Issue(s): Untold Tales of Spider-Man #16
Cover Date: Dec 96
Title: "The Boy Next Store"
Credits:
Kurt Busiek - Writer
Pat Olliffe - Penciler
Dick Giordano - Inker
Glenn Greenberg - Assistant Editor
Tom Brevoort - Editor
Bob Harras - EIC

Review/plot:
Spider-Man fights the Radioactive Man, who has recently escaped from prison after being captured by the Avengers in Avengers #6. He is upset with Zemo who left the Masters of Evil to rot in jail. Radioactive Man was trying to escape back to China, but Spidey saw him and they started fighting.

Radioactive Man accidentally gets knocked into some radioactive ore samples...

...which set off a chain reaction in the Radioactive Man, which will result in a nuclear explosion that will destroy the city. Spider-Man persists in fighting him while others flee the city...

...trying to find a way to stop the explosion, and he eventually knocks the Radioactive Man into a coal barge. The coal absorbs the radioactivity and stops the explosion...

...but the Radioactive Man escapes.

The Radioactive Man says that ordinarily he is able to keep hard radiation locked within him, releasing only light and force. Guess that explains why everyone he's ever met doesn't have cancer.

It's a bit much for me to accept the Radioactive Man, who gives Thor major trouble, having a hard time with Spider-Man.

The whole story is told from the perspective of Mary Jane Watson, who has known that Peter is Spider-Man from the very beginning (she saw him leaving his bedroom window in costume the night Uncle Ben was killed)...

...and she is trying to figure out who Peter really is since his alter-egos are so disparate.

Her dialogue is in line with the way she was written by Stan Lee, but it's still absolutely awful.

Meanwhile, Peter and Liz throw a welcome back to school party for Tiny and Jason.

Jason has been acting like an ass since he came back to school after Sally died, and this was a way to try to get him back in the gang. He and Flash both turn on Parker though.

Also, Betty Brant shows up at the party just in time to see Liz kissing Peter on the cheek, and she storms out.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: According to the chronology chart in UTOS #25, this issue takes place between ASM #14 and #15. In Avengers #7, there's a newspaper headline indicating that Baron Zemo has escaped capture and fled the country, so it makes sense for that to take place before this issue, so that Radioactive Man knows that Zemo abandoned him.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? Y

My Reprint: N/A

Betty Brant has to be written as one of the most awful female characters yet. worse than the Wasp, even, and that's saying something.

her unfounded jealousy, her flip flopping between wanting a to confide her troubles and then not wanting to talk about it, her hypocrisy in it being ok for her to push Peter away, but then getting irrationally offended because he's isn't free to go out (BECAUSE he's got homework and is living hand to mouth AND has an elderly, and sometimes sick, aunt to take care of) - i would tell her to take a long walk off a short pier. she's too much work. and possibly a nut.

what's worse is that i think she comes off even more horrible in Busiek's writing than Stan Lee's.

In an issue of Iron Man (Google image search helps my memory in identifying it as #234), Radioactive Man fights Spider-Man and is able to basically just shut down Spider-Man's radiation-created powers. I don't know if it's stated explicitly, but it didn't seem to me that the two had met before.

He didn't try to use this advantage when the Thunderbolts fought the New Avengers, but the whole Spider Totem thing might have made it not work anymore anyway.

Sadly Min, I know way to many women like that.

run, Silverbird, RUN!!!

Sound advice, I'm packing my bags. lol.