File:Marvel Team-Up Vol 1 58 001.jpg

Description
One spring evening, as Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are walking to Peter's Chelsea apartment, they find the street cordoned off by a television camera crew. It is the shooting, on location, of the two-hour season's premiere of the Stunt-Master show, and the star, renowned motorcycle stunt-rider Johnny Blaze, is being prepared for his role by Emlyn Rhys, the assistant director. Mary Jane, to whom anything having to do with show business is of overweening interest, enthusiastically persuades Peter to stay and watch. Also watching, however, is a sinister, shadowy figure on the roof of Peter's building, armed with a powerful paste-gun. Soon the cameras are rolling, and Coot Collier gives Johnny Blaze the go-ahead. Johnny twists the throttle of his modified 1200cc Harley-Davidson and drives down the street toward the waiting stunt-woman, who plays a mother with a baby carriage who accidentally walks into his path as he is chasing a carload of smugglers.. Johnny cuts to the left, roars up the fastback roof of a parked Porsche, and jumps from roof to roof along a string of parked cars. But then the paste-gun-wielding criminal covers the roof of the car in front of Johnny with quick-hardening paste, causing the motorcycle's front wheel to stick to the car and break away from the cycle. Johnny forward-flips the cycle onto its rear wheel, hoping to bring it to a safe stop, but the vehicle bounces into the air and heads for the camera crew. Having no other choice, Johnny cuts in the special cycle-Jets and sends the machine streaking over the heads of the crew, Peter, and Mary Jane. Having kept the crew from harm, Johnny changes into the Ghost Rider—a being who has more than mortal strength and skill—to bring the one-wheeled vehicle under control. Peter decides the Ghost Rider, who is going faster than 80 mph, will need help, so he leaves Mary Jane with the film company medic, quickly climbs a nearby building, and uses his webbing to snag both the Ghost Rider and the bike. Then Peter, muscles aching from the effort, changes into his Spider-Man costume and descends to the street. Before Spider-Man can exchange more than a few words with the Ghost Rider, his spider-sense tingles, and he is suddenly wrapped up in a stream of viscous paste. High overhead on his aerial platform, or floater, the Trapster carries Spider-Man away with a column of hardened paste. First, he says, he will destroy Spider-Man for his interference, and then he will return to finish off the Ghost Rider. As the film crew panic, the Ghost Rider slips away in the confusion and conjures up his flame-cycle. Seconds later, mounted on his supernatural vehicle, he is following the Trapster, silhouetted against the rising full moon. As they head toward the river, Spider-Man asks the Trapster what this is all about, and the Trapster explains how he escaped from prison after the Wizard, the Sandman, and he were defeated by the Fantastic Four. The Sandman had been placed in a hermetically sealed holding-cell, while the Trapster and the Wizard were kept under heavy guard. Then, when the Wizard and the Trapster were ordered to change into prison uniforms, the Wizard pretended to be in pain from a cracked tooth (after being punched by the Thing). Before the guards realized what was happening, the Wizard had pulled a miniature magnesium flare out of his false tooth and blinded them, Telling the Trapster to gather up his weapons, the Wizard blasted a hole in the wall of the Sandman's cell with a miniature bomb. When all three were together, the Wizard used his finger-blasters to knock a chunk out of the prison wall, and they made good their escape. But on the way out, the Trapster chanced on a newspaper that headlined the forthcoming shooting of the Stung Master show, and he told his companions that he would join them after taking care of some unfinished business. And then, says the Trapster, Spider-Man butted in. Taking this as his cue, Spider-Man snags the bottom of the Trapster's platform with his webbing, a difficult but not impossible feat with his arms pinned. Then he pulls hard on the web-line, and the tension snaps the brittle column of paste by which he is suspended. Flipping onto the platform, Spider-Man kicks the Trapster in the face. But because he is still wrapped up in paste, his kick is not as powerful as usual, and the Trapster aims his paste-gun at him. Then Spider-Man knocks the gun from the Trapster's hand, but the Trapster ignites a magnesium flare sewn into his costume. Blinded, Spider-Man is knocked off the platform and starts to fall toward the ground far below. Meanwhile, when the Ghost Rider sees Spider-Man falling, he quickly drives his flame-cycle in a circle while burning his hellfire at full intensity. This creates a violent updraft in the middle of Eleventh Avenue that slows Spider-Man's plunge even as it nearly roasts him alive. When Spider-Man is only three stories above the ground, the Ghost Rider cuts his flame and catches him in his arms. Enraged at being foiled, the Trapster circles around for another attack, but the Ghost Rider shatters the anti-gravity unit of his floater with hellfire, forcing him to look for someplace to crash-land. This he does, on the deck of the enormous nuclear aircraft carrier, the U.S.S Halsey. Once Spider-Man is on the ground, he has enough leverage to shatter the paste that binds him, and he and the Ghost Rider head for the docks as fast as they can. The Ghost Rider arrives at the carrier first, and he jumps his flame cycle onto the deck. The Trapster erects a barrier of solid paste in front of the Ghost Rider, but the Rider somersaults off his cycle over the barrier. The cycle strikes the barrier and dissolves, but he recreates it on the other side in time to catch himself. Realizing that he is outclassed, the Trapster flees, but Spider-Man arrives in time to slam him with his fist. But then Spider-Man's spider-sense tingles, and before he can turn around, a Marine hits him in the head with a rifle. Following the captain's orders, the crew members open fire on the Ghost Rider. They cannot tell the heroes from the villains, says one sailor, so they have to shoot them all. Bullets, however, cannot harm the Ghost Rider in his demonic form, and he manages to pick up Spider-Man on his cycle. The Trapster runs toward one of the F-14 Tomcat fighters aboard the carrier, enters the cockpit, and turns on the engines. Then he leaps out, hoping to escape in the confusion caused by the runaway plane. Fully loaded with fuel and missiles, the aircraft is headed toward the West Side Highway. which is thick with rush-hour traffic. Spider-Man web-swings onto the plane and swiftly clambers toward the cockpit. Using web-lines, he pulls back on the controls and turns off the engines, and the plane drops harmlessly over the side of the ship. The Ghost Rider, meanwhile, corners the Trapster on the hangar deck in a fuel-storage area. Spider-Man runs as fast as he can, and he stops the Ghost-Rider from using his hellfire and accidentally igniting the fuel. Annoyed with Spider-Man's interference, the demon hits him with a hellfire burst, but then the Trapster threatens to destroy the entire ship by detonating a hand-held bomb. The Ghost Rider turns his hellfire on the Trapster, and the criminal is quickly reduced to screaming, despairing agony. The Ghost Rider tells Spider-Man that he never intended to use his hellfire against the Trapster's body, but his mind. The ship was not in danger, he says drily. Spider-Man is dismayed with the Trapster's fate, and he berates the Ghost Rider for the ruthlessness of his methods. He is what he is, replies the Ghost Rider as he drives away on his flame cycle. Then Spider-Man gently carries the Trapster off the carrier to a hospital.