Amazing Spider-Man #35, Apr. 1966

Amazing Spider-Man #35, Apr. 1966

Script & Editing: Stan Lee
Plot & Artwork: Steve Ditko
Lettering & Loitering: Art Simek

Ha ha, same old joke about how long it’s been since I’ve written here. It’s only been… six years? Oh damn. Well, in my defense, at some point in the interval I unfortunately lost my comic book library and haven’t had much time or space in which to rebuild it. I wanted to wait until I had a working 60’s library again, but things are much harder to find now, and I want to read comics, so I’m just gonna read through ASM for a while. I can use this to keep my place.

Molten Man is back from his embarrassing appearance in ASM #28, and he basically convinces the judge it was temporary insanity and gets to go back home without even going to jail. The first thing out of jail (apart from ripping his clothes off and bending iron bars, we would all do that), he puts on a normal person disguise and robs a jewelers by pushing the clerk pretty hard. Spider-Man just happens to be overhead (even Stan the narrator admits this is contrived) and thwarts the robbery.

Molten Man gets away, and Pete figures out that the disguised guy he fought was Molten Man because his punches “felt like iron.” This genius boy. He’s still using the same hideout, so Spidey plants a tracker on his jacket and follows him to his next crime. After a completely avoidable scuffle on Spider-Man’s part, “Moltey” escapes again and Spidey beats him back to his hideout, thus gaining the element of surprise and, again, hog-tying the metal villain to defeat him.

I guess getting hog-tied is just Molten Man’s weakness. Or maybe Stan Lee was writing way too many westerns at the time and his brain was frying. Anyways, we’re almost done with Steve Ditko’s run with Marvel before he quits because he gets pissed about not having enough creative control. These last few are not some of his best work.