Spider-Man Newspaper Strip: 3 July 1978 - 10 September 1978

Background

I’m sorry that it’s been a while but if you cast your mind back, you’ll recall that Spidey had just defeated Dr. Doom, his Dr. Janet Wynn robot and his mechanical pigeon. But that story ended with Aunt May being accosted at her mailbox by three hoodlums.

Story 'Aunt May and the Street Hoods'

Even as Peter is hanging his Spidey suit up in his bathroom after washing it with Gleam-o, the three hoods tell Aunt May they want her social security check. One says, “we’re just protectin’” it because, as another says, “some creeps might steal it.” Before things go any further, a policeman enters the building. He knows Aunt May, calling her “Mrs. Parker.” The three hoods back off and leave and the cop asks May if they were hassling her. But May wimps out for the very worst of reasons (“If I lodge a complaint, Peter would worry so!”) and tells the officer that “Everything’s fine. Just fine!” The three hoods watch the policeman leave and wonder what May said to him. “We gotta make sure she don’t talk!”

Later, Spidey is web-slinging when he comes upon the same three guys lifting a stereo system from an apartment onto a fire escape. He breaks up the robbery but, when he kicks a switchblade out of one hood’s hand, he also knocks what he calls a “cabinet” (it’s looks like the stereo’s amp to me) off the fire escape and down toward some bystanders below. (July 6). He snags the cabinet with his webbing but, while he’s occupied, the blond hood smacks him hard in the back of the head with a big chain. (Where was he keeping that?) BTWOKK! Even though he “hit ‘im with everything [he] had,” the dazed web-slinger doesn’t let go of his webbing. The hoods take off. (How? Through the apartment? Down the fire escape? We don’t get to see.) Spidey lifts the cabinet so that he holds it in his hands. And two neighbors in another apartment see him and think he’s heisting the place himself.

The police think so, too. They show up and point at him. Spidey thinks, “Even F. Lee Bailey couldn’t get me out of this!” F. Lee Bailey (1933-2021) was a defense lawyer who, according to Wikipedia, “is considered one of the greatest lawyers of the 20th century.” He served as an attorney for Albert DeSalvo (the Boston Strangler), Patty Hearst when she was part of the Symbionese Liberation Army, and O.J. Simpson. His “greatest lawyer” tag didn’t extend to the 21st century since he was disbarred by Florida in 2001 and Massachusetts in 2003.

The cops climb the fire escape after Spidey, who tells them “A Kojak you’re not,” and then escapes by climbing up the wall, but is now wanted for robbery. “Kojak” was a TV show starring Telly Savalas as an NYPD detective that ran from 1973-1978. In fact, the last new episode had aired by the time this strip appeared.

Soon after, Peter Parker drops by the Daily Bugle and finds Robbie Robertson dealing with problems with his nephew. He tells Peter, “He’s becoming as wild as his two hood friends,” but he also has a picture of him on his desk that he shows to Peter. Robbie tells Pete that his nephew’s name is Jim Harper and asks, “Do you recognize him?” Peter says he doesn’t but he does. “He’s one of the thieves I fought!” (July 11). Jim Harper is also the real name of the Guardian but that’s another comic book universe.

Peter heads to Aunt May’s apartment. The three hoods are hanging out in the hallway, where they want to “make sure she don’t rat to the cops.” This gets forgotten when Peter shows up and they decide to rough him up instead. Peter doesn’t want to reveal his abilities but he is just about to take on the trio anyway, when Aunt May opens her door and he decides that he doesn’t want her seeing him this way. It’s one of the annoying motifs of the series that he would rather endanger Aunt May than let her see him protect her but that is what he does. The three hoods usher him into May’s place and force her to give up her Social Security check. (As someone who never stole a Social Security check, I have to ask…how do they cash them?) Peter fakes fainting, of all things, and the hoods don’t “make sure [May] don’t rat to the cops” after all. They leave with Peter shamefully still faking a faint. Oh, and we get another name for one of the hoods…Angel.

Peter’s plan really backfires because the robbery and her concern over her nephew stress May into a heart attack. (July 17). Now that May’s health is at stake, Peter is no longer concerned about protecting his secret identity. He changes into his Spidey duds and web-slings with her to the hospital. There, he runs into a nurse who is overly-concerned with rules and forms. (“I need your name! Your age! Your relationship to the patient! Have you medical insurance?” None of which would be asked of the person who isn’t the patient.) But, when Spidey smashes a gurney with a THWOKK!, she decides “P-perhaps we’ll waive the forms for now!” A doctor steps in and turns May over to a nurse named Alice. A photographer with sunglasses, mustache and a Donny Osmond haircut takes a picture of May and leaves, declaring, “Wait’ll the Bugle sees a shot of [Spidey’s] latest victim.” Alice calls after him that “I didn’t say Spider-Man’s to blame,” but it’s too late.

It doesn’t take J. Jonah Jameson long to buy the Aunt May photos and put out the headline “Spider-Man Terrorizes Senior Citizen.” The three hoods see it and, instead of feeling relieved that they are off the hook, they get back to their business of making sure “she don’t talk to the fuzz.” Jim Harper tells the others that he’s “got a meanin’ful relationship with a nurse there” and now we know why Alice got a name when the forms-lady did not. She is Jim’s “meanin’ful relationship” nurse.

At Forest Hills hospital, a doctor tells Peter that May will recover even as Alice tells Jim (who is shaking her by the shoulders) that she thinks Mrs. Parker will pull through. (July 24) And as Peter visits May, the three hoods decide that “we gotta shut her up fer good.” Jim objects at first but soon falls in.

Peter visits the hospital again and spies an intern who looks familiar. It’s the blond hood whose name hasn’t appeared yet and he’s going into May’s room to shut her up “fer good.” But Peter calls attention to him and he must flee. He runs down some stairs to the parking garage while Peter changes to Spidey and pursues. The hood gets into a car and heads for the exit, where, apparently, there is no booth to pay for parking. And now, as Spidey leaps on top of the car, Stan tells us he’s “the hood known as ‘Whitey’,” (in panel one of the Sunday strip of July 30). Whitey tries to shake him off but Spidey hangs on and rips part of the car’s roof away. Thinking fast, Whitey pushes the cigarette lighter in (remember when cars came with cigarette lighters?) and uses it to burn Spidey’s hand. (It actually should take longer than that for the lighter to get hot, but, hey, if I’m buying the rest of this story….) Spidey recoils and collides with a wall, knocking him off the car. Whitey, way too full of himself, gloats, “I did it! I beat up on the web-slinger! Now nothin’ can stop me!” Except Spidey recovers quickly, webs Whitey’s steering wheel from long distance (he shouldn’t have been driving with the passenger window open) and yanks the wheel so the car crashes into a pillar with a BKTHUMM!

Two cops hear the crash and come rushing in. Whitey is unhurt, even though he wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and he gets out of the car and accuses Spidey of attacking him. Then, he runs out the exit before the cops can close the garage door. They aren’t interested in him anyway. They think they have caught the big prize of Spider-Man in spite of Spidey yelling, “No! He’s the killer! Stop him!” (Well, technically, Whitey isn’t a killer, just an attempted one.) Spidey has no trouble webbing up the cops and escaping through the air duct. He returns to the spot where he left his civvies and becomes Peter again. He leaves the hospital, saying, “Some luck! Whitey escapes while Spider-Man ends up with a burned hand. (So, how does Pete know Whitey’s name? Has he been reading Stan’s captions?) And back at their hideout, Whitey tells the other that they now have to “waste” Spider-Man. Angel knows just how to do it. He’s been working for weeks on souping up a van. “It can total a dozen web-slingers.”

After Angel shows off the van’s speed by winning a drag race with a white sports car, he shows Jim and Whitey that the van is also bullet-proof by firing a gun at the windshield with his two buddies still inside. Meanwhile, Peter asks Robbie Robertson about Jim for the second time, arousing Robbie’s suspicions. But his question also gets Robbie to decide to find Jim and make him “clean up his act,” which is just what Peter wants. He sticks a spidey-tracer on Robbie’s car.

So, Spidey follows Robbie but stops under a ledge because it starts to rain. “Can’t afford to slip on a wet surface,” he says, but he wasn’t clinging to any surfaces; he was web-slinging. By the time the rain ends, Robbie’s car is out of range and Spidey can’t sense his tracer. Too bad, because Robbie knows just where Jim is. Angel confronts him at the building’s entrance and Robbie pushes Angel to get in. But inside, he is met by Whitey holding a gun on him. Jim objects because “He’s my uncle!” but the others tie Robbie up and gag him. They have a map of the subway system on the wall with one station circled and they think this is enough for Robbie to figure out their plans, which is to stage a robbery. They leave Robbie behind, telling Jim that “he’s got nothin’ to worry about…till we git back!”

As the trio head out in their van, Spidey senses the tracer again, finds Robbie and unties him. It turns out that Robbie did figure out their plans (but maybe he wouldn’t have if they hadn’t called attention to it) and tells Spidey, “According to this map, they’re planning to rob a subway train at this station,” which is “West Side…in the Sixties!” Spidey arrives at the station just as the three hoods are heading underground. “Just my luck! It’s rush hour!” says Spidey as he evades the crowd by crawling on the wall and the ceiling. But he’s too late. “The doors are closing” and the train leaves the station. Spidey snags it with his webbing and goes for a ride outside.

Inside the car, which is, fortunately for Spidey, the last one on the train, the threesome rob the subway commuters of “money, rings, and watches.” But Angel gets too close to the door at the rear of the car. Spidey pulls the door open with a SKRUTTCH!, grabs Angel, taking his gun, and webs him up (August 19).

Outside, word has gotten out that Spidey “leaped on top of a crowded train” and the police gather so that “every station is covered.” Inside, Jim notices that Angel is missing, which forces Spidey to enter the car and confront them. It sure looked like Angel was the only one with a gun but, suddenly, Jim (August 21, panel 1) and Whitey (August 21, panel 4) have them, too. (Whitey’s chain, which he had on August 20, panel 5, has disappeared.) Spidey webs Jim’s gun to his hand but Whitey grabs a hostage. (By the time, the August 22 strip rolls around, Jim’s gun and the webbing are gone.) We learned on August 20, panel 3 that the train was “comin’ to the station,” but that’s not where the hoods planned to get off. Whitey tells Jim “Here’s the spot, man! Do it!” and Jim pulls the Emergency Brake, which stops the train with such force that it knocks Spidey off the ceiling and up against one of the hand-hold rails. The doors open and Whitey and Jim exit, leaving their hostage behind. They climb a ladder that leads to a manhole next to which their van is parked.

Just as Whitey and Jim climb into the van, a police car arrives. “Those two fit the description of the ones we’re after!” says one cop(But where did they get a description?) and they chase the van with Spidey following from the manhole. The van is too fast for the police so they “radio ahead for a road block” and three other cop cars converge on the van. (Seems like an awful lot of trouble to take down some hoods who robbed the subway. I thought the police were after the web-slinger.)

Just as Spidey thinks he won’t be needed, Whitey tells Jim to “pull that lever, man!” Jim does, and oil shoots out of the back of the van, sending the cop cars “skidding out of control!” “That van’s like something out of James Bond,” says Spidey as he continues the chase. There is a police roadblock ahead but the van smashes right through it “like a pile driver.” “It’ll take a tank to stop that thing,” says one officer. Or maybe, it’ll take Spider-Man. Well, maybe a SWAT team that is blocking the road up ahead but they shoot at the van, to no effect.

Robbie hears a radio report that “the police seem powerless to stop the speeding armored van” as he drives his car. Aunt May is watching the chase on a TV in her hospital room, thinking that “that horrible Spider-Man” is “behind the whole thing” until a nurse turns the TV off. “You know you mustn’t excite yourself!” she says.

Spidey gets ahead of the van and finds a road repair crew working in a big ditch. Spidey chases them out and covers the ditch with webbing. Then he stands on the other side of it, tempting the van to try to run him over. Instead, the van crashes through the webbing and ends up in the hole. Robbie arrives “just around the corner.”

Back at the subway car, the police find Angel, still webbed up. “I don’t get it!” says one, “If Spider-Man’s as bad as they say, why would he try to help us?” And back at the van, Spidey starts to pull open the roof when Robbie shows up. This distracts the web-slinger and Whitey takes advantage by pressing a button that emits “Angel’s gas foam” through the roof. (In case you happen to have someone on your roof that you want to gas.) Spidey leaps away before Whitey can climb out of the van and shoot him but he’s woozy and in no position to help Robbie when he comes running up, yelling at his nephew, “Jim, back off! You’re no killer!” Whitey tries to shoot Robbie but Jim jumps in the way, taking the bullet for himself (September 6, panel 3).

Whitey runs to a nearby construction site and takes the elevator as Spidey pursues. Before Whitey can get a shot off, Spidey snags him around the ankle with his webbing and yanks him off the elevator. He leaves him hanging upside for the arriving police. As he wall-crawls away, one cop asks, “how do we collar Spider-Man?” “Forget ‘im!” says another, “For once he’s on our side.”

The next day, Peter is with Aunt May who is being discharged from the hospital. Robbie shows up at the same hospital to visit Jim, who, it appears, was only shot in the arm. Jim’s nurse friend Alice is looking after him. Robbie tells him, “I spoke to the DA! The fact that you risked your life to save me should help you at the trial!” Alice says, “I’ll wait for you, Jim…no matter how long!” “I don’t deserve either of you,” Jim says. (Does Jim get help at his trial? Does Alice wait for him? We never find out since, as far as I know, Jim Harper never appears again.)

Meanwhile, outside of the hospital, May says, “Peter, there’s so much violence in the world! Promise you’ll always stay as gentle as you are!” “I promise, Aunt May!,” says Peter, “I’ll never change!” (No kidding! It’s almost 50 years later and he’s about the same age!)

General Comments

Here are this story’s “First appearances in the Spider-Verse:”

1. Gleam-O (July 2, panel 1) (named July 3, panel 1)
2. The cop who knows Aunt May (July 3, panel 2)
3. Forest Hills Hospital (July 20, panel 1)
4. The nurse who is overly-concerned with forms (July 21, panel 1)
5. Alice, the nurse (July 22, panel 1)
6. The photographer with the Donny Osmond haircut (July 22, panel 2)
7. Angel’s Souped-Up Van (August 5, panel 2)
8. Joe “Robbie” Robertson’s car (August 7, panel 3)
9. The nurse who turns May’s TV off (August 30, panel 2)
10. The road repair crew (August 30, panel 3)

Overall Rating

In Comics Creators on Spider-Man, John Romita says of the newspaper strip, “I wanted to bring in all the classic supervillains and guest-star characters like Daredevil and Doctor Strange, but Stan always fought me on it. He wanted to use Spider-Man to write a soap opera strip like Mary Worth.” Still, up to this point, the strip gave us Dr. Doom, Dr. Octopus, the Rattler, the Kingpin, Kraven the Hunter, and Mysterio. But, as Bruce Canwell says in the introduction to The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Newspaper Comics Collection #1, “The rest of 1978 features three ‘street level’ plotlines,” this story being the first.

It starts with the three hoods, Whitey, Angel, and Jim, trying to steal Aunt May’s social security check and ends with them having a supervan with Spidey, the police and a SWAT team trying to stop them. In the meantime, Spidey is accused of robbing an apartment and Peter fakes fainting rather than protect Aunt May since he doesn’t dare let her know that he is not “gentle,” which only serves to give May a heart attack. Spidey is blamed for May’s condition which is a sub-plot that is never really resolved. Meanwhile, Jim just happens to know a nurse at the hospital and the three hoods go from small-time thieves to prospective murderers. Angel, Whitey, and Jim, who had a knife, a chain and no weapon respectively now all have guns. (Whitey’s chain disappears on the subway and is not seen again.) And then there’s Robbie Robertson who just happens to be Jim’s uncle which allows Jim to take a bullet for him and give us some semblance of a happy ending.

It’s a bit of a hodgepodge but does it work? Yes, sort of, if you read it day-by-day as originally intended, although you have to ask, “Are these three cheap hoods really worth over two months of reading about them?” Taken as a lump sum, it’s a little bit all over the map (Speaking of maps, did these guys really need to put up a subway map on their wall so that Robbie and Spidey could see it? Right in the front hall?) and you can’t help but notice things like Spidey ripping the roof off of two different cars. And, really, if Angel can put together a James Bond van, why is he bothering with petty theft?

The Romita art is great, as usual, and there’s some nice Lee dialogue but the whole thing is pretty average, deserving of an average rating.

Two-and-a-half webs.

Footnote

Next: Another “street level” story as Spidey runs up against Vera Arlen.