Scripter Lee provided his share of hokey bits, too. Take the first story in Volume Two, "Turning Point." Featuring the return of regular Spidey bad-guy, Dr. Octopus (equipped w./ a set of large mechanical tentacles, which Ditko delights in posing via menacing swirls around the villain's head), the prime plot involves Betty Brant's brother, who is into the mob for money. You know he's gonna redeem himself with a final ennobling gesture in the end.
Or consider the issue introducing Green Goblin (#14, "Grotesque Adventure of the Green Goblin"), which revolves around the mysterious villain's desire to lure Spider-Man into a trap. (Why? We don't know: the villain's motivation and identity were kept secret for several years. For that matter, neither Norman Osborne nor his son Harry have been introduced yet.) Our hero's lured out into the desert with the promise of a role in a movie by the director of The Nameless Thing from the Black Lagoon in the Murky Swamp (an "Oscar-winning" film, we're told), little knowing that the Goblin has brought a trio of hired thugs named the Enforcers on set to battle Spidey for real. Lee had already used the movie-as-trap plot in the first year of Fantastic Four, and it was just as strained the second time.
Such genre goofiness notwithstanding, the Lee & Ditko Spider-Man lived up to its billing. A three-issue series (#17-19) shows the team at its peak: forced once more by the Green Goblin into a confrontation - this time at a charity country club dance - our hero ducks out mid-battle when he learns Aunt May has just been sent to the hospital with her first heart attack. Branded a coward and agonizing over his responsibility for his incapacitated mother figure, Peter Parker spends a whole issue hiding from confrontations that are waiting for him around every corner. (Though it's since become commonplace, this has to be one of the first times a superhero comic devoted a full ish to character over physical confrontation.) Our guy snaps back to take on a slew of baddies in the subsequent issue, but I've gotta tell ya - as an early adolescent reading that series when it came out, for a month there I know the core readership had its doubts.
An even more compact sample of coolness can be found in issue #12's "Unmasked By Dr. Octopus." In this 'un, the mechanical cephalopodist pulls off a series of crimes through the country just to taunt our hero. Frustrated by Spidey's no-show (he doesn't realize that since Peter is just a teenager, he can't just up and fly across country), he returns to New York to kidnap Betty Brant. Peter, meanwhile, is battling a 24-hour virus that makes him woozy even as he swings off to rescue Betty at the seasonally closed Coney Island. In this incapacitated state, he's easily defeated by Doc Ock - who unmasks his foe in front of Betty and Peter's editor J. Jonah Jameson.
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