has reasoned that the Iguana’s body won’t be able to contain all of that power. And he’s right–within a few moments, the Iguana explodes, seemingly destroyed. As Spidey and Connors wander away, the Wall-Crawler indicates that Curt should now be forevermore cured (spoiler: he isn’t) and we get a typical final panel where we see that the tiny lab iguana has still survived in the sewers, even as Spidey indicates that they’ll never need to face the Iguana again. The whole issue is a bit by-the-numbers, but it’s all perfectly fine in its execution.
The Spectacular Spider-Mail letters page in this issue included a letter of comment from future Marvel writer Kurt Busiek, who seems to have felt about the improvements to the series the same way that I did. The one bit that seems a tiny bit funny in retrospect is the point where Kurt indicates that newcomer Frank Miller isn’t up to the same level as ASM’s Keith Pollard. Pollard’s a damn fine artist, and nobody could have predicted the heights that Frank Miller would eventually rise to from just his first stories as an artist, so this is all understandable. Still, it’s very much a comment of its time, I doubt there are many who would echo the sentiment today.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
i wonder how many lives have been saved in comics by well placed awnings?
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It would appear that the Marvel universe makes certain as part of any building designs to strategically include awnings at various heights and locations so as to avoid the inadvertent deaths of falling heroes and villains. I’m also convinced that there’s an ordinance somewhere requiring a certain number of warehouses remain abandoned for various supervillains and/or criminal organizations to utlilize.
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The entertainment stakes were a lot lower when the comics were less than a buck! As long as there were some above-average titles by people like Byrne, Miller, Zeck, et. al. in the mix, I was perfectly happy to also grab a few like this that were “merely ok”. As prices kept creeping up over the next decade, I started to get pickier…
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Not that Kurt Busiek needs any support from me, but if it helps, I shared on Alan Stewart’s site earlier today how I initially didn’t care for Walt Simonson’s art on Thor #337. While I quickly wised up, it just goes to show that initial impressions may not be lasting ones. Particularly as an artist or writer improves with more experience. Along those lines, I also read in an interview with George Perez saying that the editor he had a hard time pleasing in his early career was a guy named Marv Wolfman. (https://50yearoldcomics.com/2026/09/19/metal-men-49-dec-1976-jan-1977/?sn=c&c=23956#comment-23956)
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I feel compelled to defend Keith Pollard here. He did some really good stuff on Spidey for years, and on Thor (maybe top 5 Thor artists, last century). The only job by Keith I remember being disappointed with was an early 1980’s annual for one of the Superman titles, guest starring Superwoman (the one with the mask or hood). It looked nice enough, if not a bit stiff, but there seemed to be some poses and figures obviously swiped from Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. Wait, I’m supposed to be defending, Keith…
Keith drew a Moon Knight story that included a panel of Moony leaping into a group of mob thugs, and it had multiple after-image figures of MK, so we followed him from left to right, punching and kicking as he went. All in the same “shot”. Something we’ve seen in many Spidey and Daredevil stories (Frank Miller drew a lot of these after-images, too). But it was drawn so very well, it looked about as good as figure drawing in comicbooks could get. And it was used in Moon Knight’s entry in the “Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe”.
Speaking of tOHotMU, Keith took over the covers of that series sometime around 1986, I think. It sadly took him away from regular storytelling. But he drew a chapter in an Avengers annual, the one where the East & Wast Coast teams unified to fight dead heroes and villains. And Keith’s pages were inked by the sublime, masterful, and deservedly legendary Al Williamson. Nothing else in that annual looked better than their pages, and there was some serious competition, including a chapter terrifically drawn by a still youthful John Romita Jr (in the late1980’s), and inked by another legendary, masterful talent, Bill Sienkiewicz.
I think Frank was just more of an innovator. His drawing chops got really good, but then his vision expanded. He also had the benefit of being regularly inked by Klaus Janson. Another visionary. Keith had some great inkers, but I don’t think they were paradigm changers. The best of them (that I’m aware of) was Al Williamson (though I don’t know how often that was, or if that Avengers Annual was their only collaboration), Joe Rubinstein, and I’d guess Bob Layton would’ve been a good choice to ink Keith. I hope Keith’s work got to be inked by Bob Wiacek, Dan Green, and others. The older pro’s who inked his work had a different workman viewpoint. So Keith’s finished work didn’t always shine. But the fundamentals were there.
I’d rank Keith in the top third of comicbook artists. OK, Miller’s ahead of him. But I’d put Kieth in front of decent artists like Jose Delbo, Alex Siviuk, Mark “Doc” Bright, Ron Wilson, Ed Hannigan, Paul Ryan, Dan Jurgens, and many other late Bronze Age guys descended from the artists who drew they comics that they grew up reading. Many of Keith’s covers still look great today. And if he’d had a lengthy run on a well-written book in the 1980’s, as his contemporaries like John Byrne, George Perez, and Walt Simonson had (kudos to all 3 for writing some of those themselves), and maybe more importantly, with excellent inkers, I think he’d be more highly regarded than he may be today.
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I agree with everything you’ve written about Keith Pollard other than to say that I was not as impressed with his work on Iron Man. He first worked with Arvell Jones on #73-74 with Jim Mooney & Dick Ayers on inks. While very early in the careers of two gentlemen who went on to much finer work, the art in those two issues was not appealing. When Pollard returned in #107, his work was uneven at best – although improving. Fortunately, his art certainly improved from there.
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Good points. I don’t know if Pollard was ever inked on Iron-Man by Bob Layton. I’d think that could’ve been a fine collaboration on that character. It needs that shine, metallic finish. Mark Farmer came up in the early/mid 1980s. He’d have likely been a good inker for Pollard. Maybe John Beatty, too. Al Gordon. Then one of my all-time fave inkers, who did stellar work in the mid/late 1990’s into the ’00’s, John Dell. Drew Geraci might’ve inked Pollard’s work, well, too.
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Absolutely, Fred Kida inked some of his work on that second Iron Man run. That pairing didn’t do his art any favors. I’ve zero doubt that he and Bob Layton would’ve knocked it out of the park.
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I enjoyed this run of Spectacular Spider-man from about #17, but I think my interest began to slide with this storyline….which ran for 3 or 4 issues. I think I stuck around for another issue and called it quits. Though I popped back on board for issue #38 due to the cool Ditko-esque cover by Milgrom.
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