Nick Peron

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Spectacular Spider-Man #122

Nick Peron

Father's Night Out

Credits

Peter Parker is in Times Square marveling how rarely he witnesses Manhattan at night from the street due to his career as Spider-Man. As he walks down the street he hears what he thinks is a kitten in distress in a nearby alley. Thinking that there is no job that is too small, Peter goes to rescue. However, instead of a kitten, he finds an infant child. Peter is shocked to discover the baby and is disgusted that someone would callously dump it in an alleyway like this. Suddenly, a man claiming to be the baby's father demands that Peter hand the child over. For some reason, the man sets off Peter's spider-sense and he wonders why. When the man insists that he hand over the baby, the Irishman becomes angry when Peter refuses. Confident that it is too dark to be recognized, Peter fights off the man with a single punch, sending him skittering out into the street. The man thinks that was a lucky punch and vows that nobody gets to sucker punch Brendan Doyle. Doyle rushes into the alley but Parker is gone. Upon the roof, Peter changes into Spider-Man and decides to take the baby to a nearby hospital. If Doyle is really the baby's father, Spider-Man figures that he can sort it out with the authorities and explain how his baby ended up discarded in an alley. Soon Spider-Man arrives at St. Vincent's Hospital where he finds a nurse in making up one of the rooms. Climbing through the window, the wall-crawler explains the situation to the nurse. Soon they are joined by a doctor who checks on the child. When he asks where the baby came from, the doctor remarks about what he heard about Spider-Man in the Daily Bugle. This angers the wall-crawler who was trying to help. After telling the doctor he found the baby in the trash, Spider-Man departs. As he swings across the city, he stews over the fact that no matter what he does, people are always suspicious of him.

A few days later, Peter Parker is at the Daily Bugle where there are no assignments waiting for him. That's when he bumps into reporter Joy Mercado who has a lead on the baby that Spider-Man brought to the hospital. Apparently, the mother of the child has resurfaced and has tried to claim custody for the child but the city doesn't want to cooperate. That's when J. Jonah Jameson comes out of his office and tells Joy to get moving and to take Parker with her to take photos. On their way to the hospital, Joy explains that the child's name is Danny Blaire and that his mother, Sharon, attempted to reclaim him after he turned up at the hospital. She was denied after a background check was conducted by Child Welfare and they discovered that she had a number of encounters with the New York City Vice Squad. The first taxi they flag down has a Hispanic cab driver that both Peter and Joy encountered before and they decide to skip it.[ Deciding to walk the rest of the way, Joy continues to explain that Shannon Blaire lived in the apartment next to the alley and apparently the baby somehow fell out the window. As they head toward St. Vincents, Peter spots a young punk trying to steal a wallet from a woman's purse. Unable to change into Spider-Man, Peter secretly fires his web-shooter, sticking the youth's hand to the woman's purse, leaving him to explain what he was trying to do. Joy concludes her explanation by saying that Shannon explains that she was trying to protect her son, but won't explain what it was.

When they arrive at the hospital, the receptionist refuses to allow Joy interview Danny's doctor. Suddenly, Peter spots the man he fought in the alley the night before being escorted out of the hospital by security. Brendan Doyle is furious that he is being denied access to his son. Hearing this, Joy asks for an interview. Bernand is still upset and explains that Shannon was a former lover who didn't tell him that she was pregnant with his child. When he found out from a third party, Doyle went to see his son and Shannon refused to let him in. That's when she dropped the boy out the window to keep him away from Brendan. He goes on to tell Joy that because he and Shannon aren't married he has no rights to the child, particularly because he is a soldier of fortune. While telling his story, Doyle would go to the vending machine, purchase a soda, and tosses them out the window when he gets upset. This prompts the desk nurse to call for security again. But by this point, Doyle vows that the hospital will regret interfering with his life and storms out. Fearing that Brendan will make good on his threats, Peter secretly tags him with a spider-tracer so he can track him later.

Later, Spider-Man is following the signal from his spider-tracer all the way to Doyle's house. There he is surprised to see that Doyle is the armored villain known as the Mauler. Spider-Man intercepts him on a rooftop. Much to Spider-Man's surprise, the Mauler isn't looking for a fight and even thanks the wall-crawler for saving the life of his child. When the Mauler tries to take off for the hospital, Spider-Man snags him with a web-line and pulls him back to the ground. He tells Mauler that even though he is the boy's father, he can't just go to the hospital and take him, he has to follow procedures. The Mauler fights back with his armor's built-in weapons, unwilling to let Spider-Man stop him from his goal. Spider-Man defends himself, but the Mauler manages to get away when he threatens the lives of people on the street below with falling debris. After Spider-Man saves their lives, he finds a pair of police officers and tells them to report in that the Mauler is planning on attacking St. Vincent's hospital. There, Spider-Man tries to lure Mauler back outside, but the villain doesn't follow. When he returns inside, Spider-Man asks the nurse where the Mauler went. She tells him that she tricked him into thinking that his son was being kept in the basement of the hospital.

Spider-Man follows after the Mauler and their battle takes them into the morgue, where Spider-Man is unnerved to be around the dead bodies stored there. As the battle continues, a stray blast from the Mauler takes out the generator. This has some unforeseen consequences as it cuts power to the entire facility. This causes complications to the Mrs. Goldfarb who is giving birth at that very moment. When Spider-Man pulls himself out of the rubble, he is briefly delayed when he thinks one of the cadavers is an injured person. Meanwhile, the Mauler flies up the elevator shaft to the upper levels of the hospital. There he goes on a rampage searching for his son. When Spider-Man catches up, the Mauler grabs a hostage and threatens to kill the elderly man if his demands aren't made. However, he couldn't have picked a worse hostage, as the old man tells him that he is in the final stages of terminal cancer. Frustrated, the Mauler drops the old man and blasts his way up to the next floor. Their battle takes them outside the building and then back into the room where the Goldfarb birth is taking place. Spider-Man knocks the villain outside the room and is delayed again when he uses his webbing to seal up the room to lessen the contamination to the sterile environment.

By this point, Doyle has found his son and fights off the nurses trying to stop him from getting the boy. That's when Spider-Man leaps in, and thanks to some surgical gloves, grounds himself sufficiently to rip out the wires powering the Mauler's armor. Still, the villain manages to land a punch on Spider-Man that disorientates the hero long enough for Brendan to take his child and try to escape. However, by this time the police have surrounded the building and order him to surrender. The Mauler tells the police that they will have to go through his son to get at him and that they won't put the child at risk to do so. Coming outside, Spider-Man tries to reason with Doyle, pointing out that this is exactly the behavior that is preventing him from getting custody of his child. This gets through to the Mauler, who realizes that his lifestyle will prevent him from providing his son with a decent life. Putting Danny down, Brendan Doyle flies away. With the villain gone, Captain Kris Keating recovers the baby and is unimpressed to see that Spider-Man is involved in this emergency. When Spider-Man explains that he was trying to protect Danny Boil, Keating points out that the hospital was trashed in the process and that not a single good thing has come out of this. However, Keating would be wrong, as up in the hospital Mrs. Goldfarb has successfully given birth to a healthy baby girl.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man, Mauler, Joy Mercado, J. Jonah Jameson, Mauler, Danny Blaire, “Kris Keating”

Continuity Notes