Mint
This issue opens with Spider-Man snapping pictures of a speech by a vice-chancellor of his university. The speech is interrupted by the sudden appearance of The Tarantula and his goons who are there to kidnap the vice-chancellor. While Spider-Man swings in to stop The Tarantula, the goons manhandle the vice-chancellor to a waiting car. Flash Thompson rushes in to aid the vice-chancellor with Mary Jane looking on, but he is easily subdued by the goons. The Tarantula feigns unconsciousness in order to sucker punch Spider-Man and makes his escape on the back of the getaway vehicle leaving Spider-Man to flee a crowd of hostile students. Our hero returns to his original perch to find his camera smashed and in a fit of anger, injures his hand punching into a brick wall. Peter Parker returns to his Chelsea apartment and runs into his neighbor Glory Grant. She tends his injured hands and ropes Pete into going out jump-hunting with her. They run into Mary Jane in the hallway, and the threesome wanders down to City Hall. Outside City Hall, Pete spots The Tarantula's getaway vehicle. Pete makes an excuse about visiting Aunt May in the hospital to go change into Spider-Man. Cut to The Tarantula and his goons being dropped off in the basement of City Hall. Here it is revealed that The Tarantula has been hired by an unknown party to assassinate the Mayor in the guise of a bungled kidnapping. Spider-Man catches up with the trio and tangles with the two goons while The Tarantula ducks into the Mayor's special express elevator. Spider-Man dispatches the goons, and climbs the elevator shaft in pursuit of the The Tarantula. Spider-Man catches up as The Tarantula confronts the Mayor in his office. When Spider-Man dives and carries The Tarantula out of the office window, The Tarantula drags the Mayor out with them. Forced to rescue the Mayor, Spider-Man webs them both gentle to the ground, allowing The Tarantula to escape once again.
I bought this comic book after school at Comics & Comics on Telegraph Avenue in 1976. I was in the fourth grade and remember like yesterday how excited I was to own the first-issue of a new Spider Man series. Even then I calculated what the thing might one day be worth - a hundred bucks? Enough for college? The comic, along with a stack of others probably indeed worth something, rests safely at my parent's house tucked away somewhere in the basement, each individually protected by special-made air-tight sealing plastic. One day I may re-read all or simply pass them along to Eitan or Madeleine should they show an interest. So here is what happened in #1 (thank you SpiderVillian.com):
