Spider-Man Promo (Drakes Cakes 1993) #3

Background

Back in '93 Drakes teamed up with Marvel to produce a set of four mini-comics that were packed in with Drakes Cakes products. These four comics co-starred a bunch of Marvel heroes on a serialized adventure. The premise was that there was an on-going storyline that caused the various heroes to come into contact with each other. This was the first time Drakes co-produced such a set of mini-comics. The second set was in 1994.

Story Details

This is Chapter three in a four-chapter story. This chapter co-starred Spider-Man and The Hulk. As this episode begins, Spider-Man and Wolverine (who co-starred in the previous issue) come barreling into Bruce Banner's lab (this is during the time that Banner and the Hulk's conscience merged, leaving Bruce inside the Hulk's head when the Hulk was big and green).Logan, being his naturally cheerfully nasty self lunges at the Gamma-irradiated scientist who is in the middle of an important experiment and swats the mutant away. Needless to say, this sets the feral mutant over the top, and he advances on the emerald man-mount with blood in his eyes.

Spidey, being who he is, isn't interested in fight he is sure to follow, so he does not the brightest thing he's ever done, and literally steps between the two ferocious combatants and tries to calm them both down, which he is surprisingly able to do without getting sliced or squashed. Once he has the two heroes in line, and calmed down, he shows Hulk a report on alternative energy sources, written by Dr. Banner that Spidey recently acquired which was part of a shipment bound for Latveria, the home of Dr. Doom.

As the heroes are going talking, the Mount (the place where the Hulk called home for a time back in the early '80s) comes under attack from the Juggernaut. As the Juggernaut begins tossing around the Mount's workers, Ajax, Hector, and Ulysses (three of the super-powered heroes who also reside at the Mount) rush to their aid. Unfortunately even their combined might prove to be no match for the unstoppable mutant. Lucky for them Hulk Wolverine, and Spider-man are not far behind, and jump quickly into the fray. Needless to say, they don't fare much better, until Wolverine, who has dealt with Professor Xavier's step-brother before, tells the others that in order to de-power the villain, they have to first remove Juggy's helmet.

Now, with a plan of attack formulated, they direct their combined assault on the rivets that bolt his helmet to his body armor, and damage it enough so as to remove it, and defeat the villainous mutant. Which Hulk is able to do with but a single punch. With Juggernaut out of the way, the three heroes plan their next move, which is a full-scale assault on Castle Doom.

General Comments

Another fun comic as well as a very cool value-add to the box of sweets that is Drakes Cakes. All of the action flowed well, everyone seemed in character, especially Spider-man, who, once again, proves himself to be more than just some clumsy version of "Charlie Brown in tights" as some folks would have us believe him to be. He is a real hero, one who will willingly interpose himself between two violent and virtually unstoppable madmen (Wolverine and Hulk) in order to prevent unnecessary bloodletting. Plus, he is smart enough to recognize high-end scientific notes Peter Parker is a scientist of the highest order, remember), and has the ability and courage to take on truly nasty villains as well.

This is the Spider-man with whom I grew up.

Overall Rating

Reading this mini-comic you get the feeling that the writer wasn't just marking time 'til his next paycheck or the next "event-driven epic", but was truly interested in delivering a compelling story that took place inside Marvel continuity (even though most of the people reading this comic probably weren't even aware of the day-to-day events inside regular Marvel comics). This was something of which the writer was proud of doing, and wanted to do well, and you just have to love that.

Footnote

Given as this was randomly packaged inside a package of Drakes Cakes, you were never quite sure which comic you were going to get, so it required that you purchase them and hopefully you would wind up with a full set.