Amazing Fantasy #15

Spider-Man!

Featuring: Spider-Man
Release: June 5, 1962
Cover: August 1962
12 cents
Credits: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
11 pages

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In this world, with great power there must also come– great responsibility!

I’ll just go ahead and let you know up front that I think this is the single best story in the history of comics.

It suffers only from being too often imitated. It has been retold so many times over the years in comic books and other media that many feel they know the story too well before ever picking up this comic. It can lose something in the repetition. But imagine coming to this story fresh, having never heard of Spider-Man, having never heard the phrase, “With great power there must also come– great responsibility!”

The story is this. Peter Parker is a nerd, loved by Aunt and Uncle, but ostracized by his high school classmates. When a bite from a radioactive spider gives him super powers, he tests them by entering a wrestling contest. An agent spots him and helps make him a celebrity. Caught up in his interest in fame and money, the self-absorbed Spider-Man doesn’t try to help a police officer chasing a burglar. In a twist of fate, the burglar he allowed to escape kills his Uncle Ben. He learns a valuable lesson about responsibility.

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Amazing Adult Fantasy #14, Story B

The Man in the Sky!
Release: April 3, 1962
Cover: July 1962
12 cents
Credits: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
5 pages

I read this story in Amazing Fantasy Omnibus vol. 1.

This is one of my all-time favorite story tropes; has been ever since I read my first X-Men comic 28 years ago. Though my first encounter with it would probably be the film Escape to Witch Mountain I saw as a young child.

The basic idea is that there is a child or children with special abilities, and there is a place where they gather together in secret. Perhaps they have a teacher. Perhaps there are competing teachers, each trying to recruit them. Perhaps they encounter prejudice from people who fear them.

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