Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #139, Amazing Spider-Man #140
Cover Date: Dec 74 - Jan 75
Title: "Day of the Grizzly!" / "...And one will fall!"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Ross Andru - Penciler
Frank Giacoia & David Hunt - Inker

Review/plot:
Spider-Man is really getting cheesy. We've had the Spider-Mobile, we've got the incredibly over-the-top villain the Jackal prancing about, and now we've got the lame villain the Grizzly making his first appearance. We are really in Adam West Batman territory. Yes, the Spider-Mobile was deliberately campy and even mocked in its appearances, but West's Batman was deliberately campy too. That still doesn't do a lot to make up for it.

That's the super-hero level of things, anyway. On a personal drama level, which is where this series has always thrived, things are still doing OK. Liz Allan helps Peter find an apartment. Then he goes to make amends at the Bugle, but that's when the Grizzly attacks.

He's after J. Jonah Jameson...

...who ruined his reputation when he was a professional wrestler. Robbie Robertson distracts the Grizzly and tells Peter to "get help" almost as if he knows Peter is Spider-Man. Spider-Man can't beat him, but manages to rescue JJ and gets a spider-tracer on the Grizzly's back. As Peter, he traces the Grizzly to an upscale house in Manhattan, and there he gets ambushed by the Jackal.

...and then dumps him back at the Bugle, where Ned Leeds and Betty Brant find him. The Jackal says that the tracer is meant to lead the Jackal to Spider-Man, which is odd considering upcoming revelations. It is also set to explode if Peter tampers with it.

Flash helps Peter move in to his apartment, and they meet Glory Grant, a model living on the same floor as Peter.

    

Once he's alone in his new apartment, Peter gets to work removing the tracer, which after a stressful sequence, he succeeds in doing. He then hunts down the Grizzly and defeats him by tearing off the harness that the Jackal created for him.

I take it back, the Grizzly story isn't bad. In isolation, the Grizzly looks like a semi-ridiculous character, but his story - a kinda dumb wrestler whose reputation was ruined and who was subsequently manipulated by the Jackal - is pretty good. I still think the Spidey-Mobile was dumb, though!

Issue #139 is the first appearance of Peter's cranky landlady Miss Muggins, and issue #140 is the first appearance of Glory Grant.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 4 - First Grizzly. First Miss Muggins. First Glory Grant.

Chronological Placement Considerations: Peter is back on good terms with the Daily Bugle as of these issues, and it's said that Mary Jane is out of the hospital.

References:

• Spider-Man thinks to himself that he is a guy that saved the entire city from being stolen, a reference to Marvel Team-Up #28 (and it was Hercules who put the city back where it belonged!).
  
• Peter quit his job at the Daily Bugle in Amazing Spider-Man #136, an action that was never really explained, although i suspect it had a lot to do with Peter distancing himself from people who knew him while Harry was at-large as the Green Goblin. He's basically welcomed back with no questions asked this issue.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Tales #116, Marvel Tales #117

Having looked over his "final" appearance, I actually don't mind seeing villains (or heroes per se) like the Grizzly who can think they can get into this whole never-ending war, fail and then move on with their lives. It sort of is a good story element to show not everyone can make it. (sort of a bit like the Big Man was back in the 60s)

Sure, perhaps not an Eisner Award winner, but Conway's ASM run is one of my all-time favorite runs in comics. And this tow-part story may be 2nd only to the Death of Gwen Stacy. As they say, to each his own.

the Grizzly gets a "Menace or Threat?" headline in the Bugle in #140. Which I think is long before its used on Spidey in ASM annual #5.

Think you intended ASM Annual #15? I just seem to recall the convo, Kveto.
Boy, on the morning walk I daydreamed having this brilliant talk with Gerry Conway where I praise his scripting but pan all his villains since Mindworm. Then I suggest something edgy to do with the returned Gwen and mildly recommend a plan that leads to the spider (vampire!) clone turned properly to dust at the beginning of ASM #150 and introduces Spider-Woman two years early AND undoes the short-sighted choice to kill Gwen simply 'cause he didn't know what to do with her, bringing her back for other writers with NO clone saga possible in the 90's. And when Gwen finally loses her spider-powers in #200, we bring on a Jessica Drew who's been thought out for a while to be the the new Spider-Woman, send Gwen to San Fransicsco with her as the new one's mentor, and see if popular demand ever gets Gwen back in the suit again...or dead again. But! The precedent for decades of women in refrigerator stories, and the antecedent of the clone story, and a sexy Gwen Villain turn that easily upstages these other villains but includes them as her pawns as she uncovers Peter's secret, all in my re-plotted ASM #149. And an MJ/ Gwen / Peter triangle comes into existence over the next thirty issues! Maybe this is sort of what happens to Nathan Adler...it's fun to reach a time in your mind when you really felt perfectly free to dream about things like writing Spider-Man some day.
I'd mostly just help Gerry make the end of #144 through #150 much more exciting, finally pit Peter against Dracula, and bring in Dr. Strange to save Gwen's mortal form from vampirism some interesting way.
Am I wrong---the weakest point of these stories is probably, overall, the antagonists. How much do you really care if Spidey defeats them? That's crucial. The Jackyl was at least Gerry's attempt to build a new mystery mastermind. I'd just love to see THAT plan get hijacked. :-D I haven't laid out the entire idea here, but it was fun to see the potential directions that opened each month in the making of Marvel Comics, through this time period. But with our luck if we time traveled, Anj and I would arrive as the babies we'd be then, unable to articulate a full synopsis yet. Crying and pooping fans at your door. Just what every young writer wants.