Marvel Team-Up (1972 series) #50

Spider-Man visits Doctor Strange and persuades him to help investigate the mystery of the Wraith. Meanwhile, Jean DeWolff knows that the Wraith is her father, Phillip DeWolff, trying to convince her that the villain is her late brother Brian. Jean’s hunch is that the baddie’s hideout is beneath the family crypt so she returns to the cemetery and heads down the stairs….

Spidey and Dr. Strange arrive at the scene of Brian DeWolff’s supposed death in a gun battle with gangsters two years earlier. Strange casts a spell that replays images from long ago and the heroes witness Phillip DeWolff carrying off his wounded son. Spidey invites Strange on the next phase of the adventure….

In his lab, Tony Stark examines the note from the Wraith and discovers fingerprints; a computer search reveal they belong to Phillip DeWolff….

Jean DeWolff enters the lab at the bottom of the stairs to find her father and the Wraith together, confusing her as she assumed that her father was the masked villain. Phillip D ridicules her detective abilities and the Wraith unmasks to reveal Brian DeWolff. Spider-Man and Dr. Strange arrive but they set off an alarm so DeWolff employs the Wraith’s powers to have arms reach out of the walls to attack the heroes which Strange, with all his powers, cannot fight. The Wraith appears and, with a wave of his hand, renders Spidey and Strange unconscious….

Jean DeWolff awakens to discover Spider-Man and Doctor Strange immobilized by a paralysis-beam; her father then unmasks the Wraith to reveal her brother Brian whom she thought dead. [At his lab, Iron Man devises an alpha-jammer helmet and goes out in search of the villains.] Dr. Strange is confused that he has no control over his mystic powers while Spider-Man starts to regain a little movement in his left hand….

Phillip DeWolff tells the unknown story of the Wraith. He had picked up the call on his car radio and discovered Brian critically wounded in the gun battle two years ago; he brought his son home and discovered that the link between his brain and spinal cord was severed but he could not bear to imagine his son living as a vegetable. So he called in two rich guys, Karl Bonn and Max Vorster, to finance a plan to restore Brian to life as an avenging Wraith….

Meanwhile, Spidey manages to shoot a web at the machine controlling them and he misses the button; Strange finds he can control his Cloak of Levitation and so frees himself and Spidey….

DeWolff continues his story: With the help of his benefactors Bonn and Vorster, they built this lab under the crypt and created a machine to restore Brian—and that’s when DeWolff discovered his partners were criminals, intending to make Brian a supervillain. In a scuffle, DeWolff and his son were bathed in the mysterious rays, creating a psychic bond between the two and DeWolff discovered he could control Brian’s body from a distance. So the first thing the Wraith did was to exact vengeance on Vorster and Bonn (described by Jean DeWolff in issue #48). But the heroes, now freed, take on the villains, Phillip making Brian fire mind-blasts at the heroes and then have him invade Jean’s mind. But Iron Man arrives and Spidey fires web goop to cover Brian’s eyes while Iron-Man places the alpha-jammer helmet on Phillip’s head, causing Brian to collapse. But it’s not over….