File:Marvel Team-Up Vol 1 72 001.jpg

Description
Using the Spider Signal on his belt, Spider-Man startles a group of costumed criminals stealing furs from a warehouse. The gangsters are armed with special mercy guns and drugged bullets—evidently to avoid being charged with murder—but Spider-Man easily dodges their shots as he battles them. Then Spider-Man carries a load of furs up the side of a building and drops them on the criminals. But before he can finish knocking the gangsters out, the machine-gun turret atop one of the getaway vans starts firing, and a gelatin-encased mercy bullet injects Spider-Man with a nerve drug. As he starts to black out, he dives under the van and rolls it over, but before he can stagger back to his feet, the gangsters begin carrying off the furs. His spider-sense tingles a warning, but he cannot evade the electronic whip that swiftly encircles his body and tears his costume to ribbons. Acting in concert with the drugs, the current almost instantly renders him unconscious. As Whiplash, the wielder of the whip, haughtily ponders how best to kill Spider-Man, a police car arrives. The gangsters urge Whiplash into a second getaway van, and Spider-Man weakly tosses a spider tracer onto his back. McMurty and his partner get out of the police car and take Spider-Man into custody as the van screeches away. When Spider-Man regains consciousness in a police lab, the first person he sees is Jean DeWolff. Standing next to her is Iron Man, and standing around them are police officers and physicians. Spider-Man frantically asks Jean whether they removed his mask, but Iron Man replies that Spider-Man's secret is safe, thanks to Captain DeWolff. Spider-Man then tells them about Whiplash, and Iron Man comments that Whiplash's presence could very well imply the involvement of the Maggia as well. Sometime later, the getaway van passes through the gates of a stately New Jersey Palisades mansion, and the gangsters start to unload the furs. Whiplash says that the Maggia will be displeased that Spider-Man interfered and cost them half their haul. When Whiplash enters the mansion to report to his section leader, the leader demands to know why he failed to kill Spider-Man and accuses Whiplash of allowing his vanity to get in the way of the execution of an enemy. Annoyed, Whiplash reminds the leader that when he agreed to rejoin the Maggia, he made it clear that he would do things his own way. Suddenly, the front-gate alarm sounds, and on a monitor Whiplash and the section leader see Spider-Man and Jean DeWolff arrive in her roadster with Iron Man soaring overhead. The leader quickly orders Whiplash to lure the three crimefighters to their deaths and thereby rectify his error. Spider-Man showed Iron Man how to tune the radio in his helmet to the signal from the spider tracer, which is how the three companions trailed Whiplash to New Jersey. Since this is out of Jean DeWolff's jurisdiction, Spider-Man asks her to wait while he and Iron Man attack the Maggia mansion from opposite sides. However, once she is left alone, she enters the mansion herself. Having seen recent reports on Maggie activity, she knows that she has a personal interest in the case. Iron Man follows the spider-tracer signal to an open window and enters the building, but as soon as he is inside, steel shutters trap him in a hall of mirrors. Each mirror has an image of Whiplash, and Iron Man cannot determine which, if any, is the real criminal. As Whiplash sarcastically welcomes Iron Man to the Murder-Maze, multiple whips lash at Iron Man from several different directions. Using the cyber-computer in his armor, Iron Man manages to sort the real image from the false ones, grabs the whip, and yanks Whiplash into the room, shattering the mirror Whiplash was standing behind. As the criminal lies on the floor, Iron Man demands to know whom he is working for. Whiplash replies that his boss is also in the house, "entertaining" Spider-Man and the lady cop. But, he continues arrogantly, to get to his boss, Iron Man will first have to battle him. Meanwhile, as Spider-Man creeps along the ceiling of a corridor in the mansion, a group of large, poisonous spiders suddenly materialize and begin biting him. He soon loses his grip and falls to the floor, where the rug becomes a venomous serpent that entwines him, its fangs dripping. Spider-Man realizes that the creatures are illusions and that their "stings" actually result from drugged darts that are meant to make him susceptible to mental control. Then the Maggia section leader himself, whom Spider-Man recognizes as Brian DeWolff, the Wraith, enters. But just then, Jean DeWolff puts a gun to her brother's back. The Wraith congratulates her for effectively shielding her mind from his, but then he mentally forces her to point her pistol at herself. Spider-Man tries to stop him, but he hurls him away by making him imagine that the floor has risen out from under his feet. Luckily, Spider-Man crashes into the room where Whiplash and Iron Man are battling and plows into Whiplash's back. Iron Man quickly hurls Whiplash into the Wraith, breaking the Wraith's mental concentration. With his mental control removed, Jean realizes what her brother was trying to make her do. Then the Wraith shouts that he warned her not to come after him when he disappeared. Whiplash points out that Jean will make an excellent hostage, but Jean tells her brother not to listen. His mental power unbalanced him, she continues, as the doctors said it might, and she urges him to fight it. Then she tears off his mask. When he could no longer resist the pull of his power, she explains, the Maggia recruited him and used his police knowledge to plan their robberies. She insists that he is not a criminal, only a man with a hellish power that is driving him mad. At this point, Whiplash realizes that the Wraith is no longer useful as a section leader and turns his whip on Jean. Iron Man blasts him with his repulsor ray but misses, while Spider-Man aids Jean. But the Wraith attacks Whiplash with a powerful mental blast, and Whiplash suddenly sees his whip become a one-eyed, needle-fanged snake that coils around him. He begs Spider-Man and Iron Man to help, but the onlookers can see only that he is tangled in his own whip, a prisoner of the Wraith's mental image. Soon the New Jersey police arrive and take Whiplash and the Maggia men into custody. As they lead him away, all he can do is stare and scream about snakes. Because Brian still cannot handle his mental power, Jean makes him swear never to use it again, and as Spider-Man and Iron Man watch, Jean and Brian depart.