Featuring: Spider-Man
Release: February 11, 1964
Cover: May 1964
12 cents
Written in the white heat of inspiration by: Stan Lee
Drawn in a wild frenzy of enthusiasm by: Steve Ditko
Lettered in a comfortable room by: Art Simek
22 pages
We’re reading this story an entire month early. A few reasons for this. One is that a lot of plot and thematic elements remain unresolved from issue 11. So these two issues read well together. The other is that I’ll be shuffling around a lot of Avengers-related comics due to chronological complications, including Spider-Man’s upcoming guest appearance in Tales to Astonish. I’ll be pulling that story forward, which also pulls this story forward.
Since the Dr. Octopus subplot remains unresolved from last issue, I think it’s best if Spider-Man’s guest appearances with Human Torch or Giant-Man don’t break up these issues.
Just keep in mind this comic was actually was published after a lot of the exciting events we are about to read, including the return of Captain America, the introduction of Black Widow, the epic Thing/Hulk showdown, and the introduction of Daredevil. But I think it reads better before all that. So here we are.
This is actually one of my very favorite Spider-Man comics. Let’s dive in.
We see a Daily Bugle article in an unusual level of detail. Spider-Man is blamed for letting Dr. Octopus escape by interfering in police business. Jameson’s articles are often over the top, but this seems a reasonable assessment to me. Spider-Man is a child who barged into a delicate hostage situation. One person was killed and the villain escaped. We know he did his best, but he is an amateur. Nonetheless, Spider-Man is outraged by the article. He should perhaps instead be remorseful about Bennet’s death. That’s what happens when you provoke a criminal into wildly firing shots.
Dr. Octopus is on a nationwide crime spree. He wants Spider-Man to find him. He decides he has to return to New York. Well, duh. How would Spider-Man find you if you keep moving town to town? It should be pretty obvious Spider-Man lives in New York. Why would you consider trying to trap him anywhere else?
Aunt May calls a doctor for Peter. We met at least two different doctors in issue 9 when Aunt May was ill. It’s not obvious to me whether this doctor is any of those. He looks nothing like the first picture. I think the next two pictures are the same doctor, who seems to be balding more than this doctor.
The Billy Graham reference has not aged well. In fact, the 1994 reprint I’m looking at decided to modernize the reference and go with Ann Landers instead. Compare below the digital version to the reprint in Spider-Man Classics #13.
In case there’s confusion, they are not referring to the beloved comic artist, Billy Graham; his career in comics had not yet even begun at this point.
Spider-Man fights some animals. That’s always fun. Lion. Bear. Gorilla.
Let’s check out these motion effects. Most panels we’ve looked at have represented a short amount of time, just a second or so if a character is throwing a punch, perhaps a bit longer if a character is slowly sipping coffee. The idea is that they convey a single action. What we see here is one trick to establish time passing and a more detailed look at a character’s motion in a single panel, representing several actions. I think this is the first time we have seen it in our Marvel Age reading, though it’s surely wasn’t invented here. Spider-Man is the character I most associate the technique with. They convey Spider-Man’s motion in part with motion lines, but also notably with a preimage of Spider-Man, a faded drawing of where he was a few seconds earlier. We’ll discuss it more when we see it used with Spider-Man to even greater effect in coming issues.
The fight ends up in a sculptor’s studio. Makes for a cool background. Dr. Octopus is wearing a green jumpsuit this issue. Last issue, it was purple. He can’t decide, but knows that as a super-villain he only has two options.
Uh-oh. Spider-Man runs out of web fluid. That will be a common problem, but this is only the second time.
That leads to this loading-the-webbing scene. Taking a few panels to show the hero dramatically arming for battle. Surprisingly uncommon so far. The only notable example also comes from Ditko, when he was showing us Iron Man’s new armor.
Let’s talk about damsels in distress. As I often mock, Jane Foster gets kidnapped by a super-villain almost every issue for no particular reason. This superhero trope goes back to Lois Lane; the superhero’s would-be girlfriend is always the target. But at least the Superman stories made some sense out of it. Lois was inclined to put herself in dangerous situations for professional reasons. Jane Foster is just sitting in her office minding her own business when super-villains barge in to take her hostage, usually at random.
We see something like the trope at work here; this comic is putting Betty in danger these past two issues, but it spent a lot of time laying the groundwork, explaining her own family difficulties that got her involved with mobsters. Her troubles this issue spin out of that. Dr. Octopus decides to capture her, reasoning that Spider-Man had come to her rescue before and might again. They put in a lot of work to justify Spider-Man’s girlfriend being in danger. It’s been built up over 4 issues and with stories that are central to her character. She’s not an afterthought and not without agency. In fact, the next time she gets captured by Dr. Octopus will also tie back into these issues.
I think this comic does a great job with the unmasking at its center. We’ll see many instances of superhero secret identities being discovered and writers coming up with harebrained plots to write their way out of it. I think they play it pretty fair here. Spider-Man is really unmasked by Dr. Octopus in front of Jameson and Betty, just as the cover promised. Yet, his secret identity remains safe, and the reasons why felt organic.
An example of a harebrained plot a writer might come up with is if Spider-Man’s secret were revealed and suddenly the devil showed up and offered to make people forget. That would be pretty stupid. But this story worked.
Peter’s identity is only saved because everybody dismisses the idea of him being Spider-Man. And it makes a lot of sense. Something similar happened with Dr. Doom, accidentally capturing Flash Thompson in a Spider-Man suit, so there’s precedent. Spider-Man has a cold that’s affected his powers, so he did seem weaker than Spider-Man should. And Peter has reasonable motivations for pretending to be Spider-Man. His girlfriend was in danger unless Spider-Man showed up. He needed to be there to take pictures. If he couldn’t find Spider-Man in time, pretending to be Spider-Man is a sensible course of action.
There’s one conclusion that Jameson could draw which makes sense to me. Peter didn’t have a lot of notice here. How did he get the Spider-Man suit so quickly? One could deduce he already had one. If so, why would he have one? Might he be faking some of the pictures he has sent to Jameson before? That could explain how a teenager is able to get pictures of Spider-Man. In fact, Jameson already caught him faking photos before, to fabricate evidence Spider-Man was Electro.
One outcome of Peter supposedly posing as Spider-Man is that Liz does a sharp turnaround. She recognizes he’s not the coward she thought he was, perhaps just as she’s realizing that Peter might be going places in life. Liz isn’t quite the same character she was when we met her. But neither is Peter. It’s been subtle, but he’s more comfortable and confident than he appeared when we first met him. This could explain Liz coming around to him. She seems to dump Flash this issue, not for the first time.
In the beginning, Liz was always rejecting him. This time, she asks him out and he rejects her, intending to ask out Betty. Liz finally realizes that they hadn’t been nice enough to Peter.
Thing are looking up. Even the narrator notes the ending is unusually rosy for Spider-Man.
Rating: ★★★★½, 80/100
Significance: ★★★★☆
The scans are taken from a reprint in Spider-Man Classics #13 (1994).
I read this story in Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection vol. 1: Great Power. You can also find it in Marvel Masterworks: Amazing Spider-Man vol. 2. Or on Kindle.
Characters:
- Dr. Octopus
- Spider-Man/Peter Parker
- Betty Brant
- Aunt May
- Flash Thompson
- Liz Allan
- J. Jonah Jameson
Minor characters:
- Joe (police officer)
- Bill (police officer)
Story notes:
- Daily Bugle article shown in detail.
- Jameson’s secretary who replaced Betty quits; Betty gets her job back.
- Peter notes end term exams are coming up.
- Peter catches cold; virus lasts 24 hours.
- Dr. Octopus plans to use Betty as bait.
- Jameson sends Peter to photograph Spider-Man’s battle with Dr. Octopus.
- Jameson notes it’s mid-winter.
- Liz impressed by Peter; seems to dump Flash.
- Liz flirting with Peter; breaks off bowling date with Flash.
- Police contain leopard; Spider-Man fights lion, bear, gorilla.
- Frank Buck reference.
- Florence Nightingale reference.
- Liz tries to invite Peter to party; he rejects her to go out with Betty.
#168 story in reading order
Next: Tales to Astonish #55
Previous: Amazing Spider-Man #11
