"TO PROWL NO MORE!"
Writer: Stan Lee/Penciller: John Buscema/Inker: Jim Mooney/Letterer: Sam Rosen/Editor: Stan Lee/Cover Art: John Romita Sr.
Synopsis: Spider-Man and the Prowler meet in combat atop the roofs of New York, but who will emerge the victor...?
Review: The conclusion to the Prowler story is another really solid issue, if not quite as good as the previous one. The splash page for this tale tells us that the two-part storyline was originally intended to run for three issues, and reading this issue, you can kind of see how the story's been truncated; things just feel a bit rushed towards the end, but it's an entertaining issue all the same.
One thing that this issue has over its predecessor is action. ASM #78 was sorely lacking in the action department, instead focusing on the respective character dramas of Peter Parker and Hobie Brown, and whilst I personally love the issue for that, it's undeniably exciting to actually see Spider-Man and the Prowler fight each other this time around, and Buscema's artwork really pops off the page; Prowler's shooting out gas pellets and blasts of air that take chunks of masonry off rooftops, and Spidey's doing his usual wonderful dynamic, acrobatic thing. It's a bit of a stretch to believe that someone so inexperienced at fighting as Hobie could not only hold his own against, but actually defeat Spider-Man, but at least this means we get two great fights between the pair, rather than just one, and seeing the Prowler in action is just terrific fun.
The conflict between them is also rather interesting; as we saw last issue, Peter and Hobie are both in a similar place in their lives, experiencing relationship troubles and feeling directionless as a result. I don't think quite enough is made of this similarity between them, but I do like the way in which Stan makes you question who you want to come out on top in the fight scenes. Whilst Spidey is who we're all here for, Hobie isn't really a villain, and certainly isn't deserving of the treatment that the web-head's hardened foes usually face. I also absolutely adore the final three panels of the issue, after Spider-Man lets Hobie go, telling him to make things up with his girlfriend, Mindy; this last moment really re-connects with the solemn atmosphere of Issue #78, and concludes this story of loneliness in the Big Apple on a high note.
There's not much in the way of subplot developments, although we do get a continuation of Peter's belief that Gwen has left him for Flash. He's mistaken of course - he's always mistaken about stuff like this - and you can't help but wonder why he doesn't just ask Gwen about the situation and give her a chance to explain, instead of just giving her the brush-off. He's turning into Betty Brant. Any meaningful character drama is dropped in favour of just switching back to the Prowler action; I often feel that Stan underestimated the patience of his readership, thinking that they only read Marvel comics for the action and fight scenes, when in reality, we love the soap opera melodrama just as much as we love the ZAPs and KAPOWs. We do at least get a lot of nice focus on Hobie, and at the end of the day, this is really his story, not anyone else's.
ASM #79 may not have the atmosphere as the last issue, and its character work isn't quite as strong, but it's still a really fun issue with plenty of great action, and a good central conflict between Spidey and the Prowler. It would definitely have been interesting to see what the story may have been like with the third issue intact - it certainly would have allowed for more subplots - but for what we get, I think this is pretty great stuff.
Rating: 4/5
Next time, we'll be taking a trip back to the annuals, and back in time, as we look at ASM Annual #6, the first annual to be made up entirely of reprints...
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