The first time I would have come across the story from ASM3 would have been in reprint form in Marvel Collectors' Item Classics 1 in late 1965, or possibly early 1966. "The Strangest Foe of All Time - Doctor Octopus" was a genuine milestone for the character, as the increased page count opened up story opportunities that hadn't been possible in the earlier 14- and ten-page episodes.
The first page of the story (this is the reprint from Marvel Collectors' Item Classics 1), acts as a second cover, letting the reader know that Human Torch is also inside. |
But once we're past that, the story kicks off at breakneck pace. Spidey foils some run-of-the-mill burglars heisting safe, and ponders that it was too easy. If only he had a foe that really tested his mettle. In the next two pages we're introduced to brilliant nuclear scientist Dr Otto Octavius (called Doctor Octopus behind his back by co-workers), see him injured in a laboratory explosion and diagnosed in hospital as having brain damage and his uncanny mechanical arms fused to his body. And we're only on page 4.
It takes just one page for Dr Otto Octavius to go from hapless victim to scowling supervillain. Lee and Ditko sure knew how to move a story along. |
Overconfident, Spidey wades in, thinking to teach the crazy guy a lesson, but doesn't reckon with the super-strong mechanical arms of Doctor Octopus. In a one-sided battle, Doc Ock snaps Spidey's webbing, slaps him around and flings him out a window. And to add insult to injury, he calls him "Super-Man" during the fight.
This is the first time that Spider-Man has been roundly and comprehensively beaten. Sure, the Vulture dropped him in a water tower in ASM2, but that was hardly a death trap and Spidey escaped that with ease. But with the longer page count, Stan and Steve have the space to add a little more depth to the story and allow Spidey to lose the first battle to build the dramatic tension.
No one does misery like Steve Ditko, right? Given his immature years and the fact Peter's never been beaten as Spider-Man before, we can understand how he feels. And Ditko puts it across beautifully. |
But even as a kid reading this, I knew that it wasn't really the end of Spider-Man. And help comes in the unlikely guise of The Human Torch. Visiting Peter's high school, Johnny Storm gives the students a lecture on how they must stick to their goals no matter what obstacles life puts in front of them. "Ability alone isn't enough," he says. "Even the Fantastic Four have had defeats -- but we always come back."
Newly energised, Peter realises what he has to do. Using Peter's scientific know-how, he first builds a simple weapon he can use against Doc Ock. Then with his Spider abilities, he easily gains access to the nuclear facility and, even though the super-villain knows Spidey's there, Peter's powers allow him to easily evade Doc Ock's attack and fuse two of Octopus' arms together with his crude acid bolo.
From there, it's not so difficult to squirt web over Doctor Octopus' specs then biff him into unconsciousness with a good old-fashioned right-cross. Then, with Octopus safely trussed up and delivered into the arms of the waiting military, it only remains for Spider-Man to look up The Human Torch and thank him for all his help.
When I break it down like this, the story might sound formulaic and a little trite, but it's important to stress that this sort of thing just didn't happen over at DC Comics. The Flash never had a crisis of confidence after such a minor defeat. And Green Lantern never heard a pep talk in his civilian identity that made him realise what a twonk he was being. Only Stan had the savvy to realise that giving his heroes such human traits wouldn't make his readers look down on them. Quite the opposite. We could all identify what it felt like to fail. Twelve years olds face failure on a regular basis. It's all part of growing up.
The original Marvel trademark corner boxes were designed by Steve Ditko. So it kind of makes sense that a giant version would be included on the Amazing Spider-Man letters page as an advertisement. |
As with Amazing Spider-Man 3, I would have first seen ASM4 (Aug 1963) as a reprint in Marvel Collector's Item Classic 2 (Apr 1966), which would have reached the UK in the late summer of that same year. The story introduced one of Marvel's most enduring super-villains, The Sandman, a career criminal who is (you guessed it) exposed to radiation while escaping from prison over a beach. The radiation fused the sand molecules to his body and suddenly Flint Marko is able to transform his body into sand at will.
Right after Ditko's trademark "second cover" splash page, Spider-Man tries to foil a robbery, only to have the criminals accuse him of assault and call for a cop. |
In their first encounter, The Sandman manages to defeat Spider-Man by accidentally tearing his mask, so Spidey has to retreat lest his identity become known. |
I really liked the way Stan and Steve portrayed the principal as a heroic figure, standing up to the scary Sandman and trying to delay the villain so his students can escape. |
Not one of my favourite Spider-Man issues, ASM5's cover was a little weak. And I was never much taken with Ditko's version of either the Fantastic Four nor their premier foe Doctor Doom. |
Flash Thompson's practical joke backfires on him when Doctor Doom takes him for the real Spider-Man. Lucky for Flash that Spidey saves the day long before the FF turn up. |
I already covered ASM6 in a previous blog so I won't repeat myself here.
Amazing Spider-Man 7 (Jan 1964) featured the return of The Vulture. Now I always thought that The Vulture was a bit of a creepy villain. The character, Adrian Toomes, was clearly a much older man and shouldn't have been able, by any account, to offer any kind of threat to the super-powerful Spider-Man. There have been attempts by other writers to retrofix this and offer "plausible" explanations of why this should be so (his flying harness gives him super-strength and increased lifespan ... Huh?), but I prefer it was never explained and we just accept that this weird-looking old guy is somehow strong enough and wily enough to give Spider-Man pause for thought.
I wouldn't have seen Amazing Spider-Man 7 as it came out before I knew about Marvel Comics, but I would have certainly read the story when it was reprinted in Marvel Tales 4 (Sep 1966). |
Over-confident and inexperienced, Spider-Man believes he's going to beat The Vulture the same way a second time. The mistake costs Spider-Man another defeat and an injured arm into the bargain. |
The Issue closes with JJJ holding Spider-Man responsible for the damage to him premises and Spider-Man silencing JJJ in his own inimitable way, then Peter and Betty share a quiet romantic moment amid the wreckage left in the wake of the battle. All in all a satisfying conclusion to a good battle issue.
I'm not really sure what Stan Lee was trying to do with issue 8 of Amazing Spider-Man. It was a return to the two story format, but not in the same way that ASM1 and ASM2 were two story. ASM8 has one 17-page story and a short six-page backup - drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Ditko - featuring the Human Torch.
I wouldn't have see the second story till later, as it wasn't reprinted in Marvel Tales in 1966. The main draw for me in that first story - and for Stan who cover-featured it - was the boxing match (the result of an incident where Flash breaks Peter's glasses) in which Peter batters Flash senseless. I'm sure just about every kid reading that wanted to do that to the school bully. I know I did. And I'm betting Steve Ditko did, too. The main plot, featuring Spider-Man's battle with a giant computer on wheels was pretty unmemorable, and very much had the feeling of a filler.
Stan never gave a reason, at the time, for having a second (Kirby-drawn) Spider-Man tale in the issue, aside from mentioning at the end of the letters column that it was intended as a "change of pace". The only reason I can think of is that it may have originally been drawn as a filler story for Fantastic Four Annual 1, but then replaced with the six-page "FF meet Spidey" story that actually saw print there. Then Stan would have had to write a shorter Spidey tale for ASM8 to accommodate the inventory strip, which meant that because of the space constraints, "The Terrible Threat of the Living Brain" was a bit *meh*.
"Spider-Man Tackles the Human Torch" was the third time the pair had met (they'd encountered each other before in ASM1 and Strange Tales Annual 2 - Spidey's appearance in FF Annual 1, which came out a month after the Strange Tales Annual appearance, is just a re-telling of the incident from ASM1), and up till this point, their relationship had always been friendly. Admittedly, it's more interesting dramatically to have Spider-Man and Torch feuding, but it's not clear why (if I'm right) Stan decided to delay the onset of the feud until ASM8. The next time the pair would meet would be in ASM17, where their feud continued.
Amazing Spider-Man 9 was, for me, a bit of a return to form, with the introduction of a cracking - indeed, crackling - super-villain in the shape of Electro and the first of Aunt May's major health scares, when she's hospitalised for an operation.
Aunt May's illness is what motivates Peter to try to raise the $1000 he needed for her medical bills. First he tries to borrow the money from Jameson, but Peter knows, as we do, that that will never work. So he resolves to capture Electro for the reward money. When that doesn't work out so well, he sells Jameson photographic "proof" that Electro and Spider-Man are the same person. It's not Peter Parker's finest moment, and though he might tell himself he's saving his aunt's life, it's just another example of how Stan was pursuing greater realism by making his heroes morally ambiguous.
But when Electro frees all the prisoners in a local penitentiary, Spider-Man has to leave the now-recovering Aunt May and go battle the electrical menace. It also provides Peter with the opportunity to do the right thing and make it up to Jameson for the dodgy pictures he sold him with a fresh (and genuine) batch showing the defeat of Electro.
All that remains if for Peter to have a poignant scene with Betty to close out this extra-length 22-page story, certainly one of the better issues of the early Amazing Spider-Mans.
Even better, in my opinion, was Amazing Spider-Man 10 ... this issue introduced a sinister new villain, The Big Man. While he didn't have super-powers himself, his three henchmen, The Enforcers, did have skills. Fancy Dan was a master martial artist, Montana had traditional cowboy abilities and used a lasso as his weapon of choice, the The Ox was just big and very strong. With his keen intellect and his Enforcers as muscle, The Big Man sets out to take control of all organised crime in New York.
Meanwhile Aunt May is still recovering from the operation she underwent in ASM9, and now requires a blood transfusion to help her recover her strength. When the doctor asks Peter about his blood type, Peter is fearful is radioactive blood might harm his aunt. But of course he can't admit to that and reluctantly allows the medical staff to use his blood.
After that, Peter needs to rest as it's likely his powers have been weakened by the transfusion. However, when The Enforcers threaten Betty Brant, Peter decides that Spider-Man needs to get involved. Spider-Man scares a small-time hoodlum into revealing where he can find The Enforcers, then sets out after them. But they find him first and a skirmish ensues. Weakened from the earlier blood transfusion, Spidey realises he's not strong enough yet to take them all on, so he douses the lights and makes his escape. Outside he sees J. Jonah Jameson passing and develops a suspicion that JJJ's the Big Man, thinking that might explain why Jonah's accusing Spider-Man of being the Big Man.
So to get to the bottom of things, Peter resolves to boast that he's figured out the Big Man's true identity, hoping the underworld hears about it and brings him before the Big Man. Interestingly, Flash pulls Peter aside and warns him that, if he continues, the The Enforcers will be coming for him, not realising that's exactly what Peter wants. Even this early on, it seems like Stan and Steve were intent on softening Flash's character. Predictably, The Enforcers show up, grab Peter and lock him in a storeroom. Though Spidey quickly escapes, he's spotted by the mobsters and an epic battle kicks off. The fight choreography is some of Ditko's most imaginative to date, full of clever touches. Responding to the Spider signal, the police show up to round up the gangsters, while the Big Man makes his escape.
But Spider-Man, thinks he knows where the Big Man is going and heads for the office of the Daily Bugle. Watching from outside he sees the police show up and arrest ... Frederick Foswell, a timid columnist on Jameson's staff.
The final scene where J. Jonah Jameson explains to an empty room just why it is that he hates Spider-Man so much never rang true with me as a kid, and even less so now. Even this early in the series, Jameson has never at any point demonstrated even the slightest level of self-awareness, so for him to arrive at this epiphany of self-realisation shrieks of "author's message". Now it may be that Stan was getting loads of letters from readers asking just why it is that Jonah has this unreasoning hatred for Spider-Man, and in all fairness, perhaps Stan thought it would be a good idea to try to offer up some motivation. I just think he offered up the wrong motivation.
I was discussing this very point recently with a work colleague, Philip de Sausmarez, and he came up with a much more insightful explanation. J. Jonah Jameson, he reasons, is typical of the Great American Dream ... a man who, through his own ability and tireless hard work, has dragged himself up to the very top of his chosen profession. He's the owner and editor-in-chief of a big metropolitan newspaper, and he has little time for people he considers shirkers or those he thinks want something for free. He's worked hard for everything he's got and, by golly, so should everyone else.
Then along comes Spider-Man - a much younger man - who appears to have had everything handed to him on a plate. He has super-powers, gained by some happy accident, and is admired by many. And that's something JJJ just can't stomach.
Time and again, in these early issues of Amazing Spider-Man, you'll see Jameson railing against the younger generation and how they all want something for nothing, and how nobody but he knows the value of hard work. So Philip's take on this is, for me, so much more plausible than that awkward monologue Stan and Steve put in the mouth of J. Jonah Jameson on the final page of Amazing Spider-Man 10.
By now, anyone reading this blog has probably heard enough about Spider-Man for a while, so I want to take a look at the Marvel anthology titles of the mix-Sixties, with a special focus on my all-time favourite superhero, Captain America.
Next: America, America!
Unlike you, Al, I love the cover to ASM #5 and The Living Brain tale in #8, but that may be because I first read them in Pow! when I was a kid and, consequently, they remind me of my childhood. Take a look at the last panel on page 7 of the Spidey versus Doom story - there's a 'sign' with no words which doesn't look like a street sign. I've always thought this was intended to be a caption (Steve's idea) drawing attention to Doom's helicopter, but either Stan ignored it or Sam Rosen forgot to letter it. What's your view?
ReplyDeleteGiven Ditko's adherence to Ayn Rand's philosophy, it's unlikely that he would've been the one who came up with the idea of Peter faking the Sandman pics, or the ones showing that Spidey is Electro, so this seems to indicate that Stan was more involved with the plotting than he's nowadays given credit for.
Hey, weren't those Marvel Collectors' Item Classics and Marvel Tales comics great?
I'll have to dig out ASM5 and take another look, but I didn't notice the blank street sign last time I looked. And I think you're right about Peter's fake pix - not something that the upright Steve Ditko would approve of, I think, so that does indicate that these early issues were mostly Stan ...
DeleteI would like to own all those MCCs and Marvel Tales again, but my priority to make sure I have all the original comics first. I just pick them up when I see them cheap on eBay ...
I wrote a lengthy comment the other day but it apparently vanished into internet limbo. My main thought centered on Jameson's speech, which I suspect was partly based on Ditko's concept of heroism and how a flawed character might rationalize his feelings, based largely on his self-published stories. Stan Lee may have come up with the basic idea of "explaining" JJ, and possibly altered/revised/softened Ditko's notes, but my guess is the general concept of Spider-Man being a heroic ideal and JJ unable to rise to his level came from Ditko, while Lee added the parts about making money and envying Spidey. Most of Ditko's Spidey tales played Jameson as a comic foil though. which he explained in an essay some years ago. JJ was the character the reader's would love to hate, comparing him to "The Great Gildersleeve", a character played by Hal Peery on the radio in the 1940s (Fibber McGee and Molly and later his own radio program) and later in movies and on TV. The actor even looked a bit like Jameson.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the fascinating additional info, Nick. It's easy to forget - fifty years on - just how much contemporary popular culture influenced what Stan was doing in the early Marvel Comics. In the UK we wouldn't have been aware of US radio shows, so that was all new to me ...
DeleteHere is a photo of Peery as Gildersleeve: http://www.ethomsen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/great-gildersleeve.jpg
ReplyDeleteStories that started straightaway on page one were the exception, not the rule, in the early sixties. Check out contemporary issues of Hawkman, The Fly or Unknown Worlds. The splash page, or panel was usually a teaser, but sometimes symbolic as well. Even Kirby used them on Marvel's monster comics, sometimes repeating the cover scene. I'm just guessing, but I think the first time I saw the story actually start on Kirby's page one was in those early Rawhide Kid stories (His first actual series with Stan) maybe because they were so short and had to get moving quickly.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate symbolic splash pages when they're done by an artist as skilled as Ditko (or Steranko or Kirby). Ditko was an admirer of Will Eisner's Spirit, and those splashes actually WERE covers.
And for a Ditko-written variation on the scene where an antagonist has a reflective moment on why he feels threatened by the thought of heroes better than him, check out the Randian Question story in the back of Blue Beetle 5, page 2. It's right out of the Fountainhead (Boris Ebar is a variation on Ellsworth Toohey) and not that far removed from the Jameson soliloquy in #10.
Thanks for the extra info, Russ ... I have that issue of Blue Beetle so I'll look it out tonight and compare the dialogue ...
DeleteAnd a better comparison would be on page 5. panel 4 of that same story. Sorry I didn't mention it earlier.
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