The Mighty Avengers Meet Spider-Man!

Thor has called an emergency meeting of the Avengers, much to the chagrin of Giant-Man who is in the middle of an important experiment. When the group meets, they all notice that Iron Man is absent. Thor tells the group that he had just received word that Tony Stark — Iron Man’s employer — has apparently died. The group all agree to give Iron Man a leave of absence from the team until that matter is sorted out.[1]

This meeting is being observed in the distant future by Kang the Conqueror who is still fuming after his previous defeat at the hands of the Avengers.[2] Kang is inspired by the Masters of Evil’s previous attempt to use Wonder Man to infiltrate the Avengers and destroy them from within but has learned from Baron Zemo’s mistakes.[3] Instead of recruiting a henchman to carry out this task, Kang instead decides to build a loyal robot patterned off someone from the Avengers own era. After considering the many villains, Kang instead decides to use a hero as his template. He finds the perfect candidate in Spider-Man. Feeding all the data on Spider-Man and his powers into his computer, Kang then constructs a perfect robot duplicate of the hero.[4]

When the robot is complete, Kang sends it back in time to the present day. He also sends a number of robots disguised as normal thugs to attack Captain America. This gives the Spider-Man robot an opportunity to help Captain America and propose joining the Avengers. However, when Cap brings him to Avengers Mansion, the other members of the team are not willing to accept Spider-Man without proving himself first. The robot acts insulted and as he leaves, he says he knows where they can find Iron Man. This piques the Avengers interest and the phony Spider-Man convinces them that Iron Man was captured by the Masters of Evil and brought to the Temple of Tirod in Mexico. While Thor is annoyed that Spider-Man waiting until now to tell them, the group decides to put the matter aside and head to Mexico.

Giant-Man and the Wasp are the first ones to arrive at the temple and are ambushed by the Spider-Man robot. It is just wrapping up the two heroes when Thor arrives and attacks the phony wall-crawler. The robot manages to defeat Thor by separating him from Mjolnir and wrapping him up in webbing. Once 60 seconds elapses, Thor reverts back to Donald Blake and is trapped. When Captain America parachutes into the area, the fake Spider-Man tries to drop a stone cube on him. The pair fight it out, but ultimately the robot shoves Captain America off the edge of the temple and leaves him to fall from his death.

Luckily, the real Spider-Man has arrived and saves Captain America’s life.[5] He then ambushes his robotic imitator before it can activate a time machine to send the defeated Avengers to Kang’s future. As Spider-Man fights it out with the impostor, he figures out that he is actually fighting a robot and manages to strike its control stud, shutting it off. As they were fighting in mid-air, the Spider-Man robot falls into the jungle.[6] Watching the real Spider-Man take off, Captain America figures out what happened. Meanwhile, Don Blake manages to recover his hammer and turn into Thor again. After the others Avengers are freed they deduce that the only person with technology advanced enough to duplicate Spider-Man is their enemy Kang. While in the future, Kang is furious that his foes managed to foil his plans once again.[7]

Recurring Characters

Avengers (Captain America, Thor, Giant-Man, Wasp), Rick Jones, Kang, Spider-Man, Spider-Man robot

Continuity Notes

1. At the time of this story, none of the Avengers knows that Tony Stark and Iron Man are the same people. This story takes place following Tales of Suspense #61 when the Mandarin uses a satellite to blow up Stark’s house. This leads everyone to believe that Stark died in the explosion. Tony will reveal that he survived in issue #63 of that series.

2. Kang was defeated by the Avengers in Avengers #8.

3. The Avengers battled Wonder Man in Avengers #9.

4. Of the footage of Spider-Man’s abilities, Kang pulls up an image of Spider-Man’s battle with Kraven the Hunter. This happened in Amazing Spider-Man #15.

5. It’s never really explained how Spider-Man learned about his impostor or how he managed to get to Mexico so quickly. Amazing Spider-Man Annual #37 reveals that Spider-Man borrowed an aircraft from the Fantastic Four.

6. This is not the last we see of the Spider-Man robot. It will turn up again in Spider-Man Team-Up #4.

7. This story is expanded upon in Thor Annual #17.

Topical References

• The Modern Age is stated as existing in the 20th Century in this story. This is no longer the case thanks to the Sliding Timescale, which has bumped the Modern Age ahead in time so that it does not begin until the 21st Century.