Amazing Spider-Man 313 - Inferno

Multiple searches for family members see the unexpected slithering in.

Amazing Spider-Man #313

Writer: David Michelinie
Art: Todd McFarlane
Lettering: Rick Parker
Color: Bob Sharen & John Wilcox
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

Peter and Mary Jane take a taxi out to Aunt May's house in Queens, narrowly avoiding a giant shark swimming in the air of the Midtown Tunnel. In Queens they learn Aunt May has headed off to Manhattan to find them so Peter sets off again, missing Aunt May who returns as public transport is down. Meanwhile Martha and Billy Connors are driving into New York to see their estranged husband/father who has recently got control over his transformation into the Lizard. However in New York Curt Connors has lost control amidst the Inferno. Spider-Man searches for May and concludes she may have gone to the university campus so heads there, dealing with a giant parade balloon of himself that has come to life on the way. On campus a possessed security guard lures Martha and Billy into the library and unleashes demons from the card catalogue but the Lizard intervenes as he wants them for himself. Then Spider-Man arrives, knocks out the Lizard and administers the formula to cure him. At first it doesn't work and he realises he needs an electric shock to reinforce it. The Lizard's left arm proves to be under the control of Connors and grabs a cable and applies it to transform him back. Curt tells his wife and son they must stay away from him and he will make arrangements through an intermediary. Mary Jane arrives by cab and tells Spidey May is safe at home. Meanwhile in a prison Jonathan Caesar consults a lawyer about a plan to destroy Mary Jane.

It's hard to shake the feeling that the Inferno issues of Amazing Spider-Man were structured in part to allow Todd McFarlane the opportunity to draw a number of classic Spider-Man villains, many of whom haven't been seen in the title for a very long time. It's also hard to ignore the feeling that the Amazing issues are deliberate action heavy whilst the Spectacular and Web ones have many subplots due to the respective artists' strengths and interests.

The Lizard is one of the more difficult villains of the Lee-Ditko era to do much original with. Curt Connors only rarely transforms into him and his reptilian form is rarely able to engage in subtlety or planning. Instead a typical Lizard plot see Connors become the creature who terrorises those around him whilst planning some scheme to have lizards overrun humans often through transforming them. Spider-Man fights the Lizard and administers a serum to revert him to Connors who is seemingly permanently cured but a later story will show that is not the case. The main obstacle to development seems to be the determination to always rescue Connors from his reptilian form which means the latter can never do anything long term or have time to imagine. This issue follows much of the same pattern and indeed from Spidey first encountering the Lizard to Connors re-emerging happens across just five pages.

There are some other moments in the issue such as a random shark appearing in mid air or a parade balloon of Spider-Man coming to life and attacking some kids (including the winner of a competition to appear in an issue) that also requires McFarlane to draw Spider-Man's traditional look that he'd otherwise deviated from. And the final page is a set-up for an interesting plot that sought to solve the objection that Peter shouldn't be married to a high flying model and living in a luxury apartment - by having an obsessive stalker take revenge to get Mary Jane blacklisted in the industry and the couple evicted. It's brutal but it's a much better way to solve that objection than a deal with the devil.

Overall this is another issue that's big on images and light on original plot which was becoming all too common amongst books drawn by some of the future Image founders. McFarlane draws a great Lizard but the story follows the same pattern as many before making for a rather unimaginative outcome. Still it's nice to see the artist made to conform to house style at least once.