Amazing Spider-Man, The (1963 series) #150

After the events of last issue, Peter Parker paces around his apartment, agonizing about whether he’s the original or the clone! Frustrated, he decides to go out as Spider-Man to try and get some answers. He decides to stop by Curt Connors’ lab in his absence to see if the equipment there can help determine his authenticity. As he sneaks in the window, however, Spidey is unknowingly watched all the while by a mysterious shadowed figure! As Spider-Man tries to figure out where to start, he’s surprised by the arrival of Curt Connors, back temporarily for a convention he’s attending the next day. After Spidey explains the situation to him, Connors eagerly agrees to help. Connors warns Spidey that the tests will be numerous and extensive, needing to look for the slightest differences between two seemingly identical beings. He subjects Spidey to all manner of tests and afterwards tells him to rest while they wait several hours for the results to come in.

Spider-Man rests uneasily, until he’s jolted awake by the shouts of the Vulture perched on a tower outside, telling him to come and face him! Spidey heads out and attacks the Vulture, eventually using his webs to swing up on top of him. Spidey fastens his webs to Vulture’s arms in order to direct him like a bronco! Vulture responds by flying straight for a wall, forcing Spidey to leap clear onto a nearby water tower. Vulture, however, keeps going and slams into the wall with a huge explosion, seemingly disintegrating into nothing! Spidey doesn’t have long to ponder it until he’s attacked by another old foe, the Sandman! Spidey avoids Sandman’s follow-up attack and barrels into him before he can soften, ricocheting into the support beam for the water tower and causing it to topple over right on Sandman! As Sandman gets buried by tons of water, Spidey hopes this is it, feeling weak from the tests followed by the back-to-back battles. However, when the water stops flowing, Sandman seems to have disappeared completely, just like the Vulture!

Deciding he needs to get back to Connors’ lab, Spidey swings off before he’s hit out of the air by the Kingpin’s cane! Spidey lands as gracefully as he can and comes face to face with the Kingpin himself, who punches him right through the windshield of a car! When Kingpin rips the door off, Spidey webs up his eyes and uses the little energy he has left to land one last hit that knocks Kingpin into an alley, where he disappears just like the others! Thinking this may all be just a nightmare, Spidey’s spider-sense tingles, warning him of the arrival of Spencer Smythe and his newest Spider-Slayer! Spidey tries firing his webs but discovers he’s run out of webbing, as the Spider-Slayer uses its own webbing to tie Spidey up! Spidey then gets grabbed by one of the robot’s tentacles and unceremoniously slammed all around the alley, as Smythe reveals the robot duplicates of Spidey’s enemies were designed to wear him down, until his newest Spider-Slayer could finish the job!

Too weak to do anything, Spidey thinks that this may be it, and in what he thinks are his final moments, he thinks of Mary Jane. He thinks of how it took him so long to realize she’s the one he really loves, and realizes this raw, emotional response is something the clone couldn’t have! The clone would have been created when he was still in love with Gwen, and had those instinctual feelings for her, even if his memories said otherwise. Realizing this must mean he’s the real Spider-Man, he gathers the strength to break free of the tentacle, ripping the dome off of the Spider-Slayer and knocking out Smythe! Now with one last loose end, Spidey heads back to the lab, and snags the test results from beside the sleeping Connors. Assured in his sense of self, Spidey decides to tear up the test results without reading them, having already found the answer he was looking for!