File:Marvel Team-Up Vol 1 59 001.jpg

Description
It is 8:44 in the evening as Spider-Man is web-swinging across the Queensborough Bridge toward Manhattan, following a Sunday dinner at his aunt May's. Suddenly, a fire-blast covers him from head to toe in flame, forcing him to release his web-line. Then a chunk of ice slams him in the jaw, knocking him unconscious even as he starts to fall into the East River. Just three minutes earlier, Janet Pym is looking through the window of the Riverview Terrace penthouse apartment she shares with her husband, Henry. She has everything any woman could ask for, she muses, with the possible exception of a husband. Henry Pym has sequestered himself in his blochemistry laboratory for over a week without once emerging, and she wishes he would come out and be with her. A few seconds later, her wish comes true, as Henry enters the apartment and triumphantly announces that he has increased his Yellowjacket powers tenfold. But she gently silences him by letting her robe fall open and planting a kiss on his lips. As they embrace, Henry, who is wearing his Yellowjacket costume without his mask, glances through the window and notices a flash near the Queensboro Bridge. A minute later, a brilliant light-burst illuminates the apartment, and Henry sees Spider-Man falling from the bridge into the water. Quickly pulling his mask over his face and telling Janet to wait, he soars away to pull Spider-Man from the water. As Spider-Man's assailant watches from a hidden vantage point, Yellowjacket carries the unconscious crimefighter back to the apartment. It is as well equipped as a hospital, he says, and considering Spider-Man's reputation, a lot less hassle. As Spider-Man regains consciousness, images of the Human Torch, Iceman, and Gwen Stacy flash through his mind, and when he awakens, he finds himself in front of a roaring fire with the Wasp serving him hot cocoa. Someone ambushed him, she explains, and when Yellowjacket walks in, he says that he could find no one when he returned to the bridge to investigate. Spider-Man thanks them for their hospitality, and they tell him he was apparently attacked by beams of fire and ice. Does he recalls any enemies who might fit these characteristics? Spider-Man replies that he has friends with such powers, but Yellowjacket says he has already checked out the Human Torch and Iceman. The Fantastic Four are not at home, and Iceman is in Los Angeles with the Champions. Spider-Man thinks harder, and he recalls a time several months ago, when he foiled a robbery at Faversham's, a jewelry store. Pressed by other business, he sent the Human Torch to capture the thief. Later, he and Iceman battled a man named Equinox, the Thermodynamic Man, whose body rippled with alternating waves of hot and cold. The Torch and Iceman struck him with simultaneous blasts, and he exploded, apparently blowing himself to atoms. There was no body, only a crater in the street, and they never learned why Equinox stole only an atomic clock from a jewelry store loaded with millions of dollars in gems. If he is still alive, says Spider-Man, he may bear a grudge against him for having sent the Torch after him. Yellowjacket offers to assist Spider-Man in tracking down his assailant, but Spider-Man declines, saying he would prefer to handle the case on his own. All of a sudden, Spider-Man's spider-sense tingles a strong warning, and a powerful explosion blasts through the wall of the apartment. On the other side of the wall stands Equinox, and he declares that tonight Spider-Man is going to die. Spider-Man punches him in the jaw, but Equinox's face is frozen solid, and he shrugs off the blow. Then he grabs Spider-Man's wrists with fiery hands, sending pain shooting up Spider-Man's arms. The Wasp quickly changes to insect-size and buzzes around Equinox's head, distracting him with her Sting, but Equinox uses Spider-Man like a flyswatter and tries to crush her. Spider-Man is stunned after being slammed into the wall, so Equinox punches Yellowjacket with an icy fist. Yellowjacket notices that the tone of Equinox's voice is sometimes adult and sometimes young, but he can hardly act on this observation in the heat of the battle. Then Spider-Man recovers and re-enters the fray. By 9:03, the battle has demolished most of the penthouse, and the police have begun to cordon off the block. This causes a traffic jam on York Avenue near the apartment building. One of the drivers in the jam is a black woman, and when she sees flashes of light from the battle and hears one of the drivers describe the combatant as a man made of fire and ice, she grows very apprehensive, for she is nearly certain who the man might be. Suddenly, Yellowjacket strikes Equinox with a bolt from the molecular disruptor gun that he built into his costume, and when he sees he has staggered Equinox, he fires again. This sends the Thermodynamic Man crashing out of the apartment window. When the woman sees him fall, she screams that the eight-story plunge will kill him. But Equinox creates an icy slide like iceman's and slides away above the streets, headed north along the river. Yellowjacket'a energy beam hurt, he says to himself, and he will make him pay. The black woman turns her car down 57th Street, accelerating madly to keep up with the departing figure. Also following him are Yellowjacket, the Wasp, and Spider-Man, and they overtake him on the Oueensborough Bridge. As he makes his way through the traffic, alternately melting and freezing the automobiles, the Wasp attacks. Equinox swats her aside with an fiery hand, and when Yellowjacket runs up to find out how she is, she angrily tells him that she wants to have her powers increased the way he increased his own. Her Wasp's Stings are nearly useless, she complains. Yellowjacket tells her this is no time for an argument, a statement that Equinox confirms by tearing the door off a car and heaving it at Yellowjacket. Spider-Man snags the projectile with his webbing and swings it back at Equinox, but the Thermodynamic Man melts it before it can hit him. He has stopped fighting the thermic changes, he declares, because each change increases his power and strength. Soon the whole world will know of him, and he will be remembered until the end of time. Then the black woman drives onto the bridge. Leaving her car, she runs up to the battleground, carrying a device that resembles a laser rifle. She begs her son to stop what he is doing, and Equinox turns around, surprised to find his mother there. But then he throws a car at her, exclaiming that it was her failures that transformed him into a thermodynamic freak, he says, his eyes flashing with rage, and now he is going to kill her. Spider-Man swings down just in time to snatch the woman out of the way. The car slams into another, and in the ensuing explosion the Wasp is knocked out of the air. As she lies on the roadway unconscious, she grows back to normal size. Her husband tells Spider-Man to get her to safety, and then he leaps directly at Equinox. Yellowjacket realizes that he cannot use his disruptor beam, because Equinox could still kill Jan, and he launches both himself and Equinox over the bridge's railing. But Equinox ices Yellowjacket's wings, and the two men fall onto the road below the bridge. Yellowjacket hoped that the fall would leave Equinox stunned, but it does not, and they start to battle hand to hand. Spider-Man helps the Wasp revive and then they ask the woman what she knows about Equinox. She introduces her-self as Margay Sorenson. Her son, Terry, is Equinox, she continues, and he is not responsible for what happened to him. He is very ill, she says, and she thinks she has a cure. This is not enough for Spider-Man, who knows that Equinox must be stopped as quickly as possible. Holding the Wasp with his arm, he web-swings down to the road where Yellowjacket is battling Equinox. But just as they arrive, Equinox directs a heat blast toward a fuel truck behind Yellowjacket. Before Janet Pym's horrified eyes, the truck explodes violently. When the flaming debris settles, only one figure emerges: Equinox. He has won, he announces. He has killed Yellowjacket, and the explosion has made him more powerful than ever. Spider-Man tells the Wasp that she is in no condition for a battle, but she strides purposefully toward Equinox. He has killed her husband.