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I’m fresh off of reading Volume 7 so the storylines are still fresh in my mind. This doesn’t have the variety that Vol. 7 had (if you remember that featured a Spidey Annual and the two Spidey Magazines) and so it seems rather mundane by comparison! This collects Amazing Spider-Man #’s 68-77, a period that dates from January 1969 to October 1969. Stan Lee is credited with writing all of this; John Romita Jr. is the co-plotter and did the layouts for #’s 68-75 with Jim Mooney providing finishes for all of them. John Buscema helped out with #’s 72, 73, 76 and 77 while Romita was getting increasingly busy being the art director. John Romita pens the introduction again and he talks about the Marvel way of writing comics and how the tablet in the book never had a solution and it just kept bouncing around until they knew what to do with it. He also talks about Buscema and Mooney as well as Ross Andru, who did the extra comic in here.
Spoilers Ahead
-Amazing Spider-Man #68- The Kingpin returns and he wants to steal an ancient tablet (think Rosetta Stone) that has a great secret written on it that no one has yet deciphered. The tablet is being kept at ESU and Kingpin uses a student protest to break into the campus himself and steal the tablet. Spidey gets involved and tries stopping him but Kingpin gets away and the protesters (including Robbie Robertson’s son) are arrested.
-Amazing Spider-Man #69- Spidey finds the Kingpin and manages to defeat him and take the tablet. Kingpin is arrested but he plays it that Spidey was HELPING him which makes Spidey further wanted by the law. He’s not happy with this turn of events and he promises to be the menace many perceive him to be. There’s a lot of background stuff happening, too, like Robbie’s son and the protestors just wanting a building to be used as a low-rent dorm and Gwen getting pissed a kid who called Peter a coward, though she secretly believes that because Peter is never around.
-Amazing Spider-Man #70- The Kingpin is in jail, Peter is conflicted with being Spidey and leading a normal life and now Gwen can hardly stand to talk to him. The protesters are freed by the police because they didn’t do any damage and Kingpin frees himself. Spidey battles Kingpin again but it’s a draw and he escapes when the police arrive. JJJ arrives before the police and gives Spidey a piece of his mind and Spidey just explodes, yelling at Johan, threatening him and giving him a heart attack! Spidey immediately leaves and is very emotional that he may have killed Jonah and proved that he was a menace.
-Amazing Spider-Man #71- JJJ turns out to be alright, having just suffered shock. Robertson takes control of the paper for the time being and Peter decides he’s going to make the best with what he has and change his attitude. Things look up for him when he gets a massive check from Robertson for his photos and he uses that money to send May to Florida for a little vacation. Spider-Man also delivers the tablet to Capt. Stacy. Spidey runs afoul of Quicksilver and all Quicksilver wants to do is capture Spidey so he can clear his name and get back in good standing. The two battle it out but Spidey gets the better of him and swings away into the day.
-Amazing Spider-Man #72- The Shocker returns in this issue and he attacks Capt. Stacy and steals the tablet. That thing really gets around. Peter finds out about this and heads off to take down the Shocker. He does, but the tablet is still missing and Peter’s personal life is crazier than ever – especially after he snapped at Flash Thompson in the presence of Gwen.
-Amazing Spider-Man #73- Spidey visits Capt. Stacy for any clues and he stakes out the apartment of the Shocker’s girlfriend. He shows up right as a huge man named Man Mountain Marko breaks in to find the tablet. Spidey fails in besting him and Marko gets off with the tablet. He brings it back to his leaders at the Maggia. The crime family has also busted on of Kingpin’s associates out of jail. The leader of the Maggia, Silvermane, wants the tablet to be deciphered and he kidnaps Curt Connors (aka the Lizard) to help! There’s a lot of other sub-stories going on here (like Robertson’s son being rebellious to people in power and JJJ coming back to work and being pissed that Robertson had actually praised Spider-Man in his absence).
-Amazing Spider-Man #74- Connor’s works on cracking the code of the book as he fights off the Lizard tendencies, Spider-Man looks for his friend by battling a high-ranking Maggia crime lord. Connors is able to uncover the secret – the tablet is really a fountain of youth! Silvermane drinks the potion and he’s a young man again! Harry Osborn is rocking a new mustache in this issue which was very odd looking.
-Amazing Spider-Man #75- Spider-Man must face-off against a much younger Silvermane and while he does Connors transforms back into the Lizard and heads out on his own. Spider-Man’s fight with Silvermane takes an unexpected turn when Silvermane won’t stop getting younger and he fades away into nothingness. There’s nothing Spidey could’ve done there. He finds the kidnapped wife and son of Connor’s but he also finds out that the Lizard is now loose!
-Amazing Spider-Man #76- Pete goes home and calls his Aunt, talks to Harry and visits Gwen to straighten things out with her. He heads out as Spider-Man and soon finds himself entangled with the Lizard. Spidey is being cautious because he doesn’t want to hurt Connors but one of Spidey’s fiery friends only sees Spidey getting pushed around and so the Torch goes about firing away on the Lizard!
-Amazing Spider-Man #77- Spider-Man must reconcile fighting the Lizard and trying to convince Torch to leave the battle. The Lizard brings the duo to the water hoping for an advantage but he finds none. Spider-Man eventually ditches the Torch (telling him that he heard an FF distress signal with his spider-sonic hearing) and defeats the Lizard by dehydrating him and restoring him back to Connors.
-Marvel Super-Heroes #14- This is from May 1968 and is a Stan Lee/Ross Andru collaboration. It was intended as a fill-in for Spider-Man just in case John Romita couldn’t finish his duties. This is a straight-up fill-in and isn’t up to the quality of the other books in here. Spidey battles some weird voodoo character but not one-on-one – Spidey doesn’t know who he is. This man uses his mental power to bring Spidey to New Orleans where he battles some plastic being. The voodoo man is defeated when his equipment was overloaded by a postman ringing his bell. This was really an odd, trippy story.
-The Bottom Line- I just loved the last volume of ASM because of all the great stories in there. This one was good but in comparison to that it just falls short. However, that’s not really fair of me to do. It feels like I am shortchanging what is a very good collection of Spidey stories. What you have in this collection is Stan and Romita in a definite groove. The big story here is the tablet and how it bounced around like a hot potato before it concluded in disastrous fashion for Silvermane. There were interesting villains in here including the Shocker, Silvermane, Kingpin, the Lizard and equally lame villains like Man Mountain Marko. My dad still makes fun of that guy! The thing with these books is that they include a lot of subplots that continue and drive the stories over a span of many issues. The art and story were top-notch and reading through collection was breeze and that’s a good thing. Definitely a recommended collection.
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