Marvel Team-Up #97

Issue Details

Synopsis

DOCTOR OF MADNESS! The Hulk has arrived in Jude, New Mexico, and the sheriff, Bradley Martin, is not pleased. He covers the Hulk with a pistol and tells him to come along quietly. The Hulk replies that he was not looking for trouble, only for food, but now men in "funny hats" are waving guns at him and making him mad. The sheriff fires, but the bullet only irritates the green-skinned giant, and he reduces the street to rubble with his fist. Then the Hulk leaps away, and the sheriff sends his deputies after him. When the Hulk stops, orders the sheriff, they are to capture him. As the deputies race away in their squad car, they decide to trail the Hulk from a distance until the sheriff cools down and calls them back in. Jessica Drew, who is secretly Spider-Woman, happens to arrive in town, and as she steps off the bus she overhears the deputies. She is looking for a secret network that is smuggling criminals out of the country, and she is keeping a low profile. She finds a telephone booth in a nearby restaurant and calls her partner, Scotty McDowell, in Los Angeles. He commiserates about her bus trip and tells her that he knows of no bounty on the Hulk. The Los Angeles Police Department is expecting her to bring Johnny Yen back for trial, he continues. He wishes he were there to help rather than confined to a wheelchair, but she reminds him that he helps by collecting information without which she would be unable to capture anyone. Then she hangs up, saying that she will check back later.   At a villa several miles distant, Dr. Benway is telephoned by Sheriff Martin with the news that the Hulk is heading his way. Benway thanks Martin for the information and tells his assistant, Li, that they have immediate business to attend to. However, they also have a patient on the operating table, and Li declares that if they stop, he will die. But the doctor says that they may never get a chance like this again. Soon they and Benway's henchmen are in a pair of jeeps speeding across the desert. For years, says Benway, he has tried to create a creature that could survive a nuclear blast, and now the moment is at hand. All he has to do is find the Hulk. He scans the horizon with binoculars and soon spots him, and then he orders his henchmen to shoot him with an energy rifle mounted on the second jeep. The blast knocks the Hulk off his trajectory, and soon the giant angrily approaches Benway and his men. Benway tells the Hulk that he does not bring pain but pleasure, and he signals his men to shoot the Hulk again with the rifle. This time the Hulk is bathed in light that feels pleasant, and he changes into Bruce Banner as the ray stimulates his pleasure centers and relaxes him. But the Hulk is invulnerable, whereas Banner is defenseless. Benway fires the ray again and knocks Banner unconscious. Then the men carry Banner to the villa. After changing into her Spider-Woman costume, Jessica arrives at Sheriff Martin's office. Captain Walsh of the Los Angeles Police should have told him about her, she says by way of introduction. She flashes a picture of Johnny Yen, who is wanted in California on three counts of murder. They have tracked him as far as Jude, she says. Martin replies that the men look familiar.   He hung around town for a few days, he says, and then he went to a local clinic. Martin directs Spider-Woman to the place, but as soon as she leaves, he telephones Benway to make sure his guards are ready for her. As evening falls, Spider-Woman glides above the villa ten miles north of Jude. It is surrounded by armed guards and resembles a prison camp. Clearly, this is no ordinary clinic, she muses, and it could very well be the Mexican connection she has been looking for. She descends silently into the courtyard and hides when she hears a guard approach. She is surprised to see that the guard is not human but is a hulking monster. She enters the house to look for Johnny Yen and finds it empty. But as she steals through the shadows, she hears a voice in a nearby room. When she enters, she sees a figure on an operating table moaning for help, and when she removes the net, she is startled to see that the figure is another monster. She hears a voice behind her end turns to see Dr. Benway with two more monsters in tow. The creatures attack, and she knocks one of them out with a venom blast, but with her venom charge depleted she cannot stop the other. The creature drives her through a wall with its beak. She avoids being crushed by holding onto its neck, and then she knocks the creature out with a super-strong chop. But Benway shoots her with his nerve-paralyzer and renders her unconscious. When she awakens, She finds herself chained in a pit.   Standing at the edge looking down is Benway, whom she recognizes as a physician whose license was revoked for illegally trafficking in human organs for transplants. He is wanted in New York, California, Minnesota, and half-dozen other states. She asks him what scam he has going now, and he replies that he wants to develop a creature that can survive on the hostile alien worlds that mankind will someday conquer. Under the pretext of getting them to freedom, he lures criminals to his laboratory and transfers their brains into his creations. Their spare organs are sold on the black market. Standing next to Benway are one of his creations and Sheriff Martin himself, then Benny knocks her out once more with his nerve•paralyzer. She will get a much closer look at his experiments later, he promises. As he departs, he orders his creatures to guard her and, if she gives them any trouble, to rip her to shreds. But Spider-Woman is not unconscious at all. Her body's natural adaptability accustomed it to Benway's ray once he used it on her, so his second blast had little effect. She tears her manacles from the wall and leaps out of the pit. The guard-creatures attack, but she dodges all but one. That one leaps on her, and they crash through a door into Benway's lab, where Benway, Li, and Martin have Bruce Banner on the operating table awaiting a lobotomy. The operation would prevent Banner from ever again turning into the Hulk, but it would also destroy his mind. Spider-Woman tears away the straps holding Banner down and carries him away, leaving the criminal physician to deal with the monster.   Unfortunately, she runs into a closet by mistake. She starts to slap Banner to wake him out of sedation. Not only does this wake him, it makes him angry and changes him into the Hulk. The Hulk shatters the closet, and Benway orders the creatures to recapture him at any cost. The Hulk starts pummeling them, and Benway orders his guards to obtain the pleasure ray to turn the Hulk back into Banner. He also sends a guard after Spider-Woman, but she quickly takes care of him. As the Hulk battles the creatures, it becomes clear that Benway lied. They are robots, not living people at all. Using a wooden beam, the Hulk smashes them one by one. Seeing that the situation is completely out of control, Spider-Woman finds a telephone and puts a call through to Captain Walsh of the Los Angeles Police. She asks him to call the Arizona State Patrol and send them to Benway's villa. Meanwhile, Benway and his cohorts flee, and he curses Spider-Woman for ruining his project. Meanwhile, having disposed of the robots, the Hulk begins smashing the laboratory itself. He knocks over a shelf of chemicals, and there is a powerful explosion. Most fortunately the debris knocks Martin out just before he can shoot Spider-Woman. Her consciousness restored, she makes short work of Benway's henchmen. Nothing remains of Benway's villa but rubble. As the Arizona police arrive, the Hulk digs himself out from under the collapsed building and leaps away.