Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #216, Amazing Spider-Man #217, Amazing Spider-Man #218
Cover Date: May-Jul 81
Title: "Marathon" / "Here's mud in your eye!" / "Eye of the beholder!"
Credits:
Denny O'Neil - Writer
John Romita Jr. - Penciler
Jim Mooney / Jim Mooney & Al Milgrom - Inker

Review/plot:
Al Milgrom helps ink #218 only.

Peter is getting his leg - injured during the fight with the Frightful Four - examined (at the emergency ward) when he overhears talk of an assassination that will take place during the 'race'. Peter assumes the race refers to a marathon scheduled for today, so he starts scanning the area. He stops a number of minor crimes and helps some people who get into trouble while running.. .

...but can't find the assassins, even with Madame Web's help.

It finally turns out the 'race' in question was a Congressional race, and he's able to stop the assassins in time.

While still on the roof with the tied-up assassins, Hydroman attacks. But the police show up and Hydroman doesn't stick around.

Not long afterwards, Hydroman and the Sandman show up at the same bar and they get into a fight over a local lady named Sadie.

And when i say fight, i really mean a contest to impress Sadie.

And here's where this story takes a strange turn. Eventually the two do get to physical fighting, and in the process they merge into a giant mud-man.

And then the story becomes an overt King Kong tribute, with Sadie hooking up with a huckster who has the mud-man on display at Carnagie Hall.

Really a weird twist. It ends with the mud-man getting knocked off of a tall building by helicopters and seemingly dying.

We meet Debbie's hometown boyfriend, Biff Rifkin. She's taken to hanging out with Biff because Peter's been so neglectful.

There's also a resolution to an ongoing gag where Peter has been annoyed by a neighbor that has been singing country music very loudly. Peter thought it was a guy that dressed in cowboy clothes, but he finds out this issue that it's actually a short quiet guy who calls himself Lonesome Pincus. Just a cute little gag.

A Hydroman/Sandman fight and/or team-up should have been an awesome story, but this was just ridiculous.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This arc starts with Peter returning to his apartment, which has been repaired after the damage from the last arc. He's still got a bad leg from his fight with the Frightful Four. A long period of time passes during this arc, and a footnote says that Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #56 and Marvel Team-Up #107 happen during a week that passes in this story. Marvel Team-Up #103 and #106 also take place during that period (Spider-Man doesn't appear in Marvel Team-Up #104-105.

References:

• Peter met Madame Web in Amazing Spider-Man #210.
  
• Hydroman was last seen in Amazing Spider-Man #212

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

the mud creature might make for one of the stupidest comics ever

The marathon issue, a quiet little story that doesn't feature any supervillains or even a real fight, is brilliant.

I think the marathon issue is what I think is the best out of O'Neils' run. I think the idea of Hydro and Sandman fusing is interesting but execution is a precious thing. What's with the stupid King Kong route? If I had a mud-monster in a comic I'd want a bigger fight.

Okay going to do my darnest not to spam this run.

Okay okay after sitting on it for about a year or two the quiet small guy being the annoying singer is...maybe just a little...kinda sorta...cute.
(But not worth revisiting every issue!)

This would have made a lot more sense if it had come out closer to the remake of King Kong rather than five years later.

That wasn't a remake, that was actually a "sequel" to the 1976 movie. (and that it got its homage with the golden gorilla at the start of the Galactus/High Evolutionary arc in F4) But do get where you're coming from.

Ataru320, you've lost me. I was referring to the 1976 film (saying this comic was five years too late). What "sequel" are you referring to?

King Kong Lives came out in 1986, five years in the other direction, which is probably where the confusion came from.

Sadie Frickett in this story is the same woman shown in Hydro-Man's debut story in Amazing Spider-Man #212, the one who tells Hydro-Man to get lost just before he discovers his super-powers. She will return much, much later for a very minor cameo in Marvel Knights Spider-Man #6 as Hydro-Man's date to an auction where the Venom symbiote is being sold off. (There's a trademark Millar " sick joke" in that story where she finds out that her fur coat, which Hydro-Man told her was made from Tigra, is just a cheap knockoff because one of Kraven's kids is falsely claiming to have killed lots of super-heroes so he can sell this kind of stuff to other villains as a scam.)

Thanks, Omar. I've added a tag for Sadie.

My friends who like the Spidey cartoon and the movies but never read the comics joked the other day about "what if Sandman and Hydro man teamed up to become mud man?" and I just laughed.