This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post here at Balladeer’s Blog looks at every Marvel issue published in January 1978.
SPIDER-MAN Vol 1 #176 (Jan 1978)
Title: He Who Laughs Last …
Villain: Green Goblin III
Synopsis: Peter Parker’s Aunt May has joined the Grey Panthers and has her 987th heart attack at a demonstration. Peter and Mary Jane Watson visit her in the hospital.
Seeing that she is recovering just fine, the pair leave. Peter stops by the office of psychiatrist Dr. Bart Hamilton, who has been treating Peter’s friend Harry Osborn ever since Harry’s drug problems made him become the second Green Goblin. The office has been trashed.
Peter becomes Spider-Man and gets to the apartment that Harry shares with Flash Thompson. He finds Flash unconscious on the floor and the Green Goblin ransacking Harry’s bedroom. Spider-Man attacks the villain, assuming it’s Harry in the costume, but in a few issues it will turn out to be Dr. Hamilton himself, who manipulated his patient Harry Osborn to find his late father Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin costume and weaponry.
For the cliffhanger ending, the hard-pressed Goblin grabs Flash’s unconscious form and throws him out the window, seemingly to his death. Continue reading
SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #17 (Aug 1979) 
Our heroine slips away from Eric to try getting back her costume without exposing her secret identity. At one point, the drunken woman dressed as Spider-Woman falls off the deck of the mountaintop disco. Jessica uses her powers to save the woman and recover her costume before the drunk knows what’s what. 
MARVEL TEAM-UP Vol 1 #53 (Jan) 
The genetically engineered human/ animal hybrid creature Woodgod (at right) – also immune to the nerve gas – is still being contained in the depopulated town by Major Del Tremens and his troops at Tranquility Base, who caused the nerve gas leak. 
MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN Vol 1 #1 (Jan 1973) 
That chunk is brought on board Walton’s vessel and stored in the hold. While the captain relates to a crew member the tale told to his ancestor about the monster’s creation and history, the rest of the crew plot a mutiny over being kept in the frozen north for so long just to recover a monstrous corpse.
GHOST RIDER – Daredevil biker Johnny Blaze makes a deal with the devil: Johnny’s soul in exchange for Satan curing the cancer in the body of Blaze’s mentor “Crash” Simpson. We all know how deals with the devil go, and not only does Crash die anyway, but Johnny Blaze is cursed to periodically transform into the flame-headed monster called Ghost Rider.
MYSTIC COMICS Vol 1 #1 (Mar 1940) 
B. Dynamic Man – Scientist Dr. Simon Goettler creates 
DEFENDERS Vol 1 #17 (Nov 1974) 
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #25 (Oct 1975) 
VENUS
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #25 (Aug 1974) 
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