Countdown to Chaos!

MARVEL TALES — Issue no. 97, August 1978

Chance Shirley

Aug 27, 2024

Book: Marvel Tales

Issue No.: 97

Published: August 15, 1978

Title: “Countdown to Chaos!” (reprint of Amazing Spider-Man no. 118)

Cover Price: 35¢

Format: Original paper copy

This is one of those comic books where the making-of is probably more interesting than the story itself. As of 1978, Marvel Tales was a monthly Spider-Man reprint book. This issue of Marvel Tales is a reprint of Amazing Spider-Man no. 118. Because of changes in Marvel’s publishing standards, these reprint stories are often a couple pages shorter than the originals. This sometimes can make the reprint version a little hard to follow, but usually the reprint editors do a good job of making whatever cuts are necessary mostly seamless.

However, something about this reprint story struck me as weirder than usual. There are two credited letterers, and the lettering style varies obviously in a single panel, or even in a single word bubble. There are also two credited writers. It made me wonder if one writer wrote the original story and then, for some reason, another writer came in and re-wrote parts of it for the reprint. (And then the second letterer went through and updated the lettering to match the re-written parts.)

I tracked down a digital reprint of Amazing Spider-Man no. 118 and found out that, no, the two writers/two letterers thing was there in the original story, too.

Two panels from this issue. The first shows the bad guy Smasher. Smasher says, “All right, wise guy… that does it! Robertson can wait. You’re gonna eat those words. When I’m done with you, there won’t be enough left for a fly swatter!” If you look really close at the word “Robertson” in this panel, you might notice that the style of lettering is slightly different from the other lettering in the panel. In the second panel, Spider-Man leaps away from Smasher. Smasher says, “I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands.” Spider-Man thinks, “It worked! I got him so mad, he’s going after me instead of Robbie! At this rate, I could end up as the greatest success… in the cemetery.”

So then I looked up Amazing Spider-Man no. 118 on the good ol’ Fandom.com Marvel wiki and found out that Amazingno. 118 was a heavily edited reprint of a story from the short-lived Spectacular Spider-Man magazine. Turns out my “this is extra weird” theory was generally correct, I just got the specifics wrong. This isn’t reprint weirdness, this is reprint-of-a-reprint weirdness.

The Marvel wiki entry doesn’t explain why the creative team of the 1972 Amazing Spider-Man book decided to bastardize a story from the 1968 Spidey magazine. Maybe they were behind on new material so they used the material from the magazine to create a couple of fill-in issues? Or maybe they just really liked the magazine story and wanted to get it into the flagship Spider-Man book. Honestly, it’s not that compelling of a story — at least not this version. And I haven’t taken the time to go back and read the original magazine version. So, if I had to bet, I’d bet they went this route to buy some time to work on new stuff.

Speaking of bets, this issue of Marvel Tales does wrap up its reprint of the Disruptor storyline. And my bet, that the Disruptor was secretly NYC mayoral candidate Richard Raleigh, turned out to be correct.

Next time — The Uncanny X-Men! Or maybe the Invaders! Or maybe the Avengers! Or maybe I’ll write about a solo hero’s book!

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