Tag: ed sullivan

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

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.