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Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 1 by Steve Ditko, Blake Bell, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
ponch22's review
4.0
Signed up for ComiXology Unlimited just to borrow [b:Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 1|35896249|Marvel Masterworks The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 1|Stan Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1501623539s/35896249.jpg|740141] because I’m listening to a new podcast—Screw It, We’re Just Gonna Talk About Spider-Man, wherein brothers Kevin & [a:Will Hines|3342295|Will Hines|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1468766402p2/3342295.jpg] have set out to discuss each of the original Spider-Man comics written by [a:Stan Lee|10303|Stan Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1206594565p2/10303.jpg] & drawn by [a:Steve Ditko|10298|Steve Ditko|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1204665020p2/10298.jpg].
My only real connection to Spider-Man is five of the six movies released this century (I haven’t seen Amazing Spider-Man 2 yet) so it was interesting going back to the beginning and learning how it all started.
This novel collects essentially eleven issues—Spider-Man’s introduction as a part of Amazing Fantasy #15, plus the first ten issues of his own series, The Amazing Spider-Man.
(Going off my memory here from the first SIWJGTAS-M podcast because I don’t feel like googling it) Amazing Fantasy was a (monthly?) comic that was split into two halves and usually had stories with weird twists (a la The Twilight Zone). However, superheroes were becoming popular so Lee decided to test a story where the all-powerful hero was just an unpopular teenager. And so a legend was born.
AF#15 is the story we’ve been told so often—boy bit by radioactive spider, boy feels responsible for his uncle’s death, boy realizes that “with great power there must also come—great responsibility!”
Then, as is often the case, our new hero gets his own series but has a crossover to make the cover a little more enticing. In TAS-M #1, Spidey goes up against the Fantastic Four (in a silly attempt to join their team to earn money) & also battles a ridiculous villain called The Chameleon, whose power is a multi-pocketed vest with every possible disguise available. He also has a story where he is labeled a menace by J Jonah Jameson, but still saves Jameson’s astronaut son when his rocketship has a malfunction. It’s actually a little surprising how much they crammed into one issue, but I guess they had to wow audiences as best as they could!
Issue #2 has Spider-Man battle The Vulture with magnetic disrupters and The Terrible Tinkerer, who’s in league with aliens (for some reason). #3 introduces Doctor Octopus, who takes up the whole issue. He almost defeats Spider-Man, but another cameo from Fantastic Four’s The Human Torch prevents Peter from giving up!
#4 is another full-issue story, this time introducing The Sandman who Peter has to fight in his own school! #5 feels like another “ratings grab,” as it pits FF’s Dr. Doom against Spider-Man—at first, Doom asks Spidey to join him so the two of them could defeat the FF together. At Spider-Man’s refusal, the two battle until Spidey escapes. Meanwhile, Peter’s school foe, Flash Thompson, has dressed up as Spider-Man to scare Peter but instead gets kidnapped by Doom. Spider-Man again overcomes his loss & defeats the villain & escapes (before the Fantastic Four can get there).
#6 introduces (and cures!) The Lizard, taking Spider-Man out of NYC while #7 brings back The Vulture for his second appearance (now with new and improved magnets!). #8 has the weirdest “villain” I’ve ever read—The Living Brain, a robot accidentally set loose in Peter’s high school. While the villain is odd, it does have a nice subplot of Peter boxing Flash (in a teacher-sponsored fight), knocking him out, and later accusing Flash of not being around while Spider-Man was battling the Living Brain. There’s also a half story of Spidey crashing Johnny Storm’s party and Spider-Man once again fighting The Human Torch (and other Fantastic Four members).
#9 introduces Electro, a villain who can harness electrical power and shoot it at metal tie clips, belt buckles, and shoelace aglets! It also introduces a subplot of Aunt May needing surgery. Finally, #10 gives us a mob boss known as The Big Man and his three cohorts, aka The Enforcers—Fancy Dan, a short, nimble, judo expert; Ox, a lug of a man who can’t seem to get hurt; and Montana, a thug with expert lasso skills. Peter has also been building a relationship with Jameson’s secretary, Betty Brant, and in issue #10, we learn she has a dark past.
All the stories are pretty fun (some more than others). The Marvel Masterworks collection has a silly introduction from Mr. Stan Lee himself but ends with some great looks at the original artwork for AF#15, complete with white-out changes and notes in the margins. I’m surprised that there’s not one mention of Mary Jane—I would have guessed someone so linked with Spider-Man would have been there from the start. I'm interested to see if I'll see her first introduction in the next couple of collections...
My only real connection to Spider-Man is five of the six movies released this century (I haven’t seen Amazing Spider-Man 2 yet) so it was interesting going back to the beginning and learning how it all started.
This novel collects essentially eleven issues—Spider-Man’s introduction as a part of Amazing Fantasy #15, plus the first ten issues of his own series, The Amazing Spider-Man.
(Going off my memory here from the first SIWJGTAS-M podcast because I don’t feel like googling it) Amazing Fantasy was a (monthly?) comic that was split into two halves and usually had stories with weird twists (a la The Twilight Zone). However, superheroes were becoming popular so Lee decided to test a story where the all-powerful hero was just an unpopular teenager. And so a legend was born.
AF#15 is the story we’ve been told so often—boy bit by radioactive spider, boy feels responsible for his uncle’s death, boy realizes that “with great power there must also come—great responsibility!”
Then, as is often the case, our new hero gets his own series but has a crossover to make the cover a little more enticing. In TAS-M #1, Spidey goes up against the Fantastic Four (in a silly attempt to join their team to earn money) & also battles a ridiculous villain called The Chameleon, whose power is a multi-pocketed vest with every possible disguise available. He also has a story where he is labeled a menace by J Jonah Jameson, but still saves Jameson’s astronaut son when his rocketship has a malfunction. It’s actually a little surprising how much they crammed into one issue, but I guess they had to wow audiences as best as they could!
Issue #2 has Spider-Man battle The Vulture with magnetic disrupters and The Terrible Tinkerer, who’s in league with aliens (for some reason). #3 introduces Doctor Octopus, who takes up the whole issue. He almost defeats Spider-Man, but another cameo from Fantastic Four’s The Human Torch prevents Peter from giving up!
#4 is another full-issue story, this time introducing The Sandman who Peter has to fight in his own school! #5 feels like another “ratings grab,” as it pits FF’s Dr. Doom against Spider-Man—at first, Doom asks Spidey to join him so the two of them could defeat the FF together. At Spider-Man’s refusal, the two battle until Spidey escapes. Meanwhile, Peter’s school foe, Flash Thompson, has dressed up as Spider-Man to scare Peter but instead gets kidnapped by Doom. Spider-Man again overcomes his loss & defeats the villain & escapes (before the Fantastic Four can get there).
#6 introduces (and cures!) The Lizard, taking Spider-Man out of NYC while #7 brings back The Vulture for his second appearance (now with new and improved magnets!). #8 has the weirdest “villain” I’ve ever read—The Living Brain, a robot accidentally set loose in Peter’s high school. While the villain is odd, it does have a nice subplot of Peter boxing Flash (in a teacher-sponsored fight), knocking him out, and later accusing Flash of not being around while Spider-Man was battling the Living Brain. There’s also a half story of Spidey crashing Johnny Storm’s party and Spider-Man once again fighting The Human Torch (and other Fantastic Four members).
#9 introduces Electro, a villain who can harness electrical power and shoot it at metal tie clips, belt buckles, and shoelace aglets! It also introduces a subplot of Aunt May needing surgery. Finally, #10 gives us a mob boss known as The Big Man and his three cohorts, aka The Enforcers—Fancy Dan, a short, nimble, judo expert; Ox, a lug of a man who can’t seem to get hurt; and Montana, a thug with expert lasso skills. Peter has also been building a relationship with Jameson’s secretary, Betty Brant, and in issue #10, we learn she has a dark past.
All the stories are pretty fun (some more than others). The Marvel Masterworks collection has a silly introduction from Mr. Stan Lee himself but ends with some great looks at the original artwork for AF#15, complete with white-out changes and notes in the margins. I’m surprised that there’s not one mention of Mary Jane—I would have guessed someone so linked with Spider-Man would have been there from the start. I'm interested to see if I'll see her first introduction in the next couple of collections...
dantastic's review against another edition
3.0
Fun Silver Age silliness and the last time the writers, in this case Stan Lee, were able to develop the character without running into walls.
cranea653's review against another edition
4.0
Campy, yet fun. I definitely prefer the later Amazing Spider-Man, but it's nice to see where he started.
kschlegel's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
1.5
poorsun's review against another edition
3.0
First foray into the classics, really campy and every bit of action is described in the text but still fun to see the origin of a character that has been around for so long!
allmadhere106's review against another edition
3.0
This is a great collection of the original Spider-Man comics. It gives the story from the beginning, and while my collector's heart loves that, I also found it a little boring. I don't know if it's because I've heard these stories so many times before through interviews or whatnot, or if it's because I read the comics from the reboot first and I found them more action-packed. Either way, I'm glad that this exists from a historical standpoint, but I didn't really enjoy it in terms of reading for fun. I can see how it would have been ground-breaking at the time it was created, but I think for myself that the newer editions are favored, no matter how much that hurts me to say. I would recommend this if you want some historical background into your Spidey, but I would also recommend taking it a little slowly and not trying to force your way through it like I ended up doing. That would probably have made all the difference. I'll try reading it again for sure, but it didn't really wow me.