Random Happenstance

I'm going to be out of the office for a couple days, so we're leaning heavily on the random part of our method, with a dollar book picked up last Friday, featuring a character I can't believe I have two action figures of: from 1977, Amazing Spider-Man #173, "If You Can't Stand the Heat..." Written by Len Wein, pencils by Ross Andru, inks by Jim Mooney.

I don't know what was going down the previous issue yet, but Spidey is trying to get out of the basement of apparently the most hardcore hospital on the eastern seaboard, as he gets shot by a security guard, then nearly dropped by a doctor taking "mail-order kung-fu lessons!" He had good form, although why is everyone so mad at Spidey? (Actually, this just reminded me of the World is Not Enough, which I don't think is anybody's favorite Bond film; but Bond is fairly injured at the start, which does little to level the playing field against him.) The web-slinger barely escapes, and considers this the Molten Man's fault--which sounds like a super-villainy thing to say. "Curse you, Molten Man! This is all your fault!" Meanwhile, across town at a pharmaceutical company, the Molten Man has broken in, and forces a lab tech to be his hands: he was too hot to handle chemicals himself. The tech does a good job for him, but the injection they prepare only restores Mark Raxton to normal for a moment.

Across town, Spidey's supporting cast has just picked up Liz Allen from jail--Joe "Robbie" Robertson fronted her bail, good guy. And the cops come to get her again, but not for anything she did, but because Mark Raxton was threatening to blow up a pharmaceutical building unless he spoke with Liz. (Oh, now you need my help? Blow.) A wounded Peter gets a call from Robbie, to go get pictures; and puts together why Liz had been arrested: she had been taking chemicals for Mark. Liz bravely goes in, to see her step-brother, who believes he was dying, and didn't want to die alone. Spidey sneaks in as well, but the radiant heat weakens the ceiling, and he falls; and the Molten Man is more than willing to throw down with his old foe. MM gets knocked into tanks of liquid oxygen, which then blow: Spidey's hurt arm was useless, and Liz was nearly knocked out. Spidey saves Liz, despite Mark's protests: he wanted to be the one to save her, to die with him? Kind of a mixed message there, but he's pretty distraught, before he eventually explodes, after a proclamation about forcing Liz to steal, that no one could have possibly heard but let's pretend they did.

Liz feels like she had killed her step-brother, and runs off into the night, leaving her future husband Harry crying about being alone. Geez, make it all about you, Harry. Mark would of course return, more than once; and while he often seems like a lug that had been put into a bad situation, there might be a bit more edge to him than this issue shows.