Spectacular Spider-Man 81

Stalkers in they Shadows
By Bill Mantlo, Al Milgrom, Jim Mooney
Aug 1983

- part 1 of 2
- with some help from Boomerang who is also incarcerated there, Punisher breaks out of Dannemora State Prison; he double crosses Boomerang at the last minute so only the Punisher escapes
- Peter helps his landlady, mrs. Muggins to fight off some addicts
- Cloak and Dagger tangle with the same addicts a few minutes later, not realizing that Peter (the kid who they saw fighting them off) is also Spider-Man; using her light daggers Dagger cures the junkies
- Punisher shows up just after C&D depart to interrogate them to learn whom they were getting drugs from
- Peter goes to visit Felicia Hardy (Black Cat) in the hospital although he has to change into costume to get past the policemen and women guarding her, including Captain Jean DeWolff
- Spidey investigates a boarded up building that he is swinging by when his spider-sense starts tingling and he finds C&D surrounded by the bodies of the junkies; he suspects them of killing the druggies and also reiterates his belief that Cloak must have some sort of hold on Dagger; after unsuccessfully  trying to take down Cloak, Dagger shows him that he's wrong
- by lighting up the room she enables him to see that they were shot with bullets, laced with a sedative according to Cloak
- the Punisher stands alone on a rooftop and states his plan to kill the man behind the drugs, the Kingpin

- better than the last three issues, possibly due to the inclusion of the Punisher

I now want to read some or most of the stories that fall in between SSM 70 and 81

Punisher
- Punisher is by no means a new character at this point
- he first appeared in ASM 129 (1974) but other than a couple stories in black and white comic book magazines he had only made guest appearances (mostly in Spidey's books) up to this point
- his appearance in this story is about a year after his appearances in Frank Miller's run on Daredevil
- just prior to this story he had appeared in SSM 78, 79 and just following this story in SSM 83 (which is not included in this collection) he goes on trial
- it would be a couple more years before he would get his first mini-series: Circle of Blood

Black Cat
- first appeared in ASM 194 (Jul 1979)
- had about a dozen appearances combined prior to this in ASM and SSM