Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #265
Published Date: Jun 85
Title: "After the fox!"
Credits:
Tom DeFalco - Writer
Ron Frenz - Penciler
Josef Rubinstein - Inker
Keith Williams - Assistant Editor
Christopher Priest - Editor

Review/plot:
International jewel thief the Black Fox is on the run from some armored gunmen.

Some very polite armored gunmen.

They turn out to be a group called the Wild Pack, run out of the Symkarian Embassy by a Silver Sable.

Silver Sable's Uncle Morty objects to her mercenary ways. Sable's father "founded the Wild Pack with the aid of the Government of Symkaria to hunt down Nazi war criminals", but Sable believes in "changing with the times! Under my leadership, the Pack will hunt anyone... for a price!".

Spider-Man kind of blunders his way into the pursuit of the Fox...

...getting somewhat manipulated by the old thief's tale of wanting to retire, but balancing things out by delivering the batch of gems that the Black Fox stole to Sable.

It's a pretty good story. Black Fox is obviously not your typical villain, and it's a good introduction to the ambiguous Silver Sable. Sable will go on to be a fairly popular character, even getting her own series in the 90s, and its easy to see why there was interest, even with artwork in this first appearance that's on the non-dynamic side.

In subplots, Harry and Liz Osborn's baby is named (Normie)...

...and Peter and his Aunt May finally reconcile.

Spider-Man decides to wear his black costume for the second half of the story (his red and blues are too sweaty for him to get back into after his shower), and as he's swinging away from his apartment and contemplating being the only super-hero with two concurrent costumes, he thinks:

I wonder how it would work if I only wore my black costume at night, and saved the red and blue one for daytime use? Nah! That idea's too dumb even for me!

Innocent enough except that we have here from the website of Christopher Priest (editor of the Spidey books at this time):

My tenure as Spider-Editor started bad and got worse. I loved AMAZING, but I didn't think the other two books were very good, or had much of a creative reason to exist. They existed, of course, because of the audience created by Secret Wars and the symbiote costume. But what were the conceptual underpinnings of these books? It was a question nobody had asked the writers.

I didn't much care for the whimsical tone of SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, and tried to nudge writer Al Milgrom out of the seat in favor of the brilliant newcomer Peter David. I handled that in equally clumsy manner, alienating Al, who had been a friend and mentor.

At twenty-three years old, I was the office pariah. I had alienated just about everybody but Shooter, who encouraged me to move Spidey towards excellence. To which end I put Peter David and Rich Buckler on SPECTACULAR, focusing on stories with a serious, "grown-up" tone and more complex themes that happened primarily at night and wherein Spider-Man wore, primarily, his BLACK uniform.

DeFalco's little swipe at Priest, if that's what it was, would have been over the heads of any readers at the time but, if that's what it was, it's very unprofessional.

I read this story around the same time as the Marvel Tales reprint of Amazing Spider-Man #30, which features a cat burglar similar to the Black Fox and a bunch of guys in body armor similar to the Wild Pack, and i think i might not yet have grasped that the Marvel Tales book was reprinting a story published 20 years earlier; i was convinced there was some sort of connection between the stories.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 5 - first Silver Sable. Aunt May and Peter reconcile.

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Spider-Man broke up with the Black Cat in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #100, and he's still a little emotional about it, especially after running into Mary Jane while visiting Harry and Liz at the hospital.
  
• Aunt May found out that Peter dropped out of school in Amazing Spider-Man #253 (incorrectly footnoted as #252).
  
• Spider-Man met the Black Fox previously in Amazing Spider-Man #255 (incorrectly footnoted as #252; wake up, people!).
  
• The Black Cat gave Spider-Man a cloth version of his black costume in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #99. He got the symbiote version during Secret Wars.

Cross-over: N/A

Continuity Implant? N

Reprinted In: N/A

The title refers to the 1968(?) film of the same name.