The Spectacular Spider-Man #139 (1988)

“Grave Memory”

Rating: 5/5

Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Sal Buscema

Spider-Man goes to Joe Robertson’s office, where Joe told Peter to meet him. He finds a tape addressed to Peter. On the tape, Joe confesses to a past that haunts him. When he was in high school, he first met the man called Tombstone. Tombstone was a bully to other students and Joe was writing a story about it. Tombstone threatened him to kill the story and Joe backed down and never printed it. Then later, while working on a paper in Philadelphia, he ran into Tombstone again, when he killed a source who was about to tell Joe who murdered some crime boss. Joe never printed that story either. But now he’s meeting Tombstone to put an end to it. He attempts to arrest Tombstone, but Tombstone just breaks Joe’s back. Spider-Man arrives too late. Joe’s alive, but paralyzed.