PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #54

"TO SAVE THE SMUGGLER!"
Words: Roger Stern | Plot & Pictures: Marie Severin | Inks: Jim Mooney
Letters: Jim Novak | Colorist: Ben Sean | Scrutiny: Dennis O'Neil
Medic: Jim Shooter

The Plot: Spider-Man stops a car chasing an ambulance, but learns that the car contains police officers while the ambulance, transporting a witness, was hijacked by criminals. The web-slinger catches up with the ambulance, but the criminals escape, distracting our hero by way of attempting to knock a marquee onto nearby civilians. The web-slinger finds that one of the villains dropped a matchbook from a restaurant called the Chrysanthemum and the Sword, then heads to a nearby police precinct, where he learns that the kidnapped witness is the Smuggler.

Later, after spending the day at Empire State University as Peter Parker, Spider-Man heads to the restaurant, aboard a boat in New York Harbor, to investigate. He finds the Smuggler tied up below decks and frees him. They fight their way out together past the restaurant's samurai guards, but the Smuggler is shot in the escape. Spider-Man rescues him just as the police arrive. The restaurant's owner demands that the authorities arrest the webbed wonder for terrorizing their establishment, but Spider-Man exposes the place as a drug-smuggling front, using patrons' doggie bags to get the goods into New York. The wall-crawler is cleared by the police and the Smuggler taken back into custody.

DANGER GIRL: KAMIKAZE!

Story & Art: Tommy Yune | Inks: Vince Russell
Colors: Guy Majors | Letters: Richard Starkinks & Comicraft
Assistant Editor: John Layman | Editor: Scott Dunbier
With Special Thanks to Wai Lin Liao for Chinese dialogue
Danger Girl Created By J. Scott Campbell & Andy Hartnell

KAMIKAZE! is the rare (perhaps only?) Danger Girl story not plotted and/or scripted by the series creators, J. Scott Campbell and/or Andy Hartnell. Instead we have Tommy Yune serving as both writer and artist on this two-part mini-series, and doing an admirable job of it.

Yune's plot springs out of the original DANGER GIRL series, featuring a Japanese terrorist organization called the Kama (translated to English as "the Sickle"). The Kama's logo matches that of the Hammer Empire, and it is stated in the story that the Kama was going to team up with the Hammer to form a new "Axis of Terror" before the Hammer's unexpected end at the hands of the Danger Girl team. The Kama was founded by a rogue Japanese general in the aftermath of World War II, and is led in the present day by the mysterious Empress Doken and her right hand man, Shogunner -- a huge black-armored samurai reminiscent of the Hammer Empire's own hulking Major Maxim.

The story follows the Danger Girl team, consisting here of Abbey, Sydney, Valerie, and Deuce, along with Hong Kong police agent Mei Yaoh, as they pursue the Kama around Asia while the terrorist group searches for a long-lost anti-matter bomb developed by the Axis powers in the latter days of the War. The chase takes our heroines from Hong Kong to Cambodia to the South China Sea, where the final showdown occurs. The day is saved thanks to Valerie defusing the bomb, but Empress Doken and Shogunner -- revealed as the artificially preserved Kama founder, General Akuhido, escape.

PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #52

"THE DAY OF THE HERO KILLERS!"
Writer: Roger Stern | Penciler: Rick Leonardi | Inker: Jim Mooney
Letterer: Jim Novak | Colorist: Ben Sean | Editor: Denny O'Neil
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

The Plot: The White Tiger's body is dumped outside the Daily Bugle building just as Peter Parker is on his way out. As the car which carried the Tiger speeds away, Peter tags it with a spider-tracer before turning his attention to the ailing Tiger, who has a note reading "This is the first" pinned to his chest. An ambulence arrives and carries the Tiger and Peter to Bellevue Hospital, where Blackbyrd appears to watch over the Tiger as the emergency surgeons work on him. Meanwhile, Peter changes to Spider-Man and goes in search of his spider-tracer.

The web-slinger eventually tracks the car to a junkyard where Gideon Mace's men are disposing of it. Spider-Man takes the soldiers out and speaks with Mace over their radio. Mace brags that he and his men are headquartered at the decommissioned East Side National Guard Armory, and the wall-crawler heads there immediately. He allows Mace's men to believe he has been killed by their land mines, thus sneaking into the building and getting the drop on them. After working his way through several armed soldiers and their howitzers, Spider-Man comes face to face with Mace. The webbed wonder gets the upper hand on the villain, but Mace orders his men to open fire, even if it means taking him out. Mace is gunned down as Spider-Man dives for cover. Later, Mace is wheeled into Bellevue just as the White Tiger is removed from the operating room, in stable condition.

A week later, Hector Ayala removes the tiger amulets, declaring that the White Tiger will be no more. He and his girlfriend Holly move away from New York to find someplace where they can live once more in anonymity.

PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN: THE WHITE TIGER SERIAL

"...THE WHITE TIGER" | "A KILLER ELITE" | "THE MENACE OF GIDEON MACE!"
Writer: Roger Stern | Penciler: Denys Cowan
Inkers: Jim Mooney, Dave Humphreys, Josef Rubenstein
Letterers: Joe Rosen, Jim Novak | Colorists: Ed Hannigan, Christie Scheele
Editor: Dennis O'Neil | Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

The Plot: Nathaniel Alexander Byrd, a private detective called Blackbyrd, speaks with a stool pigeon named Lou Gunther. He tells Gunther the history of the Hector Ayala, a.k.a. the White Tiger, his tale culminating with the murder of the Tiger's family one night before. Blackbyrd wants to know who did it, as does the White Tiger -- who arrives moments after the story has been told.

Gunther tells the Tiger that it was "out of town muscle" who murdered his parents and sister, and the Tiger vows to track them down. He heads for the abandoned candy shop Gunther says they have been using as a headquarters, where he finds the men -- a highly trianed military unit led by Colonel Gideon Mace -- holed up.

Mace's soldiers battle the Tiger until he is forced to retreat, but he finds his attempted point of egress -- a window -- to be painted onto the wall by Mace as a trap. With his back literally against the wall, the White Tiger is gunned down by Mace, who proclaims him the first victim of a crusade to rid New York City of all its superhuman residents.

THE UNBOXING - JUNE 2014

Two books arrived this month, and they're both thick trade paperbacks from Marvel. First is NOVA CLASSIC, volume 3. I'm not sure why Marvel felt the need to pad this series out to three volumes. The original NOVA series ran for 25 issues. NOVA CLASSIC, volume 1 contained issues 1 through 12, plus an AMAZING SPIDER-MAN crossover issue. You'd think that volume 2 would then contain issues 13 through 25 and that'd be the end of it, right? Not so. Instead, the second volume gives us issues 13 - 19, plus three totally unnecessary issues of DEFENDERS which barely feature Nova, as well as an annual each for FANTASTIC FOUR and a MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE. Now, volume 3 covers NOVA 20 - 25, plus ten issues of FANTASTIC FOUR which wrap up Nova's story, but most of which involve Nova himself very little. Plus, all those FF issues were already collected a few years ago in a book called FANTASTIC FOUR: IN SEARCH OF GALACTUS, which can be found for bargain basement prices these days.

Nonetheless, since I bought NOVA CLASSIC volume 1, I went ahead and picked up volumes 2 and 3. And, regardless of my misgivings on some of the content, I am looking forward to reading these original seventies adventures of the Human Rocket.

A book with which I'm much more satisfied, however, is the SPIDER-MAN EPIC COLLECTION: GHOSTS OF THE PAST. This volume collects a chunk of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN issues by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz -- issues 259 - 272, to be precise. Note that the SPIDER-MAN BY ROGER STERN OMNIBUS ends with issue #252, and the upcoming SPIDER-MAN: THE COMPLETE ALIEN COSTUME SAGA volume 1 will cover, among others, issues 252 - 258. I love when Marvel sets up their collections this way. All three books together will contain an uninterrupted AMAZING SPIDER-MAN run of issues 226 - 272. It's a great time for Marvel collected editions, and especially for Spider-Man, whose classic (but post-Stan Lee) material was vastly under-represented for a long time.

DANGER GIRL SPECIAL

The DANGER GIRL SPECIAL was released during the run of the original series, presumably as a way to keep up reader interest during the long delays between the later issues. Functioning essentially as an "annual", the issue features two short stories spotlighting the Danger Girls.

"DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR"
Story: Andy Hartnell, J. Scott Campbell & Arthur Adams
Drawings: Arthur Adams | Digital Inks: Digital Chameleon
Colors: Justin Ponsor & Matt Milla w/Chris Garcia | Lettering: Comicraft's Rich'n'Wes
Assistant Editor: John Layman | Editor: Scott Dunbier

The first tale is illustrated by the talented Art Adams, and stars Valerie, daydreaming about life as a full-fledged Danger Girl while relegated by Deuce to cataloguing the group's recent acquisitions while Abbey and Sydney are away on a mission. Valerie fantasizes about a scenario where she plays the role of the capable and confident Sydney while Sydney herself functions as the bumbling sidekick on a mission to track down a Bigfoot-type of creature in the jungle. Then, after a very brief imagined scenario in which she is the Deuce-like leader of the "Danger Boys", Valerie moves on to her second longer daydream, casting herself as Abbey and rescuing Johnny Barracuda from a mad scientist in an exo-skeleton. The story ultimately ends with Sydney and Abbey returning from their mission and Abbey finding Valerie asleep, clutching Sydney's whip as she dreams of her Danger Girl adventures.

PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #51

"ALIENS AND ILLUSIONS!"
Writer: Roger Stern | Artists: Marie Severin & Jim Mooney
Letterer: Jim Novak | Colorist: Christie Scheele | Editor: Denny O'Neil
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

The Plot: The aliens bring Peter Parker before Mysterio, who straps him into a machine which uses a combination of nausea-inducement and holography in an attempt to make him reveal the location of Dutch Mallone's loot. But Peter feigns passing out, so the aliens stick him a cell while Mysterio forumulates a new plan. He sends the aliens to the Restwell Nursing Home to kidnap Debra Whitman, who has just finished giving a statement on Peter's abduction to the police.

Meanwhile, Peter changes into Spider-Man and escapes from his cell to explore the aliens' "spaceship". He soon realizes the whole place is merely an elaborate set, and the aliens themselves are men in disguise. When our hero sees that Mysterio has Debra as his prisoner, he uses Mysterio's own technology to confuse the villain with holograms. Debra escapes her captor and Spider-Man swings in to finish off Mysterio and the "aliens". He then returns to his cell and changes back into Peter Parker just in time for Debra to release him.