Spider-Man and El Aguila in…

THE SPIDER, THE EAGLE, AND…THE COMMUNIST CREATURE!

By Dale Glaser

Well, this is just great, Peter Parker thought as another fellow New Yorker jostled his elbow.  His mood was hovering somewhere between glum and genuinely angry.  It’s been months since I got my bachelor of science from Empire State University, and yet here I am, hanging around campus again.  Not because I’m going to do any advanced coursework, and not because I’m going to be working in the research labs.  Apparently, I’m not going to be working anywhere anytime soon, not in this job market.  Nope, I still have the strap of a camera chafing my neck because selling snapshots to the Daily Bugle is my only viable source of income.  And the Big Apple is having one of its inconvenient crime lulls, which means no web-slinging exploits to photograph, either.

“Take a bath and get a job, ya pinko scum!” a fat man with more hair on his forearms than the top of his head bellowed.  Standing right next to Parker, the man’s loud and grating voice was almost directly in the freelance photographer’s ear, but the invective was not aimed at Parker at all.  The targets of the fat man’s ire were several ESU underclassmen staging a protest in front of the university bursar’s office.  Nine students—mostly male, all long-haired, ungroomed and dressed in a mixture of army surplus and thrift store standards—had formed a loose cordon before the doors, several of them waving large signs.  Half of the handmade placards demanded “LOWER TUITION NOW” while the others identified the gathering as representatives of the “COLLECTIVE CAMPUS COMMUNIST PROLETARIAT” student group.

Yep, covering a campus protest on the off chance things might get rowdy enough to be newsworthy, Parker thought.  This is what I’m reduced to just to try to cover the bills this month.  Could things get any worse?

Another New Yorker jeered at the students and lobbed a large orange soda in a paper cup in the general direction of the protest.  The cup wobbled end over end in the air and dumped most of its sticky-sweet contents on Peter Parker’s head.  That answers that question, he seethed.

Four uniformed NYPD officers approached the bursar’s office; one split off toward the sidewalk to address the crowd of onlookers as the other three went directly to the nine protesting students.  Words were exchanged for a tense minute or so, during which Parker hoped, with no small amount of shame and self-loathing, that the situation would escalate in some interesting way.  But the Collective Campus Communist Proletariat showed no apparent desire to provoke a more physical response from the authorities, as they lowered their signs and began to move along.  The three patrolmen seemed satisfied enough as they joined their fourth partner and made sure none of the passers-by were tempted to take cheap shots at the students’ backs.

“Can’t believe Myer just caved to those stooges, man,” one of the protesters lamented, walking past Parker.  He was taller than Parker and painfully thin, with straggly blond hair and a wispy mustache and goatee probably modeled after Lenin.  “That’s not the glorious struggle putting up much of a…struggle.”

“This protest was always just for show, anyway,” a second protester answered, a much shorter young man with dark curly hair and horn-rimmed spectacles.  “Tonight is when we’ll really strike a blow against the bourgeoisie.”

“Yeah?  Tonight?” the taller protester brightened considerably.  “Electro said everything was ready for…?”

“Quiet!” the shorter one hissed, elbowing his comrade sharply in the ribs.  He looked around to see if anyone had overheard them.  Peter Parker had caught every word, but quickly dropped his head and concentrated intently on changing lenses on his camera, avoiding eye contact from the protester.  The pair moved off.

I didn’t know Max Dillon was back in town, Parker thought.  Not sure what he’s doing with a bunch of Trotskyite teenagers, either, but if Spider-Man has anything to say about it, crashing Electro’s party is gonna make the front page of the Bugle!

Parker slung his camera over his shoulder and ran to catch up with the two protesters.  As he neared them, he reached under the waistband of his corduroys and into a small compartment of the belt of his Spider-Man costume.  Passing the two protesters, he yelled out “TAXI!” and threw an arm into the air; as the arm rose he casually flicked a spider-tracer at the protester who had mentioned Electro’s name.  The tiny red transmitter attached to the bottom of the protester’s ratty green coat with its eight stubby hook-like legs as Parker rushed past them; the pair of campus communists watched Parker go by with disdain before continuing on toward the proletariat’s group home.

“TAXI!” Parker yelled again, keeping up the charade, as he reached the curb.  A moment later a yellow cab pulled over in front of him.  Parker opened the back door and slid inside.

“Where to, buddy?” the cabbie asked.

“Whoops, forgot, I left my cab fare in my other pants.  Catch you next time!” Parker waved as he exited the backseat via the opposite door.

“Lousy smart-aleck,” the cabbie grumbled, already dropping the transmission back into drive and pulling away before Parker had fully closed the door.

Later that night, Spider-Man was swinging from webline to webline across Manhattan, traversing the steel and glass canyons from the neighborhood of ESU in the general direction of the Meatpacking District.  His spider-sense led him unerringly toward his tracer, into the sprawl of warehouses crowded near the Hudson, some still in operation, others dark and derelict.  Spider-Man let go of a webline and somersaulted through the air, landing in a crouch atop a non-functioning sodium arc light at the corner of a fenced warehouse yard.  He sensed the close proximity of his spider-tracer as he scanned the yard, and spotted the scuffed combat boots of his quarry, splaying out of the deep shadows cast by one of the squat brick buildings.

Weird time to take a nap, Spider-Man thought as he vaulted across the yard, adhering himself to the exterior wall by his fingertips and balls of his feet.  He crawled down toward the unconscious blond boy.  There’s scorch marks here, on the bricks and the concrete, Spider-Man noted mentally.  And even through my mask I can smell ozone in the air.  Did the kid double-cross Electro, or…?

Spider-Man’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice emerging from an open warehouse bay.  “The boy there, he may be rethinking when and where he should go looking for trouble, once he awakens, no?” a man asked in a Spanish accent.  The speaker hopped down from the bay to the yard and sauntered nonchalantly toward Spider-Man, the heels of his deep blue leather boots echoing solidly against the concrete.  He wore red tights belted with a matching sash, and flared red gloves.  One hand casually brandished a steely double-edged saber; the weapon’s scabbard bounced against the man’s opposite hip.  His dark blue jacket was emblazoned with a golden eagle insignia across the chest, and a midnight sombrero cordobes was tipped forward slightly, obscuring much of his face.

“Did you see who did this to him?” Spider-Man asked.

The swordsman looked up at the webslinger.  He wore a red bandit’s mask covering the top half of his face, below which a sly smile surmounted by a pencil-thin mustache was visible.  “Indeed I did, amigo,” the man answered, raising his sword.  Tiny arcs of electricity skittered up and down the length of the blade.

“Well, shoot, you’re not Electro,” Spider-Man shook his head.  “Whoever you are, though, thanks for making me aware that I should really appreciate the old wattage-face for not stealing my color scheme.”

“I am El Aguila,” the swordsman answered.  “And these colors have been worn by the inheritors of the Flashing Sword of Justice for over one hundred years!”

“Oh, excuuuuse me, fancy-pants,” Spider-Man retorted.  “But I don’t care if you’re carrying the Sparkly Skewer of He-Started-It, it’s pretty clear that you should have your toys taken away if you can’t play nice.”  With that, Spider-Man thrust his right hand toward El Aguila, index finger and pinky extended as he squeezed the trigger of his webshooters with his middle fingers.  A sticky snare bridged the distance between the two figures and affixed itself to the blade of El Aguila’s sword; with a quick snap of his wrist, Spider-Man pulled the web-tethered weapon to his own hand, then began crawling toward the roof of the warehouse, angling across the wall.

As he reached the gutter at the edge of the warehouse roof, Spider-Man balanced on its lip, looking down at El Aguila.  “Not a single ‘Give me back my electro-blast sword!’ to spare?” Spider-Man asked.  “Not that I was going to return it, but you’re kinda taking all the fun out of this game of keep-away.”

“A game, is it?” El Aguila asked, approaching the warehouse in an unhurried, sidestepping amble.   “I hope you are enjoying your little game, amigo.  Here is another, a guessing game.   Where do you suppose the electricity comes from?  El Aguila’s blade…or El Aguila himself?”  By the time he finished asking the question, El Aguila had reached the corner of the warehouse, and laid his hands on a rusty iron rainspout.  Electricity flowed from El Aguila’s hands into the metal, charging the entire spout and the gutter from which it descended, sending ionized flecks of rusted metal flying in showers of sparks.  Spider-Man felt the voltage juddering through his arms and legs and instinctively leapt away from the warehouse, dropping El Aguila’s sword to the ground.  El Aguila ran to retrieve his blade.

In mid-air, Spider-Man fired a webline overhead to arrest his fall, then swung down toward El Aguila as the swordsman grasped the hilt of his weapon once again.  Great strategy, dimwit, Spider-Man berated himself.  All you managed to do was take away one conduit for his power and then rest on top of another one while you taunted him.  Forget disarming him, it’s time to take him out.   Leading with his feet, Spider-Man attempted a dual heel-strike to El Aguila’s head, but El Aguila spun gracefully out of the way.  On Spider-Man’s upward swing, his webline was severed by a small bolt of lightning fired from the tip of El Aguila’s sword.  Spider-Man flipped and twisted in mid-air and landed on the ground in a low crouch facing his opponent.

“I am not your enemy!” El Aguila insisted, holding his sword out to the side in a manner intended to demonstrate that he was not attacking but remained ready to defend himself.

“No?” Spider-Man countered.  “If you just happened to be lurking around the Meatpacking District looking for college kids to randomly electrocute, that actually does put you on your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man’s naughty list.”

“Oye.  Listen to me,” El Aguila pleaded.  “The boys were planning to sabotage trucks belonging to Pendergrast Shipping, priming fuel tanks to explode while the trucks idled, killing the drivers and the loading bay workers, possibly even turning this entire district into an inferno.  I was able to stop the one, but his accomplice eluded me.  We may yet be able to find him, if we cease this pointless mano a mano.”

“Accomplice?  Short guy, curly hair, glasses?”

“Si,” El Aguila nodded.

“So maybe Electro’s still involved in this after all, and the little guy went running back to him.  All right, you’ve convinced me.  Let’s shut the operation down, together.”

“Bueno.”

Within an abandoned, graffiti-tagged warehouse, Sheldon Wek stood in the center of a broken circle.  A rough arc was formed by the other followers, perhaps twenty in all, arrayed behind Sheldon’s back and isolating him in the center.  Two large gaps broke the circle’s continuity on either side, with a lone figure at its topmost point, sitting on a pile of broken crates which had been configured as a makeshift throne, looking down on Sheldon.  “So.  You have failed me.”

“I—we—were taken by surprise,” Sheldon explained, nervously scratching his temple where the stem of his horn-rimmed glasses pressed into his flesh.  “But we can always go back later…”

“Capitalist pigs are weak and lazy and stupid,” the enthroned figure cut him off, “but they are greedy above all else, and when their wealth is threatened they may rise above those failings to protect their own selfish interests.  Our best approach—our only hope, amidst this apparatus of decadence—­is to strike when the capitalist pigs least suspect and are unprepared to defend themselves.  Thus we will seize the means of production, and what we cannot take we will destroy.”

“I understand…” Sheldon tried to acknowledge.

“But if we try and fail,” the figure went on, impervious to interruption, “we give our enemies warning, and they may temporarily compensate for the weaknesses we would otherwise exploit.  Then they may thwart the will of the people.”

“I—I’m sorry…”

“You are sorry,” the figure agreed, with chilling disdain.  “But you may yet redeem yourself, if only as a counterexample to others.”

“No, please!” Sheldon cried.

Electricity buzzed hungrily in implacable response.

“So, how did you know what those two no-goodniks would be getting up to tonight, anyway?” Spider-Man asked El Aguila as the pair navigated through the corridors of narrow alleys between warehouses.

“In truth, I was merely lucky to have encountered them at all, much less to have caught them in the act,” El Aguila admitted.  “The abandoned warehouses are often good hunting grounds for my prey.”

“Rats?” Spider-Man guessed.  “Giant cockroaches?  Albino alligators?”

“Criminals,” El Aguila answered, his tone of voice indicating how far beneath other verminous species he regarded them.  “All those whose depredations exploit the weak and disadvantaged, the drug traffickers, the extortionists and racketeers.  I track them to their dens, dispatch them and take their spoils.”

“Well, hats like that can’t be cheap.  Especially when I imagine you lose one every time you have to run into a headwind,” Spider-Man observed.

“I keep nothing for myself,” El Aguila insisted.  “That which was taken from the victims is returned to them, or given freely to those most in need.”

“Works for Robin Hood, I guess,” Spider-Man conceded.  “Redistributing the wealth and all that…heeeeey, wait a minute.”  Spider-Man stopped and re-oriented himself on the wall, reversing from belly-crawling to an upright squat that made him resemble a brightly colored, confrontational gargoyle jutting from the masonry.  “That sounds an awful lot like what the Collective Campus Communist Proletariat tends to rant about all the time.  How do I know you’re not all in this together, and you’re not leading me straight into some kind of trap?”

El Aguila crossed his arms over his chest and stared back at Spider-Man.  “Is that una pregunta seriosa?  A serious question?”

“You bet your borscht it is,” Spider-Man confirmed.  “What exactly is the difference between you and those C.C.C.P. loons…oh, wow, C.C.C.P., I just got that.”

“I have no quarrel with legitimate businessmen or free enterprise,” El Aguila answered.  “I happen to know that Pendergrast, the company the two boys were attempting to strike at, is an upstanding corporation that pays good wages and contributes to communities.  As I said, criminals are my targets, their ill-gotten gains my means of aiding the poor and hopeless.  I do not care for politics, and especially not for stunts of sabotage.  Or murder.”

Before Spider-Man could question El Aguila further, an agonized scream echoed through the labyrinth of warehouses.  Both heroes identified the direction from which it originated, and sped toward its source.

Sheldon Wek writhed on the dirty warehouse floor in uncontrollable spasms as wild arcs of electricity leapt back and forth across his body.  The flow of current originated from the figure atop the throne of crates, shrouded in shadows.  Sheldon’s mouth was still open in a grotesque scream, but he had scraped his vocal cords so raw already that no sound came from his throat.

A skylight overhead shattered as Spider-Man crashed downward into the warehouse.  Before the webslinger had even hit the floor, he was firing twin lines of sticky synthetic silk toward the bottom layer of crates.  With one jerk, Spider-Man dislodged the foundation of the ramshackle throne and toppled the entire structure, sending its occupant tumbling down in a crashing cacophony of splintering wood.  “Whaddaya say we do this the easy way for once, Electro?” Spider-Man called out.  “I’d like to get home in time for Wheel of Fortune!”

The broken remnants of crates shifted, and the figure buried beneath them emerged upright.  Slowly, the figure walked forward and stepped into the light.  Powerfully built, easily seven feet high, and nearly as broad across its thick, squared torso as it was tall.  Its face was almost featureless, with the exception of glowing white eyes, and covered with small, jagged, loosely overlapping plates of bright green, as was the rest of its body.  The only other decorations were red boots, a studded red belt, and a red hammer-and-sickle icon which appeared to have been imprinted into its flesh.  Although the figure was so inhuman as to be vaguely androgynous, when it spoke it was in a deep basso voice with a heavy Russian accent:  “You know my name, but I do not know you.”

“I know your name?” Spider-Man repeated in some confusion.  “You’re telling me you think your name is Electro?  Because if so you must be someone else’s Electro.  Geez, is that becoming the supervillain equivalent of naming baby boys Christopher or something?”

“Supervillain?” Electro spat in disgust.  “That word only has meaning in your vulgar western culture, with its imbalance of wealth and power.  I am no petty anarchist.  I am an empowered agent of the Supreme Soviet!  Our scientists electrically charged me to battle for the glorious cause of Communism against Yankee pigs like your Captain America!  You wear the same colors as he, and thus you may know a portion of the revenge I will have upon him!”  Electro raised both hands and unleashed a torrent of electricity at Spider-Man, who leaped straight up to avoid the blast.

El Aguila kicked in the door of the warehouse and assessed the situation.  He leveled his sword at Electro and observed, “I see you can call the lightning, monstro, but can you face it when it calls on you?”  A high-voltage arc from the tip of El Aguila’s blade slashed through the warehouse and connected with Electro, causing him to stagger backwards and brace his arms in front of his eyes.

The respite was only temporary, however.  Electro resumed his fully upright stance a moment later and pointed a massive green finger at El Aguila.  Rather than firing a bolt of electricity, however, Electro bellowed, “We must stop these agitators, my brothers and sisters!  Unite and bring me that one’s sword!  I will dispatch the other!”  In response, the ragtag group arrayed around the warehouse converged on El Aguila as a bloodthirsty mob.  El Aguila attempted to fight them off without seriously injuring any of them but was soon overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Among the rafters of the warehouse, Spider-Man hopped from beam to beam, firing dense balls of webbing at Electro in an effort to keep the green electro-charged behemoth off-balance.  The effort succeeded in distracting Electro just enough that his electrical attacks never came close to Spider-Man, but the lightning storm assault continued unabated.  Ruskie-Electro down there sure was keen to get El Aguila disarmed.  Almost as much as I was, Spider-Man thought as he dodged a sheared segment of girder sent flying by an electrical explosion.  Maybe electricity is not just his power but his weakness?  A plan began to form in Spider-Man’s mind.

Spider-Man spotted a length of steel chain hanging from a winch bolted to one of the rafters, and jumped for it.  He snagged the links in both hands and angled his descent directly toward Electro; as he neared, he held on with his left hand but let go of the chain with his right, balled it into a fist, and drove his knuckles between Electro’s luminous eyes.  “Yow!” Spider-Man yelped, as the sensation of punching an electrified engine block reverberated up his arm.  Electro lashed out with a backhand in instinctive response, but Spider-man dove under the blow and maneuvered behind Electro, chain still in hand, ripping it free from the winch overhead.  He looped the chain over Electro’s shoulder, around the creature’s waist, over the other shoulder, and around the waist two more times before darting away.

While Electro struggled to free himself from the chain, Spider-Man vaulted up to the warehouse rafters once again, quickly positioning himself directly above El Aguila.  El Aguila’s sword had been knocked from his hand, and the press of bodies all around him continued to batter him with fists and boots, keeping him disoriented.  Spider-Man fired a line of webbing which fanned out and attached to El Aguila’s shoulders.  Spider-Man jumped down, on the opposite side of a beam from his webline, pulling the free end as he fell.  El Aguila was lifted out of the mob of Electro’s followers, and as he and Spider-Man passed in mid-air, heading in opposite directions, Spider-Man pushed the chain into El Aguila’s hands.  A moment later Spider-Man had landed in the midst of the mob, while El Aguila dangled just below a roofbeam.  “Give it all you got, ‘Guila!” Spider-Man exhorted, as the followers recovered from their initial surprise and began to attack him.  Spider-Man ducked under a right cross from one side and sidestepped away from a sharp kick on the other.

Both El Aguila and Electro realized in the same instant what Spider-Man had intended by connecting the two of them by the length of chain, and both responded by sending a surge of electricity shooting into the line of steel links in opposite directions.  But Electro was grounded; El Aguila, suspended aloft by webbing, was not.  The current flowed relentlessly from the Spanish swordsman into the Russian creature, who soon stiffened from head to toe within the electrified embrace of the chain.  Smoke rose from the contact points of the links against Electro’s green, scale-like flesh, and a staticky aura surrounded his head and limbs.  Then, without warning, Electro collapsed.

Most of the followers noticed Electro’s defeat immediately, and rushed to escape from the warehouse into the darkness outside.  A lone devotee continued to press the attack on Spider-Man, but a solid uppercut from the web-slinger delivered the man into unconsciousness.  Spider-Man vaulted to the rafters, lowered El Aguila to the warehouse floor, and dropped nimbly beside him a moment later.

“Well, with all due respect to Benjy Franklin and Tommy Edison, I’ve had about all the electricity I can handle for a while,” Spider-man announced.  “Think I’ll head home and read a good book by candlelight or something.”

“There will be no more attacks on innocent laborers by him,” El Aguila nodded toward Electro.  “You have my thanks for seeing to that.”  The blade wielder had found his dropped sword, nudged the toe of his boot under its hilt, and flipped the weapon into the air where he caught it with casual ease.