This is, no joke, one of my favorite single issue stories of all time. (Full list here.) The weirdness of the art of those eyes has haunted me for decades. And Romita, Jr., uses them as a template several times for future works. Like in Iron Man #152.
Anyway, this is the story where the bubbling-under subplot of Greg Salinger, a weirdo student in Peter Parker’s teaching assistant class at ESU, is finally revealed to be Foolkiller.
He’s got fabulous headgear.
He’s a serial killer who sends “fools” cards warning them they’re about to be killed…
Salinger appeared in The Defenders before this issue, but he’s become increasingly psychotic, and it’s no longer “funny” how weird he is. Although, it is a very nice touch to have him finally lose it when the ESU bureaucracy has trouble approving his financial aid application. That’s enough to drive the sanest man mad.
The cover of the issue, which shows Foolkiller standing tall while a bunch of small Spider-Men swing all around him, captures his madness—his deluded state. His mission is to kill all fools.
In the end, he turns his gun on himself because someone tells him he’s a fool to go up against Spider-Man, but Spidey stops him from killing himself.
