Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #114

Background

Last issue, Spider-Man saved his Aunt May and her boarder's from a group of thugs who Ernie Popchik shot earlier. When Peter thought everything was all over, he came to realise that there was a growing tension between May and her fiance Nathan...

Story 'The Key'

We start off with a young criminal trying to pick his way into someone else's apartment to rob it. But the janitor stops him and he tries to escape. He gets away from the janitor but stumbled across an attack in the alley. A group of thug's are attacking a police captain. They're about to attack when Spider-Man intervenes and easily beats them all. He is left with the police captain to deal with, who is angry with Spidey because he let one of the thug's away. Spider-Man get annoyed, but decides to swing off. And the young lock-picker is left to comprhend with what just happened.

We learn that his father owns lock shop and he remembers that one Peter Parker bought lots of locks from there a few weeks ago, so he decides to bust into Parker's house.

Later, the lock-picker is searching through the apartment, not finding much when he stumbles across Peter's spare Spider-Man stuff. Before he can get a good look at it though, Peter (as Spider-Man) jumps in. The lock-picker runs away before he can see that Peter is in fact Spider-Man.

Even later, he's searching through the box he stole when he finds out that it's a box full of Spider-Man stuff! He decides to use the fear that the image of Spider-Man brings to people (and Spidey's webbing and equipment) to help him in his stealing career (which is of course for a good cause: to help his father with his money worries.)

But not having much practice with the stuff, he falls from the webline and lands on the floor...hard. The police take him into custody...

Meanwhile, Peter's found out that he's been robbed of his Spider-Equipment and realizes there was spider tracers in that box. So he could use them to track the robber down. He jumps out his window to begin his plan...

While the fake Spider-Man is being taken to the police captain we met earlier. The police captain says that he's been photographed and those photographs will be leaked to the Daily Bugle if he doesn't do what the captain tells him. The captain wants him to take down the group of thugs from earlier. Of course, this isn't the real Spider-Man, so it's going to be a bit harder for him to defeat a group of armed criminals...

He tries though, and get's easily beaten with a punch. The captain then get's captured because he made a noise from outside. They're threatening to kill the captain while the fake Spider-Man is just coming to counciousness.He finds the spider tracer in his belt and realizes that it's a homing signal. He finds an old radio in a box that he uses to boost the tracer's range. And sure enough, across town, the REAL Spider-Man gets a huge blast from his spider-sense which he follows to the waterfront. He once again takes down the gang and rescue's the captain. He then starts to get angry with the fake Spidey, but cools off with him once he explains that he was trying to help his father. Spidey tells the kid a lecture and saves his secret identity, while the police officer also realises that he's gone wrong over the year's. He forgot that he became a police officer to help people.

And then to finish it off, we have a sort of epilouge where we find out that the young lock-picker has started his own electronics buisness and that their money worries are over! And for a favour for his father, he goes up town to help a customer that has locked himself out his apartment where he finds out that it was the door that he tried to break into last month (at the beginning of the issue in our time.) and that it was the police captain's house! And everything finishes with a happy ending!

General Comments

Nothing mind-blowing or amazing but a good single-issue read. Despite the coincidenses it was a pretty good issue. Nice that the attention wasn't all on Spider-Man and that it was on the kid and the police captain for once, in fact it felt like Spider-Man was more the guest star as he was only really there to save the day. Though I wouldn't like that every issue, it was good this one.

In the art department, another good job on pencilling and inking with no major flaws really. I generally think this issue was fine effort from guest writer Kaminski, guest penciller Browzowsky and inker Williams!

Overall Rating

Good issue, but nothing spectacular so it get's a rating of 3.5 webs!