File:Marvel Team-Up Vol 1 57 001.jpg

Description
Spider-Man finds himself with nothing to do on his patrol one January evening, so he decides to go home to his text-books. Freshly fallen snow has brought a beautiful wintry look to the city, and even crime seems to have stopped temporarily in appreciation. But all too soon, Spider-Man sees four costumed thieves rush out of a doorway across a snow-covered roof, pursued by the storekeeper they have just robbed. One of them, Joe, takes a shot at their pursuer, but Spider-Man swings down and knocks the thief unconscious. After sweeping the storekeeper to safety, Spider-Man chases down the other three criminals and knocks them out as well. Unfortunately, this leaves no one able to tell Spider-Man whom they are working for. Disappointed, Spider-Man is about to leave when his spider-sense starts to tingle, and he turns around only to be struck in the head by a sheathed samurai sword. A second blow throws him over the roof's edge, and he saves himself by catching held of a window ledge. But the attacker grabs Spider-Man's wrist and flings him into a wall, causing him to black out. He has fought deadlier opponents in the training arenas of his youth, says the Silver Samurai as he stands victorious over Spider-Man. Because no one must know of his presence in the city, he continues, Spider-Man must die. Then he unsheathes his sword. Nearby, a few minutes earlier, a female figure approaches a certain downtown barber shop. When she enters, she finds Angela and Roscoe absent, even though there is hot lather in the shaving bowls and the electric clippers are still on. Using the manual override, she lowers herself in the special chair through the floor and enters SHIELD's New York headquarters, where she finds the reception area as deserted as the shop above. Removing her coat and hat, the Black Widow realizes that SHIELD has suffered a most peculiar attack. As she searches through the complex, she finds hot food on the mess tables and half-smoked cigarettes in the ashtrays. It seems as if everyone disappeared in an instant just before she arrived. Realizing that she must get hold of Nick Fury, in person in case the communications equipment in the complex is being monitored, she heads back to the street where her aircar is parked. When Fury asked her to come to New York from the West Coast, she muses, he sounded almost frightened, and now she has begun to see why. All of a sudden, she sees a glow on a nearby rooftop, and thinking that it might have something to do with the SHIELD mystery, she drives the car up to investigate. When she sees the Silver Samurai about to use his energy sword to dispatch Spider-Man, she rams the Japanese criminal with her car. Although he is stunned, she knows that he can cut her vehicle to ribbons with his sword once he recovers, so she deposits him in a snowbank on the ground near a tall building under construction. Leaving the aircar, she approaches the Samurai, and he recognizes her as the hypnotized slave of his former employer, the Mandrill. She is no one's slave now, she replies, and she asks whether he is still the Mandrill's "errand boy." The Samurai angrily swings his sword at her, stating that he serves the Mandrill no longer and does not know where he is. Then he connects with an elbow to her head, but she dodges his sword and hits him in the face with her Widow's Bite. As the Samurai brandishes his sword at her, he says menacingly that he defeated Daredevil, so killing her will be no problem at all. Just then, Spider-Man web-swings as hard as he can into the Samurai's chest, bowling the criminal over. Cursing his luck, the Samurai decides that, although he would love to remain long enough to slay them both, he cannot jeopardize his mission. He already has the prize he sought, he thinks to himself. With a stroke of his sword, he chops through one of the main supports of the fifty-story skyscraper at the site of their battle. This shakes the building violently and throws a man out of an unfinished upper story. As the man plummets toward the ground, Spider-Man rushes up the side of the building, anchors himself to a girder, and snags him with webbing as he falls by. Using all his skill, Spider-Man swings him into his arms to complete the rescue. Then he smashes a window and deposits the man in a bare office inside. As Spider-Man is about to rejoin the Black Widow, the man frantically asks him to wait. The sword-stroke sliced through one of the four core pylons that support the entire building, he says, and the structure is in danger of collapsing. Even as he speaks, the building begins to settle. Spider-Man then carries the architect to the ground, where the Black Widow is still holding her own against the Samurai. When Spider-Man and the architect run under the building instead of helping her, she becomes angry, but there is little she can do. The architect tells Spider-Man that the damage is worse than he expected. The area must be evacuated at once, he says, because there is no way to prevent the collapse. But Spider-Man shoves a steel beam, weighing many tons, under the weakened pylon. The girder begins to buckle under the strain, so Spider-Man shove another one in place, but the architect tells him that it may require 35 beams before the building is safe. Spider-Man's muscles already ache from the effort, and the situation looks hopeless to him. Suddenly, Spider-Man's spider-sense warns him that the Sliver Samurai is approaching from behind. With his sword, the criminal slices through Spider-Man's webbing as if it were cotton candy. If he wastes time battling the Samurai, thinks Spider-Man, he will be unable to prevent a major disaster. Fortunately, the Black Widow rams the Samurai in the back, returning to the battle after catching her breath. Having realized what Spider-Man must do, she says she will hold the Samurai off while he finishes bracing the building. And so, as Spider-Man begins stacking girders against the pylon and fixing them in place with webbing, the Black Widow battles the Silver Samurai. After a tiring half-hour or more, Spider-Man finishes the work. But the Black Widow, weary from having to evade the seemingly tireless Samurai's energy sword, suffers a near miss that leaves her nerves jangled from backlash. Nearly exhausted, Spider-Man tells the architect to get out of there as fast as he can, and then he turns to aid the Widow. With his web-fluid depleted, Spider-Man finds a pile of steel bars and pitches one at the Samurai's back. The Widow runs out of reach, but the criminal manages to slap her with his metal glove and leaves her stunned on the ground. Although Spider-Man is fatigued, he dodges the Samurai's weapon and lands a punch that nearly knocks the criminal over. Then the Black Widow, having recovered, staggers the Samurai with a blow of her own. A final punch from Spider-Man leaves the Samurai senseless in the snow. Then Spider-Man searches the Samurai and finds the object—a clay figurine—that was stolen from the storekeeper by the Samurai's gang. This, asks the Widow, is why the Samurai was trying to kill him? Spider-Man and the Widow look at each other in bewilderment, unable to fathom the mystery.