A Wedding, Two Villains and a Nuclear Explosion

 

cover art by Gil Kane

Spider Man #131 (April 1974) picks up right where the previous issue left off--with Doc Ock about to marry Aunt May. Gerry Conway is the writer and the art is by Ross Andru.

Why? Well, I'm going to summarize the issue a little out-of-order, explaining what Spidey discovers much later in the issue. Months ago, May was working as a housekeeper for Ock. He intercepted a letter telling May she had inherited a uranium-rich island (equipped with a privately-owned nuclear reactor) located in northern Canada. Ock killed the lawyer who sent the letter to keep this a secret and has since then been wooing May. He wants to marry her to get ownership of the island.

Hammerhead knows that May has inherited something valuable and he wants in on it. So he crashes the wedding, planning on snatching May and presumably forcing her to sign the island over to him.

Doc gets away with May and, after a brief tangle with Spidey, boards a helicopter he had hidden nearby and flies away. Hammerhead follows in his own helicopter (a big one that holds lots of troops). Spidey webs himself to the bottom of this second aircraft.

They all end up at that island. More combat shananigans follow. Spidey gets away with May, which isn't easy, because she thinks Spidey is a bad guy. 

Eventually, Spidey finds a jet plane with modified controls that would allow "even an idiot to pilot it." This is ironic, because in the last issue we found out that Peter couldn't drive a car. Now he has to fly a plane. I wish I knew if that bit of irony was on purpose or just an unintended consequence of the story being told. 

Anyway, while Peter and May fly off, Hammerhead and Ock have a final confrontation inside the island's nuclear reactor. This does not end well.

Dropping Spider Man into the middle of a gang war became an occasional tradition over the next few years and I always enjoyed the concept. In this case, the premise of Ock wooing May is a bit silly (and depends on May being so ditzy that Peter really should consider putting her in an Assisted Living facility), but Ock's motive of getting ownership of valuable real estate does make sense. Andru's art is great and the action-filled story is fun to read.

Next week, it's back to the Wild West to visit that most famous of lawmen--Quick Draw McGraw.