Amazing Spider-Man #662
The Substitute Part Two
Spider-Man was taking the members of the Avengers Academy on patrol, as part of their education, when they are ambushed by the Psycho-Man. Using his emotion-casting powers, the renegade from the Microverse has now consumed the web-slinger’s students with hatred. The Psycho-Man is impressed that Spider-Man is able to resist his power but is confident that his young charges will kill him. When Hazmat attempts to remove her protective suit, Spider-Man webs her up to prevent the toxicity of her body from affecting anybody. However, as he is dumping Hazmat in a dumpster, Mettle attacks him from behind. With the wind knocked out of him, Spider-Man tries to get it together when Reptyl — having assumed the form of a spined velociraptor — knocks Mettle into Psycho-Man.
As it turns out, Reptil’s lizard forms have different brain chemistry that they can ward off the effects of Psycho-Man’s powers. However, this is a short lived advantage as Reptil is starting to lose control and pleads with Spider-Man to flee the scene before they kill him. That’s when the young shape-shifter loses his control, forcing Spider-Man to web his giant maw shut. The web-slinger refuses to abandon the youths and continues to take them down. First comes Mettle who he webs up onto a fire-escape and then he knocks out Striker. When Finess comes at him using her photographic reflexes he tries to evade her and attack Psycho-Man, but Veil is there to use her gaseous form to stun the web-head.
Psycho-Man decides that the best way to defeat Spider-Man is to turn his students into killers and takes them out of the alley they have been fighting to slaughter the people on the street. Spider-Man finds new strength and leaps out to stop the kids. He thinks about how they were all gathered and manipulated by Norman Osborn and how he doesn’t want them to fulfill the legacy he had for these youths.[1] When struggling with Reptil, Spider-Man tells him to fight off the Psycho-Man’s influence reminding the boy that he is a hero. Surprisingly, this works and Reptil reasserts control over himself.
However, the rest of the Avengers Academy are still very much under control. When Veil tries to suffocate two bystanders by becoming hydrogen chloride, Reptil stands in the way. Seeing her friend putting his life on the line for strangers reminds Veil of the torture she suffered under Norman Osborn, shocking her free from Psycho-Man’s control as well. She then uses her gaseous form to take on the smell of Norman Osborn’s lab, triggering memories in her teammates, freeing them as well. Having melted her way free of the dumpster in which she was trapped, Hazmat also rejoins her teammates.
The Avengers Academy then attack Psycho-Man all at once, smashing the robotic body he uses to interact on this world. Defeated, the Psycho-Man retreats back to the Microverse leaving behind an empty shell. Before he goes, he tells the young heroes that he has never felt such hatred, fear, and doubt, than he has felt in anyone else. He leaves considering that he won even though they are all still alive, as this is a worse fate for the troubled youth than death itself. Psycho-Man’s final words trouble the youths, but Spider-Man assures them that the villain was just trying to mess with their heads and tells them they did a good job.
When Spider-Man returns them to Infinite Avengers Mansion he tells Giant-Man what happened. In recounting their battle, Spider-Man thinks his time as a substitute teacher for the students was an utter failure because he put them in harms way. However, the students surprise him when they say this was the best fieldtrip they have been on. Reptil takes the lead and tells Giant-Man that Spider-Man taught them valuable lessons and treated them like the heroes they were meant to be. Henry Pym is pleased but, when he suggests that Spider-Man become a regular teacher at the Academy, they all mutually tell him no.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Psycho-Man, Avengers Academy (Reptil, Veil, Hazmat, Finess, Mettle, Striker), Giant-Man, Norman Osborn (flashback)
Continuity Notes
As explained in Avengers Academy #1, these young heroes were gathered by Norman Osborn while he was still top cop of the world (see Secret Invasion #8 and Siege #4). He tried to make them his new army through brainwashing and torture.
Great Responsibility
Walter Coleman was just your average 38 year old man with a wife and child. One night he discovered he suddenly had super-powers when their home caught fire. He used these abilities to get his family to safety. Elsewhere in the city, Spider-Man is doing the same thing to help firefighters saved people trapped in another fire. While Spider-Man is thanked for his help, he tells the firemen that he is just doing what is right.
Alternatively, at the fire in the Coleman neighborhood, Walter could only use his powers to save his family. While their neighbors are still trapped in their home and likely to burn alive, Walter tells his wife that there is nothing he could have done. He thinks to himself how he is not a hero because his duties as a father and a husband come first.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man
The Choice
There is a new villain in town calling himself the Magnetic-Man due to the magnetic gauntlets that he built for himself. However, he stops short from using his devices to rob a bank because he wonders if it really has come to this.
He thinks about how six years ago he tried the same thing but when he was about to get away with it he was stopped by Spider-Man and ended up in jail.[1] There he was a model prisoner because all he thought about was getting out. Although he was warmly greeted by his wife, he was shocked by how much had changed in the six years he was in jail. Technology changed, his daughter had grown up all on her own. Because of his criminal record, he was unable to get good paying work and the bill started piling up, and soon, fights with his wife became the norm.
With his recollection over, Magnetic-Man is about to break into the bank when he admits out loud that he really doesn’t want to do this. That’s when Peter Parker tells him not to. The would-be villain turns around expecting a superhero but finds what appears to be an ordinary man. Parker tells the Magnetic-Man that he is impressed with the technology he used to create his magnetic gauntlets and convinces him that a life of crime is no way to go for someone with such technical genius. Peter then offers him a job at Horizon Labs and hands him a business card.
Overjoyed at this offer, the Magnetic-Man walks away calling his wife to tell her the good news. Little did the Magnetic-Man know that Peter Parker is actually Spider-Man and this encounter and that Peter intentionally sought out this one-time villain to show him another way.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man
Continuity Notes
According to the Marvel Chronology Project, the flashback from “six years ago” took place prior to Amazing Spider-Man #254. Per the Sliding Timescale that happened about seven years prior to this story. One could assume that a year passed between Magnetic-Man’s original arrest and his prison sentence, as such this assessment of time would work here.
