Marvel Team-Up #75, November 1978 issue. "The Smoke of That Great Burning!" Plot by Chris Claremont, script by Ralph Macchio, pencils by John Byrne, inks by Al Gordon, letters by Tom Orzechowski, colors by Michele Wolfman, edited by Bob Hall. Cover artist unknown.

Our Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is trapped in a burning building (see the background on this page). As the smoke and heat starts to get to him, he tries to escape, but the floor gives way beneath him, and he's pinned under a beam.

Mere hours before, Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson had arrived at Studio 13. They run into Andre, who had invited MJ, and she goes to talk to the former beauty salon owner for a moment as Pete goes to the bar. Other people at the bar include Truman Capote and... Luke Cage, Power Man, who's just collected his drinks, and brings them to his lady-love Harmony. Suddenly, a group of black men in identical outfits and panty-hose masks calling themselves the Rat Pack burst in, wielding machine guns. Pete ducks into the men's room, but he's seen by the leader of the gang, who sends one of his cronies after him. However, it's not photographer Peter Parker whom he meets there, but the Amazing Spider-Man, who punches him through the bathroom door. Luke Cage joins the fight, but it soon becomes a Mexican stand-off when one of the gang members holds a disco-goer hostage.

Spidey thinks he can get the guy before he shoots, but Cage convinces him not to, and besides, he knows where the guys operate from. Cage brings Spidey to a tenement building off Willis Ave in the South Bronx where the Rat Pack is planning to commit arson. Watching from the buildings above, the two heroes see the Rat Pack let the girl go, so the two heroes move into action, fighting away at the men, who are no longer masked. One of the Packers throws a bucket of gasoline at Luke, blinding him temporarily, but as his eyes recover, he sees the gang member flicking his cigarette lighter...

...the lighter ignites the gas fumes, causing an explosion that sends Cage flying out of the building. They figure the gang escaped the building, but there's probably still residents trapped in it. Cage wants to go in and check, but at his weight, with the burning beams, Spidey figures Luke won't stand a chance. However, Spidey's lighter and more agile, so he volunteers... which brings us to the opening part of the story.

Spidey figures he's had it when Cage bursts in, freeing the hero and taking him outside to recover. Unfortunately, there are still people to rescue, which Spidey goes to work on right away, helping a fireman, but rescued shortly by the fire chief in turn, leaving the two of them on the rooftop. A fireman realizes the building has to come down, or the whole block will be lost. Cage is the only one who has a chance of doing it, but Spidey and the chief are still up there. Cage doesn't like sacrificing them, but he knows he has to take down the building... tearing the cherry picker off the fire truck and using it as a makeshift wrecking ball. On the roof, Spidey tells the chief to climb on his back, and two two leap across to a rooftop across the street, just seconds before the building finally collapses on top of Luke.

Spidey springs over there to see if Cage is all right, but there was nothing to worry about with Cage's steel-like skin. Not so well off is the fireman Spidey rescued earlier, who is suffering from first and second dgree burns, and is in shock. Spidey and Luke muse that the firemen are the real heroes.

Any of you remember this? It was somewhat of a follow-up ad to a previous one with the Super-Heroes in it. There were seperate DC and Marvel versions of this ad (the DC one featured the Joker). This ad's written from the perspective of a Super-Villain, although it doesn't really have Doom's "voice" to it... but it was such a cool-looking ad, I had to use it!

Speaking of ad series (which I wasn't, really, but it's late and I don't have the energy to come up with a more clever way to ink the two ads, unless one wants to take the European Villain angle), here's a Slim Jim ad, from a series of ads in which famous archetypal monsters were used. I'll have a wolfman one on another part of this site (I seem to recall others with the Frankenstein Monster and the Mummy, but I could be mistaken).

So, consider these ads a two-fer in the Food category... which, of course, means that I won't have my obligatory "if you've got someting from these ads, have a picture of you with the item scanned and sent to me along with a story about it and I'll add it to the site" speech!