A teenage boy lays dying on a operating room table. While the surgeons can repair the wounds he suffered in a traffic accident, they cannot counteract the neuro-chemical toxic he absorbed in the collision. The damage will be irreversible in two hours and the closest supply of the antidote is in Brooklyn. Peter Parker listens as the doctor explains the situation. He's more than a concerned bystander. "I don't know him at all, not even his name. But my girlfriend and I owe him our lives," he says. Peter explains that the boy pushed him and Mary Jane out of the way of the truck as they were enjoying an art show at Central Park. The young man then jumped in the cab of the truck and tried to turn it away from the crowd. The heroic youngster succeeded, but was badly injured when the truck crashed into a wall. When Peter hears that the antidote is on its way, he rushes out to help - as only the Spectacular Spider-Man can. "One traffic jam and the kid loses! Which is why Spider-Man is going to follow them...every foot of the way!" he thinks.

However, he finds that the ambulance carrying the antidote has been hijacked and its driver beaten nearly unconscious. The driver says that someone with "lots of arms" attacked him. Spider-Man sees someone fleeing across a nearby rooftop. "Multiple arms means just one bad guy in my book -- the only one I know who'd have a use for rare medical serums. Dr. Octopus!" However, when Spider-Man confronts the bandit, he discovers that it isn't Dr. Octopus at all, but the female Inhuman known as Medusa. Medusa is capable of using her long red hair in a variety of offensive and defensive ways, including using it to form a battering ram (remember Spider-Man faced her way back in Amazing Spider-Man #62). She hammers Spidey with two hard shots, even though she is supposed to be one of the good guys. "I am truly sorry, Spider-Man. I haven't time to be gentle," she says. She subdues Spider-Man with a hail of bricks, hurled machine gun-style by her tentacles of hair.

Thankfully, Spider-Man managed to land a spider-tracer on Medusa's belt during the fight. He tracks her down to Coney Island, the famous New York amusement park, where she uses her hair to climb to the top of a roller coaster. Once again, Spider-Man finds himself on the defensive. The wooden roller coaster track is damaged in the fight and while Spider-Man saves the roller coaster full of thrill-seekers from crashing, Medusa escapes again. "Ah...if...ah..any of you kids find a pair of arms lying around up there, I'll lay odds they're mine," the exhausted Web-Slinger says after pulling the roller coaster to a halt.

Medusa takes the antidote to a nearby shack, where the rest of the Inhumans -- Karnak, Gorgon, Triton and Black Bolt -- are waiting, along with an elderly, apparently sick, member of the Kree race. Spider-Man smashes his way in and with time running out, he's ready to fight. "I've got more than a few scores to settle with your red-headed cousin and I don't mind cutting the rest of you Inhumans in on the action!" he says. However, Black Bolt, the leader of the Inhumans, indicates that he doesn't want to fight. Spider-Man explains how a dying boy needs that antidote. Then he checks his watch. "The serum's got to reach the kid in the next seven minutes or he's good as dead. I'll never make it!" So Black Bolt snatches the serum, after giving some of it to the elderly Kree man, and flies away toward the hospital. Later, the doctors tell Spider-Man that Black Bolt got the antidote to them in time to save the boy's life and that the young man will recover.

Medusa explains that the Kree man, named Falzon, was disarming an alien anti-matter warhead when he triggered a nerve gas booby trap. The antidote she stole was the only thing that could save Falzon and without his help, the entire planet could have been destroyed by the warhead. Spider-Man says he would've helped had he just known. "We had no time for trifles! We were trying to save the world from destruction!" Gorgon replies. "What does one boy's life count against that?!" To which Spider-Man responds, "If you don't know the answer, Gorgon, I'm not going to tell you. But I'll leave you with a parting thought, people: You've been dubbed the Inhumans for a long time...don't let it push you into fitting the part." It's a nice, although uneasy, ending to the story. Not every story works best with a "happily ever after" ending.

This issue is a perfect example of the "fill-in" story, meant to give readers (not to mention writer Bill Mantlo and artist Sal Buscema) a break between major storylines. Mantlo and Buscema had just finished the Morbius and White Tiger stories and were about to embark on the four-part Brother Power/Sister Sun saga. Legendary X-Men writer Chris Claremont, who was not yet a legend at this point, steps in quite admirably. Claremont actually had a great run writing Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up in the late 1970s. Anyone who thinks Claremont can only write mutants should read that run. Jim Mooney, a regular contributor to the Spider-Man titles during this era, provides his usual high-quality artwork.

Next issue: Spider-Man and Flash Thompson encounter the strange religious cult led by Brother Power and Sister Sun. It's the start of a classic four-part story that any true-blue Spider-Man fan should read!

Reviewed by Bruce Buchanan.