Back in the neighborhood, but hardly friendly today.

I've had this story for years, in the glorious Marvel Treasury Edition #22, which also included the delightful "Here We Go-A-Plotting!" But we finally have a copy to put in the scanner! From 1973, Marvel Team-Up #13, "The Granite Sky!" Written by Len Wein, pencils by Gil Kane, inks by Frank Giacoia and (per the GCD, an uncredited) David Hunt.

Spidey is honestly, surly as hell this issue; although with good reason: this was still shortly after Gwen's death in Amazing #121. That issue was from June and this from September, and while Spidey had multiple adventures in his own book, Marvel Team-Up, and a guest-spot in Daredevil; it may only have been a couple weeks in Marvel-time since she died. Spidey had just returned from San Francisco, where it inexplicably took him, DD, and the Black Widow to beat Ramrod; and was looking for a fight to take his mind of his troubles. After he ditches out on a drunken sailor, though, he just misses a meteor land near the docks, that opens to reveal...the Grey Gargoyle?

Not far away, Spidey runs across two A.I.M. beekeepers running down the street: they seem mad since they had to run "from one costumed fanatic--and right into another!" He wallops them, then backtracks along their trail to find Captain America taking out more A.I.M. troops. Afterwards, Cap calls in S.H.I.E.L.D. for clean-up, and Spidey is remarkably testy, right before they're both...beamed up? To the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier?

An overzealous (and over-confident) agent wants to capture Spider-Man for questioning, and gets shellacked with webbing for his trouble. Nick Fury strongly suggests Spidey not try that with him, but invites him to a briefing with Cap: A.I.M. had been after a missile "telemetry system," and while Cap had defended one and S.H.I.E.L.D. another, A.I.M. managed to steal a third. Still, it had been fitted with a homing device, leading them to a base in Queens, beneath the Science Pavilion of the '64 World's Fair. Instead of MODOK today, though, A.I.M. is being bossed around by the Grey Gargoyle, who had been launched into space in Captain America #142. (Two years prior, don't ask what he ate or breathed that whole time...) The Gargoyle had contacted A.I.M. to bring down his stony prison, and together they were going to take control of earth's airspace, or something.

For some reason, instead of S.H.I.E.L.D. sending in the troops, Cap and Spidey take on the base, but are both turned into stone fairly quickly. They are then chained to the rocket that will launch the Gargoyle's satellite, with a "power-beam...capable of turning entire cities into lifeless stone!" With the launch seconds away and about an hour until the Gargoyle's stone-touch wears off, Cap and Spidey are doomed...unless the touch wears off early, for no apparent reason! Cap wonders if the venom that briefly gave him super-strength saved him, but can't even guess what saved Spider-Man. (They were on the second-to-last page, that's what saved him.) Cap throws the Gargoyle, who gets snagged in the chain that had held them, and dragged into space with the rocket. Other than that, it seemed like a pretty successful launch...I'm not sure where the Grey Gargoyle appeared next, or if he mentioned his stone-satellite-beam, but I don't think he and A.I.M. teamed up again. Captain America would appear in Marvel Team-Up again fairly soon, though: just got that issue, which we'll see some time later.