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.

Amazing Spider-Man #28, Sept. 1965

Amazing Spider-Man #28, Sept. 1965

Written and edited with loving care by Stan Lee
Plotted and drawn with talent rare by Steve Ditko
Lettered and bordered with a vacant stare by Sam Rosen

Seems to me like “Molten Man” may not be the best name for this guy. I mean, he’s not actually molten at all, his skin is covered with this weird metal stuff that makes him slippery and super strong and invulnerable… but not really molten. You’d think that’d be more like a guy who was hot and fluid or something, kinda like the Lava Men.

It’s Peter Parker’s last day of high school, and while his classmates are getting their robes and mortarboards in order, he’s got a little wardrobe problem to take care of as well. He visits Spencer Smythe, the guy who invented the spider-seeking robot from a couple issues ago, since he left his old Spider-Man outfit in that robot after the fight. While in the lab, a man named Raxton rushes in and beats up Smythe over a jar of “liquid metal alloy”, which he manages to spill all over himself.

Pete, now with his real Spidey suit on, chases after Raxton, who has learned that he’s invulnerable and super strong, and has started calling himself the Molten Man. Spider-Man tries to fight him, but nothing he does seems to affect Raxton. In a last-ditch attempt, Spidey knocks out the lights in the basement where they were fighting and uses his Spider-Sense to sneak up behind Raxton and hog-tie him with some thick strands of webbing. He rushes away just as the cops arrive so he can attend his graduation, and he learns that he’s gotten a scholarship to Empire State University (as did Flash Thompson)! Hooray, Peter Parker can go to college (and stay there for forty years)!

Seriously, it took just over three years (in real time) from the time Spider-Man was introduced for Peter Parker to graduate from high school. That’s tantamount to being in real time! In a comic book! What the hell is that all about? I’m not exactly sure when it is that Pete graduates from college, but I’m damn certain that it was after the 60’s, maybe even after the 70’s.