This is the Great Comic Book Detectives, where readers send in requests for the names of comic books that they remembered reading years ago and I try to find them for them! Send any future requests to brianc@cbr.com!

Reader Jason wrote in to ask:

Just read the Silver Surfer piece and it reminded me of a sequence that I've been dying to find.

In a late eighties era issue of Spider-Man, I think it was Web Of...but I'm not positive, there was a bizarrely lonesome sequence with Peter Parker. He, after some sort of sad event, lays out his costume and sits across from it. He opens a soda and tells the costume that he's his only friend and then they sit there in awkward silence. He might have even put out a soda for his costume too. This had to be the pre-marriage era when he was still living alone in that crappy apartment.

It sticks in my mind one of the last instances of Peter acting like an absolute loon in the comics.

Hope it jogs your memory, it's been driving me crazy. Thanks!

Luckily for my research purposes, this sounded to me like something that Peter David would have written during his run on Spectacular Spider-Man and since I knew it couldn't be during "The Death of Jean DeWolff," I just checked the issues after that story arc ended and it was in the second issue I read! Interestingly enough, with it being Christmastime and all, the issue was Peter David's classic (and bizarre) Christmas issue of Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man #112, which was drawn by Mark Beachum and Pat Redding. This might shock you to learn (if you have never read a Mark Beachum illustrated comic book before) that there were a good deal of close-ups on women's asses in this comic book.

Released at the end of November 1985, "You Never Make a Sound" sets things up so that Peter Parker believes that he is going to be all alone at Christmas, but much of that is just a matter of him misunderstanding other people. For instance, he cuts off both Aunt May and Robbie Robertson right before they are about to invite him to their respective Christmas Day gatherings, so he thinks that he is all by himself. He also calls up Mary Jane, but she is busy taking a bath and doesn't answer the phone. She even worries a bit whether Peter knows that Aunt May had invited her and her aunt, Anna, to Christmas Day celebrations.

The more active drama in the issue is introduced when Peter's neighbor, Bambi, takes her son (whose existence we did not know about until now) to see Santa Claus, and the Santa is secretly a crook who gets the addresses for his victims from the kids of the victims!

That Bambi ass shot is practically demure to the shots of the Black Cat in action later in the issue...

Anyhow, that leads us to Christmas Eve night and a mopey Peter Parker...

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Reach out and talk to someone']

A lonely Peter puts down his costume on a chair and talks to it while he pours a glass of Coca-Cola (the original, not that BS New Coke stuff) for the both of them...

The Santa Crook breaks in next door to Peter and he hears the commotion and bursts in to the scene as Spider-Man. The guy gets away, though, when Peter's other neighbors show up in various states of undress and get in the way of his webbing...

He chases the crook to the roof but then he seems to vanish!

The next day, Peter gets a photography assignment. Apparently the crook had a change of heart (implied due to a visit with the REAL Santa Claus). The REAL Santa Claus (or at least the implication of the real Santa) gives Peter a note to call his Aunt and the issue ends with him, Aunt May, Anna Watson and Mary Jane Watson celebrating the holiday....

There ya go, Jason!

Okay, that's it for this installment of the Great Comic Book Detectives! If anyone else has a story that they'd like me to track down, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!