Underneath the mid-level action and the usual focus on Peter Parker's life, this story has some pretty heavy elements. First is the death of Unus, a particularly agonizing death at that. He's one of my favorite X-Men villains with one of the coolest powers. Then there is the real friendship between the two mutants, Unus and the Blob. This is brought home by Al Milgrom with brilliant subtlety; simply by having both men call each other by their first names and not their costumed code names. Understated and finely executed. Also there is the topic of alienation felt by the Blob. Of feeling lonely and left out and angry at the world. This is how the Blob feels and it becomes more acute with the death of 'his only friend' Unus. I think all of us can relate to this feeling at some point in our lives.
As mentioned, the action element is middling, serving as a showcase for Black Cat's new and secret bad luck powers. Aside from that we also get Spidey's black costume from his adventures in the Secret Wars. The black outfit was a big deal when it first came out and it takes only a look at the splash page of this issue to se that its aging pretty well. Enjoy these issues when Venom was still pretty much dormant.
I also like it that characters we most often attribute to the X-Men have shown up in a Spider-Man book.
Posted by Pete Albano - May 7, 2011
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Spectacular Spider-Man (1976) comic books
Other Spectacular SPIDER-MAN Stories
1-3 : Tarantula, Lightmaster, Kraven
7-8 : Morbius the Living Vampire
47-48 : Belladonna and the Prowler
80 : J. Jonah Jameson - Reporter
87 : Spider-Man unmasks before the Black Cat
113 : Thugs break into the Parker house
114 : The Spider-Man costume gets stolen