As presented in PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN Nos. 19 & 20.
"AGAIN, THE ENFORCERS!"
Writer: Bill Mantlo | Artists: Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito
Letters: Jim Novak | Colors: Mary Titus | Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter
"WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?"
Story: Bill Mantlo | Art: Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito
Letterer: Irving Watanabe | Colorist: Don Warfield | Editor: Jim Shooter
"AGAIN, THE ENFORCERS!"
Writer: Bill Mantlo | Artists: Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito
Letters: Jim Novak | Colors: Mary Titus | Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter
"WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?"
Story: Bill Mantlo | Art: Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito
Letterer: Irving Watanabe | Colorist: Don Warfield | Editor: Jim Shooter
The Plot: (Issue 19) In the hideout of their new boss, Lightmaster, the original Enforcers, Fancy Dan and Montana, practice beating on a Spider-Man dummy. Lightmaster appears and introduces the men to the new third member of their trio, a lumbering brute named Ox, to replace the original Ox who died in battle with Daredevil. Lightmaster sends the enforcers to the Coffee Bean near Empire State University, where they take the customers and staff hostage, demanding Spider-Man come to face them. Peter Parker, in the area, changes to the web-slinger and confronts the Enforcers, while the hostages escape. But one hostage, Hector Ayala, remains inside to watch the fight. After Spider-Man easily defeats the Enforcers and departs, Hector emerges from the Coffee Bean, leading Lightmaster to believe that Hector is actually Spider-Man.
(Issue 20) The police interrogate the Enforcers (while Spider-Man secretly listens in), but are unable to learn who their boss is. The web-slinger heads home for rest, while Lightmaster prepares to move against Hector. The next morning at Empire State University, Lightmaster appears and abducts Hector in front of Peter and others. Peter manages to tag Hector with a spider-tracer and tracks him to Lightmaster's hideout on Long Island. There, Lightmaster has activated TV cameras to broadcast his unmasking of Spider-Man. Spidey delivers to Hector the tiger amulets, which he dropped during the abduction, and Hector changes to White Tiger as Lightmaster's cameras roll. Spider-Man and White Tiger then defeat Lightmaster together.
This being a Spider-Man comic, there are naturally several footnotes and sub-plots relating to the wall-crawler's life. Quickly, they are:
- The Enforcers last fought Spider-Man (and the Human Torch) in MARVEL TEAM-UP #40, which we examined here not too long ago.
- The original Ox died in DAREDEVIL #86.
- Peter Parker has just returned from Los Angeles, where Spider-Man helped Angel and Iceman tie up some loose ends from the recently cancelled CHAMPIONS series over the past two issues.
- Peter is concerned that Aunt May is currently in the hospital, as seen in recent issues of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.
- Intergalactic long-haul trucker Razorback, who appeared in PPTSSM issues 12 through 15, writes a letter to Flash Thompson upon returning to his hometown, Texarkana, Arkansas.
- Flash, one of the Coffee Bean hostages, is about to propose to his girlfriend, Sha Shan, when the Enforcers attack.
- Peter and Flash are both due to graduate college soon (which doesn't exactly make sense for Flash, since he served a tour in the army while Peter was still attending classes).
- Peter's longtime landlady, Mrs. Muggins, appears in issue 20, berating him for leaving his skylight open again and causing the ceiling plaster to fail as a result.
- Lightmaster first (and last) battled Spider-Man in SPECTACULAR #3, where he was ESU Chancellor Edward Lansky before his transformation into a super-villain.
Flash introduces Hector and Holly to Peter in issue 20. While Holly immediately begins flirting with Peter, later explained as a ploy to make Hector jealous, Peter and Hector recall their brief encounter during the night school protest in #9 (though Peter does not put two and two together with regards to Hector being the White Tiger, even though Blackbyrd told him the Tiger's real name back in issue 9).
My Thoughts: And so we reach the most momentous moment in young Hector Ayala's costumed career, as he is unmasked live on television by Lightmaster, thus sealing his eventual fate (which we'll check out next week). Back in the seventies, this sort of thing would have been a big deal. Secret identities were sacrosanct; aside from the Fantastic Four, nearly every Marvel character had one -- and to upend a hero's status quo like this would have been mostly unheard of.
I suppose it helps that at this point, the Tiger did not have any sort of ongoing series. He was a serial guest-star, popping up in series like SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, DEFENDERS, and THE HUMAN FLY, with no place to hang his hat since the cancellation of DEADLY HANDS. This made him more of a supporting charater than a main protagonist, which meant he could be shaken up in a way that a corporate mascot with one or more montly titles, like Spider-Man or Captain America, could not. And of course, Mantlo had exhibited a perverse interest in making Hector Ayala's life miserable since practially the moment of his debut, so a development like this is not exactly unusual, even if it's unexpected.
No, it would be Mantlo's successor on SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN who would ultimately present a tragic outcome to the events of this story, as we'll see next week with a pair of "flashback" posts to the early years of this blog, when White Tiger is targeted by the vigilante-hunting Gideon Mace!
I remember reading these issues in four digests that appeared to be promotion gifts (like a Happy Meal). They were edited to leave the story in a cliffhanger to be continued in the next one (Ox 2.0 attacking Spidey after his allies were defeated; Spidey being in Lightmaster’s trap before WT makes his rescue).
ReplyDeleteAMS does address your issue about Flash. His military time does disqualify him from joining Peter in graduation (just as Harry’s drug rehabilitation did the same to him; guess MJ quit college).
DAREDEVIL 86 was also Karen Page’s last appearance as a regular until…you know. She and Matt make a brief reconciliation before deciding to go their separate ways, Karen to her movie career and Matt to his growing relationship with Natasha. And we know how those went…
Interesting! You and Tim (below) both mentioned that AMAZING covers Flash's inability to graduate alongside Peter. I read all the 1970s issues of ASM many years ago in ESSENTIAL format, but I must have forgotten that. I guess Mantlo wasn't quite on the same page as... Wolfman, I seem to recall as the writer who did the actual graduation.
DeleteI had no idea these stories were edited into a promotional digest. Seems like a slightly weird choice, unless someone was trying to get the White Tiger some mainstream exposure!
"According to the Marvel Wiki, he would appear in ten issues between #21 and #32 (but he then vanished for the remainder of Mantlo's run, which ended with issue 42)."
ReplyDeleteIssue #32 is a big status quo change, introducing Peter's (post)graduate days. A whole new set of supporting characters were introduced who'd hang around the series for a few years and make it distinctive from Amazing. In the process existing characters fell away.
"Peter and Flash are both due to graduate college soon (which doesn't exactly make sense for Flash, since he served a tour in the army while Peter was still attending classes)."
Indeed when the graduation ceremony comes (in Amazing #185) Flash explicitly says this is why he's not graduating then. Although even then Flash doing a tour in Vietnam during his university years was starting to strain the timeline.
Ahh, of course! Thanks, Tim. I hadn't thought about it, but #32 sure was the debut of Debra Whitman, Marcy Kane, and the rest. It's weird how they stuck around for a while and then just totally vanished. I seem to recall from my reading of the Roger Stern era that Denny O'Neil sort of co-opted Deb into AMAZING and then wrote her out. I believe it was Mantlo himself who wrote out Marcy, revealing her to be an alien (!) in the process.
DeleteNot sure whatever happened to the guys, though. Professor Sloan, too. They all just faded away in the early eighties. I suppose Peter dropping out of grad school during Stern's AMAZING run meant they were no longer necessary.
Along from his treatment of the White Tiger, which I'll touch on a bit next week, I feel that Peter leaving school was the one major blunder Stern made in his otherwise impeccable run. Though I have to imagine that had he remained on the series, it would've been temporary and Peter would have returned to ESU before long. But after Stern left, I think the ESA setting was abandoned for something like five or six years until the late eighties. And then it was used super sporadically into the 90s.
ReplyDeleteI had way more Amazing than Spectacular as a kid but definitely picked these up off the rack. The cover to #20 in particular is really cool, so that might have done the job. And like I said here several years ago, when you unboxed Deadly Hands of Kung Fu Omnibus Vol. 2, Young Blam’s mind was blown by how the White Tiger’s identity got exposed.
Favorite panel: “The leaves will hide my street clothes!” thinks Pete as we see him in a tree utterly devoid of leaves.
Mantlo surely forgot about Blackbyrd telling Spidey the White Tiger’s real name, because even if it doesn’t come up when Hector and Peter meet in #19 you’d expect at least a metaphorical head slap on Spidey’s part in #20 when he recognizes Hector’s amulet.
I really like the idea of Tony Stark designing failsafes and whatnot for the police, but that “maxiglass” observation window seems to break a little too easily. Ox’s strength isn’t superhuman.
Lightmaster’s mask has always weirded me out in effectively looking like a small face within a larger head.
Perhaps it was partly the zeitgeist, mixed with Mantlo’s social consciousness, but I noted that in #19 one cop basically suggests bombing the Coffee Bean to deal with the Enforcers before another reminds him that it’s full of college students, while in #20 D’Angelo has to remind the guy who suggests other ways when the Enforcers won’t talk that criminals have rights.
As compelling as most of this two-parter is, the last page reads like the story just suddenly ran out of room.
Yes, that issue 20 cover is phenomenal. I really like it! Characters with light-based powers lend themselves to some really cool visuals in the hands of the right artists. I also think Lightmaster has a really cool costume. It's weird to me that he was so infrequently used.
DeleteGood point on the "maxiglass". If Stark provided it to help the police with super-villains, it should be at least strong enough to hold the Rhino, for example. Ox shouldn't be able to do a thing to it!
Also, I agree on the ending. It does feel like somebody ran out of pages.