Marvel Team-Up #88
A Child Is Waiting
Peter Parker is bored to death on a photography assignment at a Central Park Society luncheon. Even the presence of socialites Sue Richards and Janet and Henry Pym provides no relief. It is the nicest day in weeks, Peter thinks glumly to himself, and he has to spend it indoors shooting pictures for the Daily Globe's gossip page. Not only that, the food is terrible. But, it's a living. When Sue is called to the telephone, Peter follows her, snapping pictures. But as she talks to Alicia Masters, she suddenly becomes enraged, slams the telephone down, and swiftly strides from the building. It is obvious that something is wrong, so Peter trails her unobtrusively, and he soon gets close enough to slap a spider-tracer on her purse. After she enters a taxi and speeds away, Peter changes into his Spider-Man costume and web-swings in pursuit. Sue soon arrives at Alicia's apartment, and Spider-Man listens to their conversation at the skylight. Alicia is in tears as she tells Sue about the gang of criminals that kidnapped Franklin, whom Sue left in Alicia's care.
Being blind, Alicia could not prevent the thugs from chloroforming the boy. They forced her to telephone Sue, and then they quickly departed. The telephone interrupts Alicia's narrative, and Sue turns on Alicia's recorder. The voice on the phone tells Sue that if she wants her son back alive, she must do exactly as she is told. The voice explains that there is a Maggia "bank" in Harlem that she is to rob for them. Spider-Man hears everything and decides to help her, though his plan must be nearly flawless with her son's life at stake. Half an hour later, a Ferrari borrowed from Johnny Storm's car collection pulls up in front of a decaying brownstone building in Harlem. Sue Richards steps out, drawing gazes from the local residents, and enters the building. On the third floor, a petty criminal named Spencer Jarret is standing guard. Suddenly, he sees something most peculiar a dress walking upstairs by itself. He whips out a pistol and opens fire, and Sue realizes that in her haste she forgot to change her gown, which is not treated with unstable molecules and did not turn invisible with her. In a fraction of a second, she whips it off into his face; so that it appears to be attacking him. In the room that Janet was guarding, a group of criminals counting large sums of money are startled by the sound of gunfire. Then Jarret smashes through the door, propelled by Sue's invisible battering ram-shaped force field.
Sue knocks out the gunmen one by one, but unfortunately, one of them escapes to inform his boss, Morgan. Sue quickly puts on the Fantastic Four costume that she carries in a secret compartment in her purse. Then she quickly gathers the money, millions of dollars of it, into a briefcase and returns to her Ferrari. Her next stop is Yankee Stadium, where there is a double-header today. Her instructions are to be there just before the second game begins. As she adjusts her rear-view mirror, she sees Spider-Man in the back seat. She angrily tells him to leave, but he explains that he knows about the kidnappers and says that as long as they have her son, the Fantastic Four are nearly helpless. He will help her get him back safe, he says, but they better get moving, because Morgan will certainly send his men after her when he finds out what she has done. But even as he speaks, a Cadillac pulls up behind the Ferrari and Morgan's crack "enforcer" squad emerges, armed with machine guns. When they approach the Ferrari to check it out, Spider-Man slams them with hard web-balls and tells Sue to step on it. The Ferrari screams away from the curb with the Cadillac in hot pursuit. But Sue cannot shake off the driver, so she tells Spider-Man to take the wheel. Unfortunately, Spider-Man cannot drive very well, but he does manage to keep from crashing. Sue, meanwhile, shapes her force field into a ramp in front of the Cadillac, and suddenly the gangsters' car flips into the air and smashes into an abandoned tenement. Spider-Man slams on the brakes, and when Sue asks him why he is shaking, he tells her. Sue takes the wheel.
A half-hour later they arrive at Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees are playing the Boston Red Sox. As instructed, Sue walks directly to the pitcher's mound, much to the puzzlement of the fans. Beside her is Spider-Man, but she has made him invisible. After a few minutes, a man in an umpire's uniform takes her briefcase. She asks where Franklin is, and the man replies that he is safe. But he has no intention of giving him back yet, and he says that if she leaves the mound or turns invisible before he leaves the field, the boy will be killed. As the man departs, Spider-Man follows him, and Sue strains mightily to keep him invisible all the way across the baseball field. Fortunately, he makes it, and he continues to follow the man through the stadium. He notices that several passersby have identical cases, as if the gangsters are playing a "shell game." The man soon discards his uniform, and Spider-Man also does a quick costume change to follow him inconspicuously as Peter Parker. The man takes a subway to Manhattan, and Peter gets in the car with him. Peter cannot put a spider-tracer on him, because the gangsters said that they have detectors, so he bugged himself instead. This way, Sue can track him. The man disembarks at 125th Street and heads down a maintenance walkway. Peter changes back into his Spider-Man costume and, clinging to the ceiling, follows. He is so intent on his quarry that he is almost run into by a train, but after it passes, he finds he has lost his man.
Just as he is cursing himself for his inattention, Sue turns visible behind him and says she saw the man slip inside a hidden door on the other side of the tracks. And so, just as the Hole in The Wall Gang are busy congratulating themselves on having earned a cool $3 million, Spider-Man smashes through the wall and starts pummeling them. Franklin is sound asleep on a makeshift cot. When Daisy, a female gang member, sees what is happening, she aims a pistol at the boy, but the Invisible Girl trips her before she can shoot. Sue and Spider-Man make short work of the gangsters and leave them unconscious. Then Sue embraces Franklin, but Spider-Man's spider-sense suddenly tingles once more. She encloses Spider-Man in a force field and pulls him away from the wall as Morgan and his "enforcer" squad rush in with machine guns blazing. Sue's field deflects the bullets, and it looks as if the criminals are stalemated. But Morgan exhorts his men to keep up the pressure. Sue maintains the field as long as she can, but the strain soon brings her to the point of blacking out. Fortunately, Jean DeWolff and a tactical squad of policemen arrive just then and order Morgan and his men to raise their hands. The police escort the criminals away, and Jean offers to have one of her men drive Sue home. Sue says she can make it all right on her own. As she departs, she kisses Spider-Man in gratitude, and then she and Franklin vanish. Jean congratulates Spider-Man on how well his "crazy" plan worked. Thanks to the tracer that he carried, not only did they bag the Hole in The Wall Gang, but Morgan and his men as well. Not a bad day's work at all, she says.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Invisible Girl, Franklin Richards, Jean DeWolff, Boss Morgan, Janet Pym, Henry Pym, Alicia Masters
Continuity Notes
This story states that Peter Parker is a photographer for the Daily Globe. At the time of this story, Peter was fired by J. Jonah Jameson in Amazing Spider-Man #191, the Globe snatched him up in Fantastic Four #207.