Story Of The Year! * GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY GUEST APPEARANCE * HAMMER AND ANVIL appearance Spider-Man is climbing the Deterrence Research Corporation Tower, formerly known as the Magnum Building after the man who built it, Moses Magnum. Magnum was a dealer in illegal weapons who is now missing and presumed dead, but the corporation he left behind avoided punishment for its crimes and is now doing better than ever. Spider-Man is following up rumors that the D.R.C. is planning a large operation, although the building looks like an ordinary skyscraper', muses Spider-Man, it is, in reality, a Fifth Avenue fortress. Suddenly Spider-Man's spider-sense tingles, and when he looks into a window he sees a man rummaging through a desk. The man is Lawrence Whittier Reynolds —"Rap" to his few friends—a rather arrogant ace journalism student at Columbia University. He, too, has heard the rumors and has come in search of a story to sell to the networks. Hearing voices approach, he slips into a closet, and a moment later two men enter the room. One is Dr. Eric Salter, a renegade NASA scientist, and the other is Ivor Carlson, Moses Magnum's successor as head of the D.R.C. After adjusting some equipment and conversing, the two men leave, and the delighted student emerges and starts videotaping. He has just learned that the D.R.C. is planning a rocket launch toward a hitherto unknown satellite called "Drydock" in orbit around the Earth over a thousand miles up. Drydock is evidently crammed with secret scientific and military hardware, and the D.R.C. plans to hijack it. And the prize-winning story of the year, he gloats gleefully, is all his. Then a noise distracts him, and when he shines a flashlight into a darkened corner, he sees an unusual crystalline man. Before Reynolds can ask a single question, the security alarm goes off, and the crystal man bolts down a corridor. The man is Martinex