Over in the DC Universe, the various heroes are scattered acorss the U.S., usually in cities such a Gotham or Metropolis that only exist within that universe.
In the Marvel Universe, the heroes mostly congregate in New York City, so its not that much of a stretch that Spider Man was pretty much stumbling over another character every month in the pages of Marvel Team Up.
In MTU #5 (November 1972), the webslinger stumbles across Vision, who is apparently having a really bad night.
The story, written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Gil Kane, is an entertaining and unusual one. Vision is having sudden and unpredictable attacks of seizures and blinding headaches. He doesn't want to go to the Avengers because of some angsty stuff he's going through in concurrent issues of the Avengers.
That's a weak excuse, by the way. In the Avengers, Vision is going through a sort of identity crisis because he's not a human being, but refusing to go to his teammates when he so obviously needs their help isn't just angst, it's just dumb.
But, dumb or not, Spider Man is the only one around to help him.
Spidey realizes that an intangible ally makes it easy to break into a hospital, where he uses some jury-rigged equipment to find out a mysterious signal is superimposing another set of brainwaves onto Vision. The source of that signal is traced to the Baxter Building--the headquarters of the Fantastic Four.
I like this part of the story. Peter Parker is a budding brilliant scientist as well as a superhero and it's always nice when a story remembers this and incorporates Peter's smartypants tendencies into the plot.
We soon find out that FF villain Puppet Master is inadvertantly responsible for the Vision's woes. While hiding out in a remote cabin, he saw an alien ship crash. From this wreck he recovers a powerful robot. He makes a puppet of the robot to gain control over it, then begins to use it to take revenge on the Fantastic Four.
The robot barrells through the building's security, but Puppet Master is disappointed to find out there's no one home. It's at this point that Spidey and the Vision show up.
I've always enjoyed Gil Kane's art work, whom I believe never drew an uninteresting panel in his life. The fight between Spider Man and the robot, in which the webslinger barely holds his own, is entertaining and exciting.
Vision isn't much help at first. The headaches and seizures come whenever Puppet Master is actively controlling the robot, so he's pretty useless at first. But when he sees Puppet Master and figures out what's going on, he pulls himself together long enough to destroy the puppet. The robot then deactivates and collapses.
So Vision is now all better and he soon flies off, leaving Spidey behind in the Baxter Building with a damaged alien robot and an unconscious supervillain.
What will the FF say when they get home? We'll find out next week, since the next issue is a direct continuation of this one.
This particular issue is fun. Conway's scripts were too dialogue heavy at this early point in his career, but he was still producing great stuff. The plot makes sense within the confines of Comic Book Logic and I really did enjoy seeing Peter Parker being able to use his science skills.
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