Marvel Team-Up #144: Spider-Man and Moon Knight – My Sword I Lay Down!

Story: Cary Burkett
Pencils: Greg LaRocque

There's a gang-war in Chinatown, and Spider-Man and Moon Knight have to stop it, without actually interfering.

It's all something of a dilemma, until the latter discovers that one of the antagonists secretly is an outsider, and suddenly he has an in.

Spider-Man meanwhile is trying to track-down a bomb, and fretting about his old school-pal Phil, who's caught-up in a leadership battle within one of the two sides. Basically, everyone wants Phil to be their leader, except Phil, who's renounced fighting and become a pacifist.

This is really where the story's meat is. Spidey also wants Phil to stand-up to his people's oppressors, but over the course of the story, the webslinger finds his opinions swaying. When Phil gets publicly beaten-up, refusing in front of everyone to try to protect his own life, the web-head is forced to at least wonder.

By the end, there are no neat conclusions to the old pacifism vs. self-defence debate here, but the moral convictions of all the three leads make this good reflective stuff.