tests serum on self – Coke & Comics

Amazing Spider-Man #6

Face-to-face with the Lizard!

Featuring: Spider-man
Release: August 8, 1963
Cover: November 1963
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee
Drawn by: Steve Ditko
21 pages

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Fantastic Four #20	Reading order	Tales of Suspense #47
Amazing Spider-Man #5	Amazing Spider-Man	Amazing Spider-Man #7

I’ll get that masked menace if it’s the last thing I do!

Six issues in, and we meet Spidey’s fifth iconic villain. We’re only short one because he fought Dr. Doom last issue.

We learn newspapers around the nation are printing stories about the Lizard menacing the Flordia Everglades. I imagine the headlines read something like: “Florida Man sees human lizard in swamp.” Of course, not the Daily Bugle headline. That focuses on Spider-Man.

Notice that Spider-Man is also lowering the payment with his web.

The Lizard is a great villain. His character has a lot in common with the Hulk, except it’s much better. They both draw from the Jekyll/Hyde trope. Unlike the Hulk, which never settled on anything in the comic, the Lizard as a character is very clear. Dr. Connors is a good guy. When he first transforms into the Lizard, he has his own mind, but feels it slipping fast. Soon, the Lizard personality is entirely in control. The Lizard has plans to lead an army of reptiles to conquer the earth and destroy all humans. Once cured, he is back to being a decent man.

Tales to Astonish #28

I am the Gorilla-Man

Featuring: Gorilla-Man
Release: November 9, 1961
Cover: February, 1961
12 cents
Credits: Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers
7 pages

This is a tangential story, but it seemed worth including. Unlike Henry Pym last issue, Herr Radzik is a mad scientist bent on evil. He’ll also become less prominent of a character.

He is an evil scientist who invents a ray to switch bodies. He first changes places with a cat (I perhaps would have stayed there) and then decides a gorilla will be the ultimate form. His ambitions involve stealing money as a gorilla, and such. But, once he puts the gorilla into his body, the gorilla is able to use its new human brain to outsmart him and lock him in a zoo.

Tales to Astonish #27, Story A

The Man in the Ant Hill
Release: September 28, 1961
Cover: January, 1962
10 cents
Story: Stan Lee and Larry Lieber
Pencils: Jack Kirby
Inks: Dick Ayers
7 pages

I read this in Marvel Masterworks: Ant-Man/Giant-Man vol. 1. The story gives no credits, but the collection does. Some online sources break that down as crediting Stan with the plot and Larry with the scripting.

The opening splash pages serves as a title page and cover for the story.

Marvel stands on the precipice between its era of short sci/fi tales and its era of superheroes. This comic comes out the same day as Fantastic Four #2 and fits squarely in the former category, a short cautionary sci/fi tale about a mad scientist. Not clear what the theme is. Be careful of inventing stuff, I guess.