File:Marvel Team-Up Vol 1 101 001.JPG

Description
Because Kyle Richmond's finances are currently under government investigation, he has called a press conference in an effort to quell public curiosity. Representing the Daily Globe at the evening affair is photographer Peter Parker. Just as Richmond takes the podium, a young blonde woman, screaming that he murdered her, leaps at him from the audience. She picks him up effortlessly with one hand and hurls him into the crowd of reporters. Peter's spider-sense tingles a strong warning as he quickly sets down his camera and tries to grab the woman's shoulders to prevent further mayhem. But she easily throws him through a plate-glass window, and then she turns to Richmond, asking him in an angry shriek why he murdered her. Richmond recognizes her as Mindy, a woman from his past, but this does him little good as she slams him into a wall. Peter, meanwhile, has donned his Spider-Man costume, and he enters the hall and covers the woman's eyes with webbing. But when he yanks the web-line to pull her over, there is a dull explosion and the woman's head comes off. As she drops to the floor with smoke cuffing up from her neck, it is obvious to both Spider-Man and Richmond that the "woman" is a robot. In the meantime, all the newsmen have fled, which leaves Spider-Man alone with the millionaire. Before Spider-Man can ask for an explanation, the robot's severed head starts talking. She assumed Richmond would survive their melee, it says, but "the fun" is just beginning. She really came there, it continues, to invite him to a "very special" class reunion at Grayburn University—the college Richmond and Mindy attended years ago. Then it again accuses him of murdering her, and he responds by kicking the head out the window. Spider-Man asks whether he wants to talk about it, and he quickly says yes. Elsewhere, some 300 miles north of New York, the controller of the Mindy robot turns off the console and, seated in a wheel-chair, pauses before a lifesize portrait of Mindy herself. She—the controller is a woman—sneers at Kyle Richmond, the spoiled rich brat, and promises the portrait that Richmond's destruction, for which she has worked relentlessly during the years since Mindy's "tragic demise," is close at hand. Later, that night, having changed into his Nighthawk costume, Richmond meets Spider-Man on a roof and hands him a manila envelope. Spider-Man asks whether it bothers him to have his once-secret identity publicly disclosed, but he replies that it does not, because he has no loved ones to protect. Then he opens the envelope and shows Spider-Man the photographs of himself and Mindy at college twelve years ago that began to arrive in the mail several months ago. Recently a card came, reading, "You killed Mindy—now it's your turn to die!" Nighthawk goes on to explain that he met Mindy in a bar the same month Bobby Kennedy was shot. She was a freshman and he was a sophomore at Grayburn. Although he was very rich and very spoiled, she wasn't, and they seemed to care for each other. She provided the warmth and inspiration that his father did not (his mother had died when he was very young). Unfortunately, he became drunk one night and smashed his car into a tree, killing Mindy. The sub• sequent burden of guilt has been crushing, he says, and Spider-Man, who is similarly crushed with guilt over the death of his uncle Ben, feels deeply sympathetic. He offers to accompany Nighthawk to the Graybum University class reunion. Nighthawk glides away with Spider-Man web-swinging behind, headed toward the upstate New York campus. As they pass over a site where two women, Renee and Karen, are camping, Karen sees them and decides she has had enough wine for one evening. Nighthawk explains that when he was a student, some of his classmates were dissidents, but many were quite conservative. Mindy's death was the biggest scandal the university ever had. Sometime later, he continues, the university was shut down due to tack of funds and another scandal, this one in the administration. Unknown to either of them, their movements are closely monitored on giant viewscreens by the woman in the wheelchair. Ten minutes later, Spider-Man and Nighthawk arrive at Gray-burn University. The place is dark and silent as they approach, but suddenly the lights go on and the campus teems with students, even though it is the middle of the night. There are long-haired protesters carrying placards, beer-drinking fraternity men, and guitar-wielding folk singers. When the two crime-fighters descend, the students attack. Their placards turn out to be razor-sharp steel weapons, and their guitars turn out to be guns. Noting their mechanical movements and voices, Nighthawk realizes that all the students are robots, though somewhat more crudely fashioned than the Mindy robot that attacked him earlier. He turns on his laser cannons and melts a dozen of them into slag, and Spider-Man's powerful punches shatter many more. Robot fraternity-men throw explosive beer cans, but Nighthawk mows those robots down as well. But then a contingent of robot campus police arrives, and both crimefighters are laid out with sleep gas before they can counter-attack. When they awaken, the still groggy Nighthawk finds himself chained inside a car—a replica of the very automobile that he wrecked that night with Mindy. Spider-Man is also in chains, semi-conscious and kneeling on the ground surrounded by robot police with rifles. Then the woman in the wheelchair arrives, and she is none other than Mindy herself. Nighthawk is aghast as she explains that she did not die that night over a decade ago. Rather, she rages, Richmond's father and his lawyers bought her silence with a huge sum of money to prevent the scandal from sullying the Richmond name any further. It was bad enough that he apparently killed her in the accident, but it would have been far worse had it been made known that the accident actually left her a helpless cripple. Mindy came to loathe Kyle Richmond for what he was and for what he had done, and she used the money his father gave her to build a financial empire of her own. Then she hired AIM scientists to build the robots and resurrected Grayburn University, all for her revenge. She followed his career, she says, as he changed from rich playboy to incompetent super-villain to third-rate super hero. Twelve years ago, he destroyed her life and killed everything that was decent in her, she shouts, and now she will balance the scales. So saying, she presses a button on her wheelchair's control arm, and the 1968 Fiat picks up speed, heading down a road toward a group of trees. Fortunately, Spider-Man recovers from the sleep gas much more quickly than expected. Shattering his chains, he smashes the robot guards and turns to meet an onslaught of robot students. Nighthawk, meanwhile, struggles to clear his brain as his vehicle gains momentum. Spider-Man weaves a web-shield and plows through the robots, and then he snags the automobile's bumper with his web. Trying to slow the car as best he can, he berates Mindy for saying that she once loved Kyle Richmond when she is now so willing to put him to a fiery death. As Mindy mulls over his words, Nighthawk's head clears, and he bursts out of his chains and soars to safety. Then the webbing snaps, and the empty car careens into the trees. Pushing through the horde of robots, Spider-Man accuses Mindy of never having loved Kyle Richmond but of having pursued him for his money. He is wrong, she retorts; she did love him. She rises angrily from her wheelchair, hits a button, and blasts Spider-Man with an energy beam. But then Nighthawk disengages her hand from the control. Tears fill her eyes, and she falls into his arms. As the robot students stand motionless, he carries her away, promising to help her. A call to SHIELD quickly disposes of the robots, and Mindy is taken to an exclusive New England sanitarium. Later, back in New York, Nighthawk tells Spider-Man that he hopes she can be helped, and Spider-Man replies that they have both taken the first step—exorcising the past. Nighthawk thanks Spider-Man for all his aid, and as the two crimefighters part company, he offers to help Spider-Man in return, if he ever needs it.