Amazing Spider-Man Annual 1

Featuring: Spider-Man
Release: June 11, 1964
Cover: 1964
25 cents
Written by: Stan Lee
Drawn by: Steve Ditko
Lettered by: S. Rosen
41 pages

It’s 1964. You’re young. You don’t have a lot of money. But you know some math. Most comics cost 12 cents. This one costs 25. You could get two comics for that price! But wait… those two comics between them would only net you 42-46 story pages. This one promises 72 pages! 72 big pages, at that.

Indeed, this first story is 41 pages, enough to give you your money’s worth. But there’re over 30 pages of bonus features as well!

Plus, most of those comics will give you one super-villain, two at most. This cover promises a sinister six villains for your hard-earned quarter.

If you’re not yet sold to drop two bits, the first page should do it. Aunt May and Betty Brant have been captured by the Sinister Six, and Spider-Man has lost his powers! Now that’s a story!

A notable aspect of this story is that Spider-Man runs into lots of superheroes, his first time meeting several of them. I have mixed feelings on this. On the negative end, most of these encounters are completely gratuitous and irrelevant to the main story plot. It’s also a fairly blatant attempt at marketing within the story, using the popularity of Spider-Man to advertise their other heroes. On the other, it helps create the sense the the city is now teeming with superheroes, and running into them is actually commonplace. Usually heroes have met with cause. It’s fun to see them randomly bump into each other. More generally, it’s fun, and perhaps that’s all that matters.

Thor just flies past Spider-Man (this would be their first meeting, but it may not count as a meeting since Thor doesn’t even notice him). Dr. Strange’s ectoplasmic spirit form interrupts a fight between Peter and Flash (this would be the first meeting between Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, but Dr. Strange doesn’t know Peter is Spider-Man). The Fantastic Four see Spider-Man in trouble, but decide he’s showing off and that it’s best to leave him alone. Peter walks past Giant-Man and Wasp foiling a crime (these heroes first met in Tales to Astonish #57). When Jameson needs to reach Spider-Man, he calls the Fantastic Four, who call Avengers HQ to find Captain America there. (Captain America and Spider-Man still haven’t met and don’t this issue.) Iron Man shows up after Spider-Man has a battle at a Stark plant. They actually meet, but this is not their first meeting; they met previously in Avengers #3. Human Torch offers to help with the Sinister Six, but Spidey turns him down. The X-Men see a message for Spider-Man from Human Torch but ignore it; Spider-Man and the X-Men still have not met. Spidey thinks he fights the X-Men, but it turns out he was fighting robots controlled by Mysterio.

Daredevil is the only Marvel character with his own title absent from this issue; well, except Sgt. Fury whose title is set 20 years earlier. The Hulk is absent, but he doesn’t get his own title back until next month; the Watcher is absent, but his series was just cancelled; Namor is absent, but it will be another year before he gets his own series again.

In a similar vein, the story serves as a tour of what the Spider-Man series has been about. Equally extraneous. Spider-Man visits Jameson so we see what his character is about. Flash picks a fight with Peter because he saw Peter with Liz.

We also get a recap of Spider-Man’s origin for the first time since the first issue. This one is more complete. For the first time since the actual origin, we see Peter remorseful over Ben’s death, reminding the audience that he blames himself. This is the first time we see that specific guilt in the ongoing series. In the first issue, he said Ben was dead because he was “too late” to save him. But his culpability runs far deeper than that.

Ben’s death has rarely been mentioned up to this point as all, in fact. Spider-Man complains a lot about the responsbility of being Spider-Man, but without explicit reflection on his origin. If Ben has come up, it’s in the context of why May has trouble with bills now. They haven’t explicitly referred to his death since the second issue, when Peter inherited his camera. Going forward, Spider-Man will reflect on the past a lot more.

There’s a practical reason for this. Marvel Tales Annual 1 just came out, which reprints the origins of many characters. Lee had to assume up to this point that every month attracted new readers who may be unfamiliar with the story so far, so he made each issue focused on the present to be accessible. Now, they have a retelling of the origin back in print and on the newsstands, so fans can read the origin. In fact, Stan would love them to go buy that issue. Hence the reference to it.

Damsels in distress. A poor trope of superhero comics, most evident in the Thor comics, when almost every villain has endangered Jane, usually entirely coincidentally. This series has been much better about it. First, because it happens less often. Second, because when it does, they work the story around it. Betty didn’t randomly get into trouble because a villain picked her out of a crowd. She had a whole story about a brother and his debts that put her in the path of Dr. Octopus the first time. And Dr. Octopus is targeting her again, specifically because Spider-Man saved her before, having traveled all the way to Philadelphia to do so. The trap nabs Aunt May as well, as she had been with Betty. They were going to get coffee and talk about what’s been troubling Peter. This is Aunt May’s first time getting captured by a super-villain.

In a funny turn of events that will become a running gag, Aunt May grows fond of Dr. Octopus. She sees his extra arms as a disability people shouldn’t hold against him. She’s impressed that he’s a doctor and so well-spoken. She somehow seems to not understand the danger she is in.

We get a new team of super-villains. In the vein of the Masters of Evil, they consist of existing villains who team up. This fight will be six against one. It’s a pretty thorough coverage of Spider-Man’s villains so far. Green Goblin is the most notable absence. Also absent are Chameleon, Tinkerer, the Living Brain, Big Man, and the Enforcers. The Lizard is cured of being the Lizard, and is now the genial Dr. Connors. So his absence makes sense.

The comic begins with Dr. Octopus breaking out of prison. It makes no effort to explain how the other villains got out of prison. Presumably either escaped or paroled. Only Kraven hadn’t been in prison the last we saw him; rather, he’d gotten deported.

In case having to face six villains– each of whom nearly defeated him alone– isn’t enough, Spider-Man has also mysteriously lost his powers.

It turns out his power failing was psychological. His guilt and self-doubt were the problem. With a clear focus on his goals and belief in himself, his powers returned just in time.

The plot of Spider-Man 2 seems to come straight out of this comic. Spider-Man suffers from similar doubts in the movie, and loses his powers. But when Dr. Octopus kidnaps Mary Jane, he needs to regain his sense of determination and his powers along with it.

We get one of the best scenes yet as Spider-Man resolves to face the odds. “And if this is to be my finish… at least I’ll face it… like a man!”

Marvel stories have so far been light on these melodramatic last stands against impossible odds. Largely because their heroes are pretty powerful and many of the villains are, frankly, lame. Most of Thor’s foes clearly stand no chance, so any speech about this being his final battle comes off as absurd. The only other good moment along these lines we’ve had is when Thing had to face Hulk alone, recognizing he was overpowered.

His aunt and girlfriend in danger, his powers gone, his six most dangerous foes teamed up against him… and Spider-Man doesn’t back down.

Due to their egos, the villains attack Spider-Man one at a time. (Honestly, he wouldn’t stand a chance otherwise.)

The comic is then a sequence of six battles, each one including a splash page of a climactic moment. The splash pages alone are worth the 25 cents this comic costs. It really shows off just how talented Ditko is, particularly when he is given a bit of space and time to draw. No artist has ever been better at rendering Spider-Man. Let’s take a look at them.

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Notice that Dr. Octopus is trying to live up to his namesake better by putting on scuba gear and battling Spider-Man underwater. Because I don’t like the coloring in the reprint I scanned, let’s see that Dr. Octopus page in the digital restoration.

A natural question is whether it makes sense for Spider-Man to defeat each of these foes in a few pages, when each took him a whole issue last time. I think they make it work. First of all, he’s got an aunt and girlfriend to save. The drive might be enough to justify his not messing around with these people. Second, he has the advantage that he doesn’t need a decisive victory; he just needs to get a paper from them with the next location in the gauntlet and get away. Finally, he has the advantage of history. He’s wise to their tricks and weaknesses. He thinks to ground himself against Electro; he deduces he can hold his breath longer than Sandman; he sees more quickly through Mysterio’s tricks.

We see a new use for Spider-Man’s spider sense. A message he needs to read has been burnt and is about to dissolve. He can’t read it anymore, but his spider sense is able to detect what the message used to say. Neat.

Dialogue notes the castle was imported to this country brick by brick. There are a LOT of castles in America in these stories, more than I’ve ever seen. So I’m glad they’re explaining what this one is doing here at least.

The issue’s funniest scene involves Jonah talking to a spider. He thinks the spider might be able to get a message to Spider-Man. While it’s tempting to mock him, recall that talking to ants does work at getting a message to Ant-Man.

Aunt May retains her positive impression of the well-mannered Dr. Octopus, but is very disappointed to find her nephew using offensive slang: phrases like “shook-up” and “ever-loving greatest”.

Hopefully May has grown more accepting of Betty through this experience and will stop trying to set Peter up with another girl.

Time to talk about the major flaw of the comic. Dr. Octopus has carefully chosen a venue for each villain, one that complements their strengths, and written it on a card. The cards also have numbers on them. They draw the cards at random to determine the order.

See the issue? The locations are deliberate, but the numbers are random. There would need to be two different cards, location cards handed out, and number cards drawn at random. But that’s not what we see. Explain that!

I think that’s enough for this post. This issue has plenty of backup features. But we’ll look to those next time.

Rating: ★★★★½, 89/100
Significance: ★★★★★

I read this story in Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection vol. 1: Great Power. Scans are taken from a reprint in Amazing Spider-Man King-Size Special 6 (1969).

You can also find the story in Marvel Masterworks: Amazing Spider-Man vol. 2. Or on Kindle.

Characters:

• Betty Brant
• Aunt May
• Sandman
• Kraven the Hunter
• Mysterio
• Dr. Octopus/Dr. Otto Octavious
• Electro
• Vulture
• Peter Parker/Spider-Man
• J. Jonah Jameson
• Thor
• Flash Thompson
• Dr. Strange
• Uncle Ben
• Burglar
• Mr. Fantastic
• Invisiblge Girl
• Human Torch
• Thing
• Liz Allan
• Giant-Man
• Wasp
• Captain America
• Professor X
• Marvel Girl
• Angel
• Iceman
• Beast
• Cyclops
• Iron Man

Story notes:

• Dr. Octopus in State prison, Prisoner #4756689.
• Team of specialists had Dr. Octopus’ arms removed; Dr. Octopus can still mentally control arms, even when separated, as long as they are within a certain range.
• Thor is described as appearing in his own magazine and Avengers; Dr. Strange as appearing in Strange Tales; Fantastic Four in their own feature-length magazine; Giant-Man and Wasp appear monthly in Tales to Astonish; Captain America in Avengers; Iron Man appears in Iron Man; Human Torch in Strange Tales. This came out just before Captain America got his own series. It’s strange that they call Iron Man’s comic Iron Man, instead of Tales of Suspense. Causes me confusion.
• Spider sense can detect an aura of villainy around a suspicious guy.
• Dr. Octopus calls meeting of Spider-Man foes.
• Editor refers to Marvel Annual 1 to read the origin of Spider-Man.
• Spider-Man suddenly loses spider powers in moment of self-doubt, and gets trapped on flag-pole on Madison Avenue.
• Vulture is the first to mention the team’s name: Sinister Six.
• First venue is Stark Electric Plant, Building #4.
• Electro claims he selected a perfect battle site; Doc Ock selected it.
• Spider-Man’s powers return just as he needs them; power loss psychosomatic, driven by guilt.
• Spider-Man fights Kraven across the Bay from the World’s Fair. Kraven attacks with two leopards.
• Spider sense can detect remnants of burned message.
• Vulture insists Spider-Man fight him without web.
• Jameson too busy trying to find Spider-Man to get story that Spider-Man is already fighting the Sinister Six.

#234 story in reading order
Next: Amazing Spider-Man Annual 1, Story B
Previous: Fantastic Four #30