Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #130

24 HOURS

Searching for the Hobgoblin, Spider-Man crashes through the wall of a warehouse, demanding his foe to reveal himself. He finds his foe covered in casts and in a wheelchair. He warns the wall-crawler that if he is touched, Harry Osborn will die. When Spider-Man asks what happened to his foe, the Hobgoblin tells him that it is unimportant and explains his entire scheme...  Two hours earlier, Harry Osborn received a package. Opening it, Harry found a pumpkin inside. Reading the note attached, it warns Harry that he has been poisoned and has 24 hours to live. AS the Hobgoblin had hopped, Osborn contacted Peter Parker, knowing that he had a connection to Spider-Man and would be able to convince the wall-crawler to help. Spider-Man doesn't understand how the Hobgoblin could be in the current condition. The villain explains that he was hired by a European mobster to steal a ledger from the Kingpin. He managed to break into the Kingpin's office and steal the ledger, but he tripped off the security guards. When he attempted to leave, his goblin glider was struck by stray bullets and blew up. It sends the Hobgoblin falling down the side of the building. He managed to break his fall by falling between balconies but was still seriously injured from the fall. He now tells Spider-Man that he wants the wall-crawler to finish his mission and steal back the ledgers and sell them back to the Kingpin for a hefty sum. Spider-Man refuses, but when the Hobgoblin tosses a tracking device at him, he informs Spider-Man that it had coated with the poison that will eventually kill Harry Osborn. The Hobgoblin orders Spider-Man to carry out his mission if he wants to get the cure and save himself and Harry.  Instead of going along with the mission, Spider-Man goes to the lab of Dr. Curtis Connors to see if he can find a cure for the toxin that is poisoning him. After taking a blood sample and running some tests, Spider-Man determines an anti-toxin could be created in 36 hours. Unfortunately for the wall-crawler, neither he nor Harry has. Connors assures Spider-Man that he will do everything to see if he can find an existing and suitable anti-toxin. After Spider-Man leaves Connor's lab, he stops at a pay phone to call Harry Osborn to tell him to hang tight. After the call ends, Harry fears that his death will leave his son, Normie, to grow up without a father. Using the tracking device given to him by the Hobgoblin, Spider-Man tracks it to an illegal gambling ship. Spider-Man slips aboard the vessel and gets into a gun battle with the crooks who own the ship. Spider-Man succeeds in recovering the ledger, unaware that he is being observed by a group of men in a car. The web-slinger returns to Curt Connors home to see if he had any luck securing an anti-toxin. However, he discovers that Curt is being held hostage by some mobsters. Spider-Man makes quick work of them and is confronted by the Kingpin who has come to personally recover his stolen ledger.  The Kingpin offers the anti-toxin in exchange for the ledger and a guarantee to punish the Hobgoblin for his transgression. As a show of good faith, the Kingpin brings Spider-Man the anti-toxin. He then uses it to cure himself and Harry just in time. Spider-Man then rushes to the warehouse where the Hobgoblin is hiding out. However, when he tries to ambush the villain, he has prepared for this contingency by protecting himself behind a transparent screen and escapes via a trap door. With his foe escaped, Spider-Man leaves and finds the Kingpin waiting for him outside. The Kingpin is not happy to see that Spider-Man failed to capture the Hobgoblin. Spider-Man is furious at being criticized by the mobster and tells the Kingpin he should be satisfied with the fact that he returned the ledger and swings off.