A Month of... Celebrities in Comics, Day 13: Unlike any other sport, the objective in boxing is chillingly simple: One octopus-man purposefully endeavors to inflict bodily harm on a spider-man

When the Amazing Spider-Man vows to box the Delectable Doctor Octopus in a winner-takes-all tournment at Marla Madison Square Garden, of course you get the 1970s' most unprevaricating, multiloquent, and periphrastic sportscaster that ABC can lend to PBS: Howard Cosell!



Panels from "The Return of Dr. Octopus" in Spidey Super Stories #11 (August 1975), script by Jean Thomas, pencils by Win Mortimer, inks by Mike Esposito and Tony Mortellaro, letters by Irving Watanabe (?)
Alas, unlike Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, the other big-name comic book boxing match of the seventies, this one doesn't have a galaxy of real and imaginary celebrities on its cover. (I may have to devote an entire week eventually to that comic!)


Cover of Spidey Super Stories #11 (August 1975); cover by John Romita, Sr.; letters by Irving Watanabe (?)
Wait, what am I saying? There's Morgan Freeman, right there!