The Assassin Nation Plot was a six-part series that ran in The Amazon Spider-Man in late 1989 (issues 320-325). This series, especially the artwork of Todd McFarlane, helped draw me into comics rather seriously for a period of a year or more. Spider-Man has always been the best superhero out there, and Mary Jane has to be the hottest superhero's wife (especially back in the day when McFarlane was drawing her). This is a strange but interesting little series that brings in a number of different characters, good and evil, to help start or avoid a war with the nation of Symkara following the assassination of that country's prime minister and the king's fiancée. Spider-Man stumbles his way into the whole crisis by accident, after bumping into the mercenary Paladin. He soon finds himself working with Paladin as well Silver Sable, whose job is protecting the life of King Stephan of Symkara. It's sort of strange to see Spider-Man doing his thing so far away from home, but he needs the money Sable offers him (Mary Jane can't find a job modeling, and they are planning on moving to their own apartment because Aunt May is closing the boarding house in order to spend as much time as possible with her dying friend). Actually, it's a little disturbing that Spider-Man expresses ambivalence over the interests of America for as long as he does here. The whole assassination plot was carried out in such a way as to implicate the CIA, and the aftermath pushes America and Symkara pretty close to the brink of war. That's certainly why Captain America arrives about midway through the story - to find out who the killer really was and thus rid his country of this ever-darkening shadow of complicity. Spider-Man does eventually discover his own sense of patriotism, but it comes much too late, as far as I'm concerned. He really comes across as a spoiled brat on more than one occasion.