Marvel Team-Up
This story certainly stakes a good claim to being dumbest ever Spider-Man story. Plot holes big enough to sink Manhattan. Worse dialog than the out-takes from a cheap-budget Arnie film.
No problems, Hercules grabs the chains and pulls the island back into place. Well, do you want me to cover the seventeen fundamental flaws with this entire plot, or can you imagine them yourself. Then, a Special Nuclear Submarine is waiting with attached chains to pull the island of Manhattan out of New York Bay, to a previously designated point... It seems that the earth-digging machines are going to sever the interior foundation of Manhattan Island. There's always a good reason to keep your plans secret from Super-Heroes. Why did the robots bring their victims with them when they moved. They were at opposite ends of the island, but when our heroes awake, the robots are applying their strange machines in the same location. They speak English, but only to babble about intruders. The robots aren't interested in fighting, but then they take the time to disable their victims.
An alien robot with hyper-technology uses chains to tie people up. He attacks, the robot shrugs him off and continues with his work. Meanwhile, Spider-Man finds a similar robot with device under an overpass at the other end of the island. Well, perhaps you understand why not just anybody can be a script writer. He has been programmed with all the essential English phrases he will need. The robot is fully prepared for this situation. He opens a hole in the ground, and reveals a robotic alien being, manipulating a device which is clearly the source of the vibrations. Meanwhile, Hercules is guided by instinct to the other. Still, of course even though Peter only manages to attend one lecture in four of the courses he is actually enrolled for, he is also the star pupil of every single science department in the entire university.
Very few comic book writers grasp the idea that for example an expert in gene-splicing technology might not be able to assemble a nuclear bomb, or that a molecular chemist might be a little rusty on the principles of tectonic plate interaction. As soon as he enters the door, the professor immediately ignores the hundreds of other students, and explains the whole scenario to Peter, without even being asked. Fortunately, in the 70's, even non-quake prone areas were completely rigged with remote sensing instruments which could rapidly report by telementry and diagnose that there are exactly two points of origin for the quake. At this point, we start to suspect that this story is lacking a little in the realism department. A quake of that magnitude, you can count on thousands dead and close on a million homeless. Secondly, any earthquake that's going to toss people out of windows will level damn near most of Manhattan.
Through a plate glass window, that is - without getting a scratch. Fortunately Spidey is there to save her. So, while Peter continues with the mental re-caps, and Hercules ponders with amazement the kinds of matters which really have no reason to amaze him, we cue an earthquake.