Amazing Spider-Man #295
Mad Dogs
Story continued from Web of Spider-Man #33...
Injured while attempting to rescue Vicky Gibbs from the Plesant Valley Sanitarium, Spider-Man is brought in by the staff nurses for immediate medical attention for the gunshot wound he suffered to the stomach. As he is brought in, his top of his costume and mask are tossed into the laundry room. The head nurse takes this opportunity to show Mary, a new employee, around the facility. They pass the "Brainstorm" room where electroshock therapy is administered, the "vegetable patch" where a lot of their disturbed patients live. They stop in the high-security ward, where patients who suffer from the ubermensch syndrome, or in other words, think they are superheroes. When Spider-Man comes to he tries to fight off the nurses and explain who he is. Only Mary seems to take him seriously when he makes this claim before he is sedated and locked in a room. With no identification, Peter Parker is registered in the Mad Dog Ward as a John Doe.
Several days later, Spider-Man has been reduced to a medicated stupor and is wheelchair bound as he recovers from his injuries. He has become known by his patient name MD336 by the other patients of the ward. Peter struggles to keep his thoughts together, but the drugs make this difficult. He holds onto the idea that he's Spider-Man, but doesn't have the strength or ambition to break free. His one friend is a patient who wears a cape, thinking that he is a superhero called Captain Zero. Peter struggles to keep his mind clear and suggests that they should revolt and break free. The other patients rally to this cause for a briefest of moments until they are all distracted by the television and wander off to do their own things. One of the few people he has started to convince to do something is Mary. Later, Peter manages to talk her into taking him to see Vicky Gibbs. Along the way, she asks him if he remembers his name, but he still can't. The whole situation with patient MD336 bothers Mary because she doesn't know why the doctors keep him so heavily sedated as she doesn't have access to his file. Still, she takes Peter to see Vicky who is in a solitary cell. He tells her that he was sent by her children, Jacob and Tanya and that he knows she doesn't belong there. He promises that he will do something to get her out of the ward, but the drugs kick in and nods off.
Meanwhile, at the Gibbs household, Jacob and Tanya attempt to fend for themselves without their mother. When their father, Frank, returns home the children refuse to eat the pizza he brought home. Jacob defiantly tells his father that they will look after themselves. This leads to an argument, and Frank tells them that he can't bring their mother home otherwise the Kingpin will eliminate them all. Later, back the Mad Dog ward, Doctor Hope continues experiments on his star patient, MD2020, aka Brainstorm. Hope intends to condition him into the perfect killing machine for his employer, the Kingpin. He hopes that with the success with Brainstorm, the Kingpin will allow him to experiment on MD336, the patient who claims that he is Spider-Man. At the recreation room, a demonstration is being made of a new type of straitjacket that are going to be given to all the patients to wear. Seeing this, Peter is horrified that they are going to be treated in such a humiliating way. This gives Parker the drive to pull the IV drip out of his arm and get out of his wheelchair. He then storms up to the staffer giving the demonstration and forces him into the straitjacket. When other staff members try to restrain Peter, he easily overpowers them with his superior strength.
Peter then whips up all of the other patients into a revolt, prompting the nurses to begin sedating everyone. His senses still dulled by drugs, Peter is also injected, putting a quick end to his mutiny. Peter watches as everyone's determination quickly fades and becomes tired himself. Almost falling over, Peter is helped back into his wheelchair by Mary. Later, when Doctor Hope hears of the day's excitement, he decides to increase the doses on his patients as punishment. His assistant, Sally Salins informs Dr. Hope that the patient calling himself Captain Zero is not responding to the Brainstorm experiments. Hearing this, Hope gleefully schedules a lobotomy for Zero.
This story concludes in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #133...
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, David Stack, Jacob Gibbs, Tanya Gibbs, Doctor Hope, Patient MD 2020, Vicky Gibbs, Frank Gibbs
Continuity Notes
Vicky Gibbs is the wife of a mobster employed by the Kingpin. When she started having a mental break trying to deal with her husband's job, the Kingpin had her sent to the Mad Dog Ward where she could be heavily medicated and incapable of confessing her husband's crimes. That happened in Web of Spider-Man #33.
