A San Francisco news TV station receives a letter from a Dr.
Bad Vibes, claiming to have invented an earthquake machine and threatening to
prove it by creating a tremor at noon that day. News anchor Ariel O’Hare thinks
this would make a great story and runs with it….
Eddie Brock is walking down a street in a rundown section of
the city; he sees the owner of a TV store having a fight with his wife and she
runs off. He also passes a dude named Skip talking his Catholic School
girlfriend Tammy into some loving in the back seat of his car. And then an
earth tremor shakes the city, ruining buildings in the neighborhood; Eddie
immediately turns into Venom and stops Skip’s car from disappearing into a
crevasse. He pulls off the door and frees the trapped Tammy; Skip complains about
the missing door, calling Venom “Spider-Man.” Venom, hating to be called
Spider-Man, drops the car back into the crevasse. On TV, Ariel O’Hare announces
that Dr. Bad Vibes has sent a second letter, this one demanding a ransom of
twenty million dollars not to destroy the city. Venom then fails to save an
elderly man injured by the rubble but does scare off a gang trying to loot the
TV store. Then Venom spies the Hulk and assumes he created the earthquake,
trying to take him down. But this is Professor Hulk, easily bursting his
opponent’s webbing and punching his lights out. This doesn’t deter Venom….
On TV, Ariel O’Hare interviews a scientist, Prof. Hinkley,
who claims Dr. Bad Vibes is a fraud, the quake having a natural explanation,
and a psychic, Madame Star, who prophesies that the villain is authentic and he
must be paid his money to protect the city….
Hulk finally overpowers Venom with a couple of very loud
thunderclaps sits on him to get him to listen to reason: Hulk has come to help.
They team up and go on TV challenging Dr. Bad Vibes to a fight and, along with
hundreds of crank calls, the villain responds to the threat. Hulk, who knew the
quake was completely natural, traces the bad guy’s call and he and Venom show
up at the villain’s lair, accompanied by Ariel O’Hare and a cameraman. On
arrival, they discover that the fearsome Dr. Bad Vibes is a crackpot whose
quake machine is a cardboard box. He presses the painted-on button and believes
he has created another disaster as the heroes watch in pity. Hulk and Venom
walk off, chatting about how life is sometimes pointless. Then the TV guy’s
wife comes back to him and Venom thinks there’s at least an occasional point…..