Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Nowadays, this is an almost weekly occurance...


Spidey gets jumped by his greatest enemies, and the Shocker, in 1977's Amazing Spider-Man #170, "Madness is all in the Mind!" Written and edited by Len Wein, pencils (breakdowns) by Ross Andru, inks (finishes) by Frank Giacoia and Mike Esposito. Oddly, Spider-Man has had three stories using that same title, which is more interesting than much happening this issue...

Captain America villain and deal-a-meal candidate Dr. Faustus hypnotizes Spidey with "narcotic smoke" that causes the above hallucination. (Um...huh.) Faustus wants to break in to a heavily sci-fi guarded lab, in order to add a psychotropic additive to a flu vaccine that will be given to millions of Americans. Standing under a vent, Spidey manages to shake off the smoke's effects, only to take an embarrassing beating from the chunky Faustus, who at one point steps on Spidey's hand, a maneuver more effective than Doc Ock's last three bouts.

Faustus mentions his other trick, "the compulsive quality of my perfectly-modulated voice," but only uses that as a ruse, possibly because trying to out-talk Spider-Man seems like a losing proposition. Dosing Spidey again with his special smoke, Faustus almost escapes, but can't run that fast because he's fat but Spider-Man hooks the alarms back up and he's zapped by the stun-rays that are a standard fixture of any security system. The cover with the villains coming out of the walls makes this issue seem like it's going to be a trip, but not quite.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Poor Spidey.....almost jobbed out to Doctor Faustus, a guy who can't enven get the jobb done on a "regular superhero" with Cap, but decides to fight a a guy with actual powers?

I never bought Faustus as a credible bad guy, even if the name was more evil than he was.

He looks like he'd be better off in a cripple fight with Perry Mason or Ironside, than any Marvel hero.