Issue(s): Spectacular Spider-Man #157
Cover Date: Nov 89
Title: "Shakedown"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Sal Buscema - Penciler
Mike Esposito - Inker
Glenn Herdling - Assistant Editor
Jim Salicrup - Editor

Review/plot:
It feels like we haven't really had a traditional Spider-Man villain in the Conway Spider-books for a while. It's not really true; we've had Chameleon and Hammerhead, at least. But this issue's appearance of Electro and Shocker, basically outside of any gang war storyline, still feels like something we haven't seen in a while.

It's also a little bit of a twisty plot. Electro has a contact with a security company that keeps giving him blueprints of banks, but Electro keeps arriving at the banks to find them suffering from localized earthquakes with the vaults already empty.

The inclusion of Shocker in the book is kept a secret until he shows up while Electro is confronting the guy that was selling him the blueprints.

Spider-Man also shows up and knocks out Electro, but Shocker gets away without Spidey having seen him.

There's a lot more going on in the issue besides that. J. Jonah Jameson calls in the inner core of the Daily Bugle (including *cough* Ben Urich. Never ignore a cough in a comic book.)...

...and tells them that Thomas Fireheart (aka Puma) has bought the company.

And Joe Robertson stands up to Tombstone on the Amish farm that they're recovering at...

...and stabs him with a pitchfork.

We later find out that it was Hammerhead and Chameleon that helped with his jailbreak.

Fun stuff. Nice development of subplots.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: JJ says that the Bugle sale just finished 15 minutes ago, but that's after Peter was 15 minutes late to showing up at the meeting because of his first run-in with Electro, so i'm assuming this doesn't take place directly after Puma's meeting with JJ last issue.

References:

• Spider-Man is distrusted by the police after seemingly helping Tombstone escape from prison "a couple of weeks back" in Spectacular Spider-Man #155.
  
• Electro mentions having been in the Sinister Six (Amazing Spider-Man annual #1), the Emissaries of Evil (Daredevil annual #1), and the Frightful Four (circa Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #42) and has decided that he'd rather work solo from now on.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

A supervillain fight can be fun. you have to feel sorry for electro. he won the fight but was the one who got caught.