by Len Wein
With madness in his eyes, Octopus charged across the girder at his web-slinging foe, but Spider-Man hopped nimbly out of his way.
“Octopus, you’ve blown it, buddy. Why don’t you cut and run while you still can? Maybe you’ll find a rock big enough to hide under.”
“No! Never!” Octopus was ranting now, his eyes glazed. “For most of my life, I hid myself away, laboring in dark laboratories for the benefit of others. I was never acknowledged, never given the credit I deserved. I was a nobody until these mechanical appendages were grafted to my body, but I’ll never be a nobody again.
“Now I work for myself, for my own advantage, for my own glory—and I’ll destroy anything that dares to stand in my way. That’s why I killed Allen Huddleston, and that’s why I’m going to kill you!”
Below them, J. Jonah Jameson suddenly screamed. “You’re lying! Please tell me you’re lying. You can’t tell me Spider-Man isn’t a murderer. Not after all I’ve printed. If Spider-Man is innocent, I’ll look like a fool. I’ll be the laughing-stock of the publishing industry. Please—tell me you’re lying!”
Urgently, Joe Robertson grabbed Jameson’s arm. “Forget it, Jonah. We’ve got more important things to worry about than preserving your reputation. We still have to save our skins. I helped give the Web-slinger the break he needed, but from here on, he’s on his own. Let’s just get out of here.”
In anguish, Jameson shook his head. “Don’t you understand, Robbie? I plastered the front page with news of Spider-Man’s guilt. If he’s really innocent, I’ll be humiliated. Don’t you see that, Robertson? Don’t you see that?”
“All I see, Jonah, is a man who let his blind hatred get the better of him. No matter what it costs you, Jonah, you’ll have to print the truth. All the rest will take care of itself.”
Joe Robertson turned to leave, and this time Jameson followed him. “You’re right, Robbie. I should have thought of it myself. The American public has a notoriously short memory to begin with. I can write an editorial explaining how we actually cooperated with the Wall-crawler, printed those headlines to make it seem as if he was guilty, so he could work in secret, undercover.
“Sure, I’ll tell them all how I actually saved the Web-slinger, how I helped expose Doctor Octopus, how I was an eyewitness to Doc Ock’s confession that he murdered Allen Huddleston. You’re right, Robbie. I can still come out of this mess smelling like a rose.”
Jameson reached the doorway, strutting like some gray-haired peacock. “C’mon, Robertson, let’s get moving. We’ve still got a newspaper to publish. I can see it now, a four-inch banner headline: ‘Fearless Publisher Saves the World!’ You know, Robbie, that really has a nice ring to it.”
Joe Robertson glanced back over his shoulder to see Spider-Man avoid another swipe by Doc Ock’s tentacles. He had no great love for the Web-slinger, but neither did he dislike him. Spider-Man had saved too many people far too often for Robbie to ever really think of him as a criminal. Silently, he wished the Wall-crawler luck.
“You’d better not start setting type yet, Jonah. The battle back there still isn’t over, and unless the Coast Guard gets here in time, Doctor Octopus might yet triumph.”
Jameson’s cat-eating grin instantly faded. “No, he wouldn’t dare do it to me again. Spider-Man can’t die now. He’ll ruin everything.”
High among the girders, the desperate game of cat-and-mouse continued. Spider-Man was leaping, diving, almost flying among the tangled struts, with Doctor Octopus in single-minded pursuit. It was the sort of hit-and-run combat that could have gone on for hours, if a heavily armed squad of Coast Guardsmen hadn’t chosen that moment to burst into the room.
“Okay, both of you—stop right where you are!”
Doctor Octopus whirled towards this new intrusion, an almost-animalistic snarl on his lips. “I’m disappointed in you, Web-slinger. I’d have thought you had courage enough to finish our disagreement unaided, but since you do not—”
A thick cloud of black smoke suddenly enveloped the eight-limbed figure, throwing the Coast Guardsmen into confusion. A handful of shots rang out before Corporal Kominsky could regain control of his men, but it made little difference. When the inky smoke had dissipated, Doctor Octopus was gone.
“Cripes! What are we supposed to do now, corp?”
“There’s not much we can do. We lost one of these freaks, but we still got us Spider-Man. We’ll have to be satisfied with that.”
Slowly, his hands above his head, the Wall-crawler descended into the midst of the frightened Coast Guardsmen, wishing he had the same sort of gimmicks Octopus had, so he could be anywhere else right now than here. But he didn’t, so he was determined to make the best of the situation. Doctor Octopus had vanished, and this round had ended in a stalemate.
But the war was not yet over.
Seventeen
J. Jonah Jameson glowered at Spider-Man as the Web-slinger was led up to the oil platform’s deck.
“Well, I hope you’re satisfied, Wall-crawler. Your being innocent has really left me holding the bag.”
“Excuse me. Next time, I’ll try to be guilty, okay?”
Jameson snorted. Then, without another word, he turned and headed for the Coast Guard cutter that waited to carry Doc Ock’s victims back to the shore, and safety. Joe Robertson gave the Wall-crawler a sympathetic shrug, then followed after his employer.
The eight oil company heads were close behind. Andrew Cobb smiled lazily at Captain Gregory Turk, who headed the Coast Guard crew. “Mighty nice ship you got here, Captain. Reminds me of the li’l lady I served on back in the Big One. Mind if I go up front and watch the action?”
Turk laughed. “Of course not, Mr. Cobb. Feel free.”
John Daniels grunted sourly. “Bah. You’re a brave man now, Cobb, but when the chips were down I was the only one among us with nerve enough to stand up to that monstrous madman. I’m glad it’s over anyway. With any luck, I’ll never have to see any of you ever again.”
Arthur Norman smiled sheepishly as he stepped toward the Coast Guard cruiser, wheeling Madison Bell before him. Arthur had fled like a frightened rabbit when violence had broken out between Doctor Octopus and Spider-Man. He’d been glad to know he was not alone, for he’d found Bell cowering in a utility closet after the battle. But now, Bell’s eyes glistened as he pulled his heavy blanket tight around him, turning to Spider-Man with an impish grin. “That was some fight you put up back there, Sonny. Hope you gave that Octopus character the beating he deserved. Anyone who would murder a sweet innocent guy like Allen Huddleston just to get him out of the way deserves all the bruises he can get.
“You hang in there, Web-slinger, and if you need a lawyer or something when you come to trial, well, you just give me a call.”
Beneath his mask, Spider-Man smiled. When he finally had his day in court, he would need all the help he could get, and if a multi-millionaire like Madison Bell was volunteering to support him, he certainly wasn’t going to turn him—Hey, wait a minute. How could I have been so blind?
As if propelled from a cannon, Spider-Man launched himself through the air, tackling Madison Bell and pulling him from his wheelchair. Stunned by the Web-slinger’s unexpected action, Captain Turk shouted, “Stop him, men! He’s gone berserk! Stop him!”
Three of the Coast Guardsmen hurled themselves at the furious Web-slinger, but he shrugged them off with an almost-casual motion. “Sorry, Captain, but I’m just as sane as you are. Maybe more so.”
“Get him off,” Madison Bell howled. “Get this madman off of me.”
“Not just yet,” Spider-Man responded. Then he shot a pointed look at J. Jonah Jameson, who stood trembling almost imperceptibly behind Joe Robertson. “Jameson, did you or Robbie tell anybody else about Doctor Octopus’s confession back there?”
“What? And blow an exclusive? Are you really crazy?”
“That’s what I thought,” Spider-Man said, almost grinning now. “So if you didn’t tell Madison Bell that Doc Ock murde
red Allen Huddleston, and Joe Robertson didn’t tell him, and I didn’t tell him, how did he know?
“The answer is simple if you think about it,” Spidey said, reaching for a fold of skin at Bell’s wrinkled neck as Captain Turk moved forward to prevent him from strangling the old man. “The only way Madison Bell could have known who murdered Huddleston is if Bell himself is actually—”
“Doctor Octopus!?”
A half-dozen voices sounded as one, and Spider-Man tore away the lifelike mask to reveal the snarling, furious face of Otto Octavius beneath. And under the heavy blanket that covered Bell’s supposedly crippled body were hidden four writhing metallic tentacles—which Octopus did not hesitate to use.
“I warned you once to stay out of my affairs, Web-slinger. This time, you’re going to die!”
Eighteen
Doctor Octopus’s steel arms shot forward, smashing Spider-Man back into a bulkhead. “This time, nothing will stop me, Wall-crawler! This time, I’m going to rip you to ribbons!”
A writhing tentacle grabbed the Web-slinger by the front of his costume, pinning him to the deck, while a second tentacle drove savagely for his face. Desperately, Spider-Man kicked free and rolled as the pile-driving appendage put a gaping hole in the metal where his hooded head had been lying instants before.
Octopus raised his tentacles to strike once more, and several of the Coast Guardsmen, recovering from their shock, hurled themselves upon him. Doc Ock hurled them off again with ease, fracturing the arm of one and leaving another unconscious.
Ock’s gone completely bananas. He’s liable to turn this rig into a slaughterhouse, unless I take the battle where nobody else can get in the way.
Without hesitation, Spider-Man vaulted over the heads of the gathered throng, latching on to one of the girders that served as a support for the massive oil drill that formed the center structure of the sprawling platform. His eight-limbed adversary was after him in seconds.
“Fool, haven’t you learned yet? There is no place you can go that Doctor Octopus cannot follow.”
That’s the general idea, chuckles. You just keep on coming.
On the deck, Coast Guard Yeoman Anthony Callahan struggled to center Doctor Octopus in his sights, until his rifle was slapped aside by an angry Captain Turk.
“Are you as crazy as the rest of them, Callahan? Do you want hot lead ricocheting off one of those girders and maybe putting a hole through one of these oil company men? Our first priority is to protect these people, and that’s precisely what we’re going to do.
“I want everybody aboard the cutter, and I mean now. We’re casting off. We can send reinforcements back to handle the Web-slinger and his freaky friend. They’ll keep until then, alive or otherwise. After all, there isn’t exactly anyplace for them to go from here. This platform is three miles off the coast.”
Within three minutes, Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus were alone on the towering structure that was Project Recovery. Doc Ock had torn loose one of the support girders and was using it as a bludgeon in a futile attempt to smash the fast-moving Wall-crawler, who had thus far managed to stay just out of reach.
“You can’t avoid me forever, Web-slinger. Eventually, you’ll make a slip, and I will finish you.”
A double backflip put Spider-Man beyond the range of Doc Ock’s next lunge. “You know the problem with you, Ock? You have these delusions of adequacy. You assume everything will go your way just because you want it to. I mean, how long did you actually expect all those oil companies to fall for your little con game anyhow?”
As the Web-slinger spoke, he whipped around a girder, slamming into Octopus from behind and toppling the demented genius from his perch. Octopus fell, but two steel arms shot out instantly and he quickly regained his balance.
“The best-conceived schemes are often the simplest, insect. My plan would have worked . . . if it hadn’t been for you.”
Octopus lunged, and Spider-Man triggered his web-shooters, binding the eight-limbed lunatic in a shoulder-to-hip cocoon. Snarling savagely, Octopus shredded his bonds, then turned to see the Web-slinger scrambling to the top of the derrick. He was tired of chasing that blasted insect all the way to kingdom come. This time, he would make Spider-Man come to him.
“Is this how you intend to defeat me, Web-slinger? Do you honestly believe you have power enough to accomplish that?” As Octopus ranted on, two of his tentacles snaked silently down toward the base of the derrick, their pincer-like fingers reaching for the locking mechanism of the oil cap, which held back countless gallons of the precious black liquid. If he could just maneuver the Web-slinger closer, then release the cap without his noticing, the geyser that would result would smash the insect senseless.
Slowly, his mechanical fingers curled about the locking mechanism and began to loosen the couplings.
“Answer me, Wall-crawler! How do you intend to defeat a man who is obviously your superior? Curse you, insect—answer me!”
Spider-Man scurried along the girders cautiously, his spider-sense tingling. Doc Ock was up to something, but from this distance he couldn’t tell what it was. He had to get closer to get a better look. Step into my parlor, said the Octopus to the Spider. It’s not exactly the most original of quips, but considering the situation, it’ll have to do.
“I don’t have to do anything to defeat you, Ockie. You’re doing a pretty good job of that yourself. All your much-vaunted power is a sham, just like the radiation you supposedly used to contaminate all that oil. In point of fact, that radiation didn’t even exist, did it?”
“Oh, it existed all right, insect, in the minds of those I was dealing with—and, in the end, that is all that really matters.”
“Come off it, Octopus. Those eight men didn’t become the heads of this nation’s most powerful oil companies by being taken for a ride by every lunatic who comes along the pike. They would have investigated your claims, checked and double-checked them.”
Octopus grinned, reveling in his genius. “And indeed they did, my web-slinging friend. But those they employed to carry out the investigations had been in my employ for many years before. So were the men they utilized to double-check the findings, and those who took care of the triple-checking. I leave nothing to chance, Spider-Man. John Daniels and the others were told precisely what I wished them to be told, and nothing else. By the time my agents completed their reports, there was no way on earth that any of those companies would have dared touch their oil supplies.”
“And while they left that oil to grow dusty, you intended to siphon it off, store it in your own supply tanks somewhere, and then sell it back to them without their ever realizing it was already theirs.”
Doctor Octopus applauded politely. “Congratulations, Spider-Man. All in all, a most astute observation, but with one rather important oversight on your part. You see, I had already begun the siphoning process, and my hidden oil supply tanks were here!”
A shrill note of triumph trembled in Doctor Octopus’s voice as he yanked the final coupling loose and the oil cap sprang free.
With a deafening roar the sky turned to ebony, as countless gallons of glistening oil erupted upward with the power of a convulsing volcano. Two hundred feet straight up it rose, turning everything it touched a deadly shade of black.
But the Web-slinger’s remarkable spider-sense had not failed him. At the same instant Octopus had torn loose that final coupling, it began tingling with an insane fury, and Spider-Man had backflipped out of the path of the raging black torrent, avoiding it by scant inches.
Doctor Octopus went berserk. He had gambled and lost. Now he had nothing to fall back on but his own inhuman power. Almost blindly he clambered up the side of the derrick in pursuit of the agile Wall-crawler, the windblown spray of oil turning his clothing black and moist.
Spider-Man, braced for the attack, waited for him to reach the top. It appeared the Web-slinger had finally run out of places to run. A metallic tentacle lashed out, but Spider-Man ducked beneath it; he had been
prepared for it. But not for the second swinging tentacle that caught him from behind, threatening to hurl him from his perch. Yet instead, he was able to use the momentum of the blow to propel him into Octopus himself, stunning him.
The lenses of his dark glasses smeared black by the oil, Doc Ock groped desperately for his wall-crawling foe, his tentacles flailing the air in hopes of making contact with yielding flesh. But Spider-Man kept dancing out of harm’s way.
You’re doing fine so far, Parker old pal. Just keep moving. Octopus is fast and powerful. You’ve got to keep away from his tentacles.
A feint, a leap, and the Web-slinger avoided another blind lunge. “You’re losing your touch, Ockie. You’re sure you don’t want to give it up while you still have the chance?”
Doctor Octopus’s only reply was a roar of unintelligible rage as he tore off his now-useless glasses and lashed out at his taunting foe one final time. This time his tentacle’s pincers gripped the front of Spider-Man’s costume securely, pinning him against a girder.
“Losing my touch, am I? I’ll show you who’s lost his touch, insect, and it will be the last thing you ever see.”
Triumphantly Doctor Octopus stepped forward, preparing to deliver the death-stroke. He raised his tentacles dramatically, grinned a maniacal grin, and lost his footing on the oil-slick girders.
With a horrified scream, Otto Octavius plunged groundward through the center of the derrick-tower, the oil still rushing skyward beside him. Furiously, his tentacles flailed about, seeking purchase among the girders, but the oil had made them too slick. His tentacles finally made contact with one of the vertical beams and he attempted to gain hold, but the friction of metal scraping against metal served only to kick up a flurry of sparks.
Atop the derrick, Spider-Man glanced at the gaping hole in the front of his costume where Doc Ock had torn away the fabric, and then looked down at the screaming Octopus himself. His eyes grew wide behind his mask when he noticed the trail of sparks.
