... Catches thieves just like flies

AS I NOTED in last month's blog entry, at the age of 12 I hadn't been much enamoured of John Romita's version of Spider-Man. I had been a die-hard Steve Ditko fan and, when he unceremoniously ditched the creation that had made him famous, in 1966, I struggled to warm to the new, sleek, decidedly un-nerdy version of Peter Parker.

The whys and wherefores have been adequately covered in other blogs - mine and other people's. My reaction to this changing of the guard was to turn my attention firmly backwards and seek out the invaluable Marvel Tales reprints of the earlier Spider-Man stories.

At first, you could have been forgiven for thinking that Stan Lee had just aped the classic DC Comics reprints of earlier stories. The cover formats of the DC 80-pagers and the early Marvel Tales were visually quite similar. Both took either panels from the stories they were reprinting or generic images of the characters and put them together in a kind of patchwork quilt of a cover - no focal point, no single striking image. Just an attempt to show customers just how much they would get for their 25c (in the UK, 1/6).

The Secret Origins Giant was a bit of a holy grail in the early 1960s. I only ever saw the ads in other DCs but never saw the real thing. The first Marvel Tales I wouldn't own until much later, but it was another must-have item in my social circle in 1964. I did however have a copy of Marvel Tales 2 in 1965.

And for most kids, this quantity over quality approach would have worked just fine. But once Marvel's two reprint titles became regular bi-monthly publications, Stan thought it through and hit on a much better idea. He reproduced the original covers of the issues he was reprinting on the front covers of Marvel Tales and the new Marvel Collectors' Item Classics.

Above left: A typical Marvel house ad from 1965 - I loved these as a kid and there was a real sense of "treasure hunt" around trying to find all the issues in the newsagents. Stan tapped into the same feeling when he revised the layout of the Marvel reprint titles.

Of course he'd been doing this for a while with the Marvel House ads, which I've covered in an earlier blog. Those ads made me want to find all the Marvels they depicted. And it was the same with all the other kids I knew who followed comics. There was something quite compelling about those wallet-sized cover repros ... so when Stan used the same idea on the covers of Marvel Tales and Marvel Collectors' Item Classics well, it was like an ad for all those old issues we'd missed - with the issues actually inside.

And, as usual, Stan knew what he was doing. The way Marvel's sales had grown dramatically between 1961, when the first issue of the Fantastic Four came out, and 1966 demonstrated that there were many current readers of Marvel Comics who had missed out on the early issues. And Stan was also referencing those earlier issues in almost every story he was writing

So because Stan was a really generous guy (and because he'd also spotted a sales opportunity) he provided us with a jumping on point. Or rather, two ...

MARVEL TALES

During 1965 and 1966, as I was buying more and more Marvel comics and leaving DC behind, I quickly found that the two Marvel reprint books were a great source of stories I'd missed. As I've noted in another post, one of the first Marvel Tales I came across was issue 3, which featured a reprint of ASM6 from November 1963. But now, fifty years on, it's impossible to remember which order I found these reprints in. So I'll cover them in the order of publication of the originals.

The first appearance of The Amazing Spider-Man. The 11-page story was later reprinted in full in the first Marvel Tales Annual in October 1964. I never did see a copy of Marvel Tales 1 until much later.

Amazing Fantasy 15 was always a tough comic to find. First time I ever came across it was when I was on holiday with my family in France. It was our first foreign holiday and we were in a campsite just outside Antibes. There was an older kid a few tents away from us who had brought a stack of comics with him and in that pile he had an Amazing Fantasy 15. This would have been August 1964. I tried everything I could think of to get that comic from that kid. Any comic from my stack, any three comics, money ... I tried everything short of conking him on the head and running away. But there was no deal to be made. It was a compelling cover and it was the first indication I had that the adventures of the Wall-Crawler didn't begin with Amazing Spider-Man 1. He did, however, let me read the comic, so I was able to find out how Peter Parker had come to be Spider-Man. And quite a dark tale it was too.

Even in the first formative story, where it would have been Stan Lee driving the concept and plotting rather than Ditko, this was a pretty unusual comic scenario. From the very first page, Peter Parker is marked out by his peers as a complete loser. Despite a loving home life, with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May, Peter is rejected and ridiculed mercilessly by his schoolmates. And there can't be a comic nerd anywhere who doesn't know what that feels like.

Right from the very first page of the Spider-Man saga, Stan Lee establishes exactly who the character is. This kind of information would probably occupy 20 pages in a modern comic.

But then Parker's life takes a different turn ... in the kind of weird lab accident that Stan loved so much, Peter is bitten by a radioactive spider, which somehow transfers the arachnid genetic characteristics to Peter's blood and he begins to show signs of spider-like abilities. And at first, this appears to be a good thing.

Suddenly, through no hard work or natural talent, Peter becomes the celebrity known as Spider-Man and is all over the media - giving demonstrations of his abilities on television and appearing on chat shows, foreshadowing current media phenomena like America's Got Talent by many decades.

Although Peter never asked for his spider abilities, his first thought is how he can use them to make money and make his own life better. He's a selfish teenager who really needs a serious life-lesson ...

And that's when it all goes horribly wrong. The sudden fame, contrasted with how Peter Parker has been forced to put up with his classmates' relentless bullying, made the teen selfish and stupid, and in a moment of callousness, he allows a criminal to escape the pursuing police, little realising that this same criminal would go on to murder his kindly Uncle Ben.

... And when the life lesson comes, Peter learns one of the great truths of life ... good luck comes with a price and usually, it's way more than you planned on paying.

It's the sort of twist-in-the-tail that Stan Lee had been employing in the mystery tales he'd been running in the preceding 14 issues of Amazing Adventures/Adult Fantasy. But this was the first time it had been applied to a super-hero story. And for a ten-year old reading this, Peter Parker's realisation of how badly he'd messed up - blaming himself for the death of his Uncle and feeling guilt for the devastation he'd brought to the life of his aunt May - is tangible. And it is this simple blueprint that would drive every Spider-Man story of any quality ever after.

Accounts of what happened next vary. Stan Lee has said in autobiography Excelsior that he threw Spider-Man into Amazing Fantasy 15 because Marty Goodman had decreed that it would be the last issue of that magazine, and Stan figured he had nothing to lose. But the evidence tends to indicate otherwise.

Though I have no way of knowing, my opinion is that Stan didn't just put the Spider-Man story in the last issue of Amazing Fantasy. I think he planned to have Spider-Man as an ongoing feature in the title, in the same way that Thor was featured in Journey into Mystery 83, which debuted the same month. The editorial message in Amazing Fantasy 15, unsigned but almost certainly written by Stan, clearly states, "As you can see, we are introducing one of the most unusual new fantasy characters of all time - The SPIDERMAN, who will appear every month in AMAZING. Perhaps, if your letters request it, we will make his stories even longer, or have TWO Spiderman stories per issue."

That's pretty clear cut. "Spiderman" was to be regular feature. So when Marty cancelled Amazing Fantasy out from under Stan, there's a very strong chance he had a couple more Spider-Man stories in the inventory. And we know what Marty thought of inventory.

Journey into Mystery 83, featuring the debut of Thor came out the same day (5th June) as Amazing Fantasy 15, and Strange Tales 101, with the first solo Human Torch Story, was just two months later. Both comics contained three stories - 13 pages plus two five pagers. This fitted the standard Marvel format of 23 story pages per issue.

That first Spider-Man story ran 11 pages. The rest of Amazing Fantasy 15 was filled out with two five-pagers and a three-pager, a total of 24 pages of comic strip. Yet, the first Thor story in Journey into Mystery was 13 pages, and the first solo Human Torch story which appeared in Strange Tales 101 the following month was also 13 pages. So Stan's preferred pagination for Amazing would likely have been two-five pagers and a 13-page Spider-Man story, the same format as Journey into Mystery 83 and Strange Tales 101.

As it turned out, the first two issues of Amazing Spider-Man had two stories - each having one at 14 pages and one at ten. So it's my theory that the two 14-pagers were destined for the never-published 16th and 17th issues of Amazing Fantasy.

After Marty cancelled the title, Stan was left with two 14-pagers on his inventory. So when Goodman relented and gave Spider-Man's own title the green light, there was no way Stan could fit two 14-page stories in Amazing Spider-Man 1. He'd need to to put one in each of the first two ASM issues and commission a pair of ten-page fillers for the remaining story pages. If I'm right, then the untitled first story in ASM1, telling how Spidey saves astronaut John Jameson from certain death in a faulty space capsule would have been intended for Amazing Fantasy 16 ... and the first story in ASM2, "Duel to the Death with the Vulture" would have been meant for Amazing Fantasy 17.

These two tales introduce many of the elements that the Spider-Man strip would be built on: J. Jonah Jameson, the Daily Bugle and his unreasonable hatred of Spider-Man; Aunt May's belief that "Spider-Man is a horrible menace, just like that nice Mr Jameson says"; Jameson's Now Magazine; Peter Parker's selling pictures to Jameson; Spider-Man's spider sense power; and Peter Parker's science know-how used to defeat Spider-Man's enemy.

When you read the two ten-page stories, it seems even more likely that they are the filler tales. The ten-pager from ASM1, "Spider-Man vs The Chameleon", is definitely a weaker story, with a pretty trite plot device (the villain impersonates the hero) and a guest appearance from The Fantastic Four shoe-horned in ... just the kind of gimmick you'd want for a first issue. The ten-pager from ASM2 is also quite weak recycling, as it does, the old invading-aliens-from-space plot that Stan had used so many times before in titles like Strange Tales and Tales to Astonish.

This is all just speculation on my part, but it seems to fit with the known facts.

One story each from Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2 was reprinted in the second Spider-Man Annual in 1965. I did manage to track down a copy of this at the time, though the remaining stories from ASM1 & 2 would elude for many years.

But none of this was on my radar back in 1965. I wouldn't catch up with a couple of these stories until they were reprinted in the mid-1960s in Amazing Spider-Man King Size Annual 2 - the 14-page lead story from ASM1 and the ten-page "The Uncanny Threat of the Terrible Tinkerer" from ASM2. The other two stories I wouldn't read until very much later.

To my mind, the Amazing Spider-Man comic didn't really get going until issue 3, when Stan and Steve were able to start doing book-length stories. But I'll cover that in the next entry in this Marvel in the Silver Age saga.

Next: Look out, here comes the Spider-Man

... Spins a web, any size

TO SAY I WAS DEVASTATED when Steve Ditko left Amazing Spider-Man (and Marvel) back in mid-1966 wouldn't be overstating it by very much. But then I had just turned twelve, and that sort of thing was a pretty big event in my life at that time. Other stuff, like schoolwork and washing the back of my neck, not so much.

I suppose the reason I engaged with the life of Peter Parker as depicted in Amazing Spider-Man comics was because there were more than a few similarities between us. I too was growing up in a single-"parent" household. I had family responsibilities in that I was expected to care for my younger brother and sister when my mum wasn't there. And though I can't say I was an unpopular kid at school, there was still a contingent of my classmates who were giving me a hard time because I was quite bookish and didn't play football at breaktime.

When Steve Ditko left the strip he'd helped create, his departure was so sudden that he didn't even draw a cover for his final issue, leaving the Marvel Bullpen to have to pull together the above cover by cobbling together bits and pieces of interior art.

Those aspects of Peter Parker's life were very much at the forefront of Steve Ditko's vision for how the Spider-Man saga should play out. But as time wore on during 1965 and 1966, it seemed that Ditko wasn't happy with the changes Stan Lee was making to his magnum opus.

Now, I'm one of the people who thinks Stan did a beyond-terrific job with his scripting of Marvel's comics. Though I agree that Kirby's and Ditko's plots were ground-breaking and superb, it was the scripting skills of Lee that pulled it all together into a coherent package, gave the entire Marvel line its own unique voice and was largely responsible for rocketing Marvel to the top of the sales charts during the last half of the 1960s.

Though there are those who would disagree with this, you only have to look at the work Kirby and Ditko did on their own to see that neither had much appreciation, or even understanding, of characterisation. And if they didn't understand that, then they could only ever see Stan's contributions as interference.

When both Kirby and Ditko struck out on their own, their projects didn't have the commercial success of Stan Lee's Marvel Comics. The "why" is complicated and is something that I'll look at in a later blog entry.

But none of that mattered to my 12 year old self. All I was concerned about was no more Ditko art on Spider-Man.

In retrospect, Stan Lee must have known that many of his readers would feel that way. So he took a big gamble. Rather than letting the new guy - John Romita, fresh off doing a very creditable job on Daredevil, including two stories that co-starred Spider-Man - ease himself into the job slowly, with a couple of safe, warm-up issues, Lee decided to sweep away the last remains of the Ditko plotlines and tackle the dangling Green Goblin thread head-on.

Except, far from being a new guy, John Romita had been a stalwart of the Atlas line of comics. From 1951 till the Great Atlas Implosion of 1957, Romita had been one of Stan Lee's most reliable artists. He'd spearheaded the Atlas hero revival on 1954 by pencilling Captain America ("Commie Smasher") and had drawn Western Kid for the entire 16 issue run, as well as contributing dozens of crime, war and mystery stories throughout the 1950s.

The earliest Atlas comic I could find with Romita art was Spy Cases 5 (June 1951), though he did only a five-page interior story. However, the cover art on Captain America 77 (Jul 1954) is Romita's, likewise the cover art on Western Kid 1 (Dec 1954).

But when Marty Goodman made that fateful decision about winding up his own distribution company, and the Atlas line went from 53 titles to 16 practically overnight, most of Stan's artists found themselves unemployed ... including John Romita. In an interview with Roy Thomas' Alter Ego magazine, Romita explained how he'd been furious when Stan had let him go in 1957. "I had done two or three days' work, ruling up the pages, lettering the balloons, and blocking in the figures on a story - and here comes a call from [Stan's] assistant ... and she says, 'John, I have to tell you that Stan says to stop work on the western book because we're going to cut down on a lot of titles.' I said to her, 'Well, I spent three days on it. I'd like to get $100 for the work, to tide me over.' She said, 'Okay, I'll mention it to Stan.' I never heard another word about the money, and I told [my wife] Virginia, 'If Stan Lee ever calls, tell him to go to hell.' And that was the last work I did for him until 1965." Luckily, Romita had been doing some uncredited work for DC's romance line, so when his Marvel work evaporated, he walked across the road and became a full-time romance artist for National Periodicals.

The earliest credit I could find for John Romita at DC was the cover of Secret Hearts 43 (Nov 57). Ironically, The romance comic was invented by Simon & Kirby, before Jack went on to help revolutionise the superhero comic at Marvel. By March 58 Romita was entrenched as one of DC primary romance pencillers. A few years later, Romita was mainly inking, here over Mike Sekowsky pencils for Girls' Romance 116 (Jun 66).

Then, after nine years hard graft, pencilling at DC, Romita was feeling burned out. Some days he'd get a script and sit staring at it, not knowing where to start. He'd been offered a 9-5 job at an ad agency, storyboarding commercials, paying 25% more than he could making by killing himself drawing comics. So he was seriously considering leaving the comic field altogether. But in the meantime, Marvel's fortunes had reversed and Stan was in the position of not having enough artists to feed the hungry Marvel machine. After all, Kirby and Ditko couldn't draw everything. Lee had hung on to Ayers and Heck during the lean years, and was in the process of wooing back George Tuska, Gene Colan and John Buscema, as well as trying to poach Gil Kane and Win Mortimer from DC.

He also called John Romita around 1963 or 1964, trying to get him to switch sides and come back to the new, re-envigorated Marvel Comics. "[Stan] would say, 'John, we're really starting to roll. It would be great if you could come back.' And I'd say, 'Stan, I'm making $45 a page. What are you paying?' He'd say, 'Twenty-five a page.' And I'd say, '"How can I take a $20 a page cut?' 'Well,' he says, 'maybe we can make it up to you.' I said, 'Stan, I can't give this up as long as I've got it, you know.' He called me three or four times, and I just kept telling him no. But I didn't tell him to go to hell, like I'd threatened."

Romita's first work for Stan was to ink the cover of Avengers 23 from Kirby pencils. But almost immediately, Romita was the new penciller on Daredevil. His first cover was a solo effort but was heavily "fixed up" by Vince Coletta. The next Daredevil cover was just inks over a very typical Jack Kirby design and pencils.

Finally, Romita was talked into coming back to Marvel. But after years of churning out pencilled pages for DC, Romita was determined to leave the pencilling to others and stick to inking. His first job was inking an Avengers cover over Kirby pencils. Then Stan threw him in at the deep end and put him on Daredevil from issue 12 to cover for departing Wally Wood. Romita, an experienced artist, floundered a little in coping with the Marvel way of doing things. Like many other professionals, he was unable to see what it was that set Marvel apart. After showing Stan the first two pages of his first Daredevil story, Stan wasn't satisfied. So he got Jack Kirby to do rough layouts for the rest of the issue for Romita to finish. "As soon as I saw Jack's breakdowns, I knew exactly what Stan meant by pacing. Jack laid out two issues. I still have the original art to those two stories."

Romita's solo pencilling in Daredevil 12 was still very much in the DC style. Everything at eye level and looking quite flat on the page. The later pages, laid-out by Kirby have a punchier feel to them.

Once Romita got the hang of the Marvel style, he was off and running. His story pacing and action sequences become more dynamic over the handful of Daredevil issues he did. So much so that with issue 16, Stan had Spider-Man co-star in the title just to see how Romita would handle the character. And he must have done a bang-up job in Stan's eyes because before he knew it, Romita was the new artist on Amazing Spider-Man. "When I did the Spider-Man/Daredevil stories, I really felt it was obvious that I couldn't do Spider-Man as well as I could do Daredevil. I was amazed when Stan gave me Spider-Man to do. I felt he was desperate. So I did the book to help him out, hoping all the while that it would be temporary."

John Romita was a seasoned pro with decades in the business when he took over Daredevil. Here, his Spider-Man is a curious combination of Ditko's version and what would later become the trademark Romita version of Peter Parker.

But in reality, Ditko was gone, and now it was just Stan Lee and John Romita in charge of guiding the company's second-highest selling title. And over the next couple of years they must have done something right, because within a few months, Amazing Spider-Man had overtaken Fantastic Four in sales and was Marvel's best-selling title and was closing the gap on DC's Superman and Batman comics.

Yet for all this, my 12 year-old-self was very much in a strop after the departure of Ditko. At the time, I recall I only read a couple of the John Romita issues before concentrating my attention of finding all the old Ditko comics I could find in second-hand shops and in swaps with friends.

SAME CHARACTER, DIFFERENT DIRECTION

With his new artist, Stan Lee was no longer walking on eggshells. From here on, this would be Stan's own version Spider-Man, still with troubles, but far less angst-ridden. And the first order of the day was to resolve a few dangling plot threads.

In earlier issues, Ditko had been quite careful to hide the true identity of the Goblin and also to introduce a couple of characters who could well have been the arch-villain. Opinion was divided between proven master of disguise Frederick Foswell, who'd had an earlier criminal career as The Big Man (ASM10), and the father of Peter Parker's college room-mate, who had been introduced as a member of Jonah Jameson's club in Amazing Spider-Man 37.

No longer reliant on the plotting of Steve Ditko, Stan Lee did a fine job of the storyline for Amazing Spider-Man 39, including two heart-stopping story twists.

Amazing Spider-Man 39 left us in no doubt as to the identity of the Green Goblin. Romita's pencil art, inked by "Mickey Demeo" (Mike Esposita who, with Ross Andru, was still one of the main artists over at DC) starts off a bit like a Ditko pastiche, then wobbles a bit before finding its feet around page 6.

But there was other stuff going on in the background. This was where Stan began to move Peter Parker away from being the perennial geek he'd been on Ditko's watch and to dial down the animosity shown towards Peter by his peers. On page 6 (see above), Peter shows some empathy towards Harry Osborn, who's been pretty unpleasant towards him so far in the series, and both Gwen Stacy and Flash Thompson see this and start to think Parker's must be much more of a mensch than they've been giving him credit for. As the series winds on over the next ten or twenty issues, Flash's ribbing becomes more good natured and he finally ends up one of Peter's friends.

But back to the plot ... The Gobin's henchmen stage a fake robbery to lure Spider-Man close enough so they can gas him with a chemical that neutralises his spider-sense. It's this that allows the Goblin to tail Spider-Man, then Peter Parker, undetected so he's able to learn who Spider-Man really is. From there on, Lee piles on shock after shock until there's a heart-stopping battle between the two right outside Aunt May's house, resulting in Peter/Spidey defeated, trussed up and unmasked (just like the spoiler on the cover). But the biggest shock comes on the final page of the story, where the Goblin is revealed to be ... oh, you guessed! (Again, see the picture above.) And of course, it's a two-parter, so we were all going to have to wait a month to find out how Spider-Man escapes from this trap, if indeed he ever does.

Inside another brilliantly designed cover by John Romita, Stan Lee's epic final battle between Spider-Man and his greatest foe, the Green Goblin unwinds with a couple of unlikely plot turns.

Well, he kind of doesn't. In ASM40, goaded by Peter, the Goblin's standard-issue super-villain ego gets up on its hind legs and decides that Peter should be untied so the Goblin can beat him decisively. It's kind of weak, to be honest. And when the Goblin is knocked into some electrical equipment, the shock causes Norman Osborn to lose his memory of ever being the Goblin. It only remains for Spidey to burn the Goblin costume and help his friend's father to safety before rushing home to Aunt May.

Now, I'm one of Stan's biggest boosters and even I find the plotting here a bit slipshop. I can only surmise that - as I speculated earlier - Lee just couldn't wait to clear the decks of all remnants of Ditko's Spider-plotting so he could crack on with his new vision for the series. And in doing so, made a couple of easy choices that got him where he wanted to be more quickly. Compare the contrived way in which Peter is freed of his bonds by the Goblin to the epic battle he waged to free himself of the machinery pinning him down in the Ditko-plotted ASM33. At the same time, to cut Stan some slack, it's only fair to point out that the departure of Ditko was abrupt - he didn't even bother turning in a cover for ASM38, after all - so Stan probably had to rush to pull the following issues together in record time.

Cover: Big, bold animal-style super-villain, check. Splash page: Acts as second cover, explains what changes are in store, check.  Interior pages: New artist has got the hang of drawing the hero? Not so much.

When we get on to issue 41 of Amazing Spider-Man, Stan is announcing that this is a new start point. First, he brings back the splash-page as second cover, something that Ditko was fond of but Stan wasn't. Here it's being used for a very specific purpose. It's letting readers know there's a new sheriff in town and it outlines the changes Stan's going to be making. Then there's the animal-based super-villain - goodness, how Stan loved that idea ... and Steve didn't. Finally, there's making Peter less of a nerd to allow the further softening of Flash, Harry and Gwen towards him. All clearly flagged up on the opening splash page.

The other thing that was apparent to me with this issue was the way Stan was perfectly capable of good plotting despite accusations from some quarters that he wasn't. This issue re-introduces Jameson's son John, US astronaut and all-round good-guy, who will be the super-villain in the very next issue.

The only slight niggle here is that as slick as Romita's art is, he didn't yet have a handle on Spider-Man. But that's no major criticism. After all, even the King himself, Jack Kirby, struggled to depict Spidey with any authenticity. The difference is that Romita would get better.

A detail from ASM 41 pg 16 ... Romita didn't quite have the hang of Spidey's mask yet. And in this poster by Kirby, you can see that Jack also wrestled with the same problem. (Though I've read somewhere recently that Bill Ward might have helped out with these Spidey issues)

As ASM41 unfolds, we can see there's a big improvement over ASM39-40. The pacing is polished, the Rhino's a pretty cool villain and there's the return of Betty Brant - not that I'd ever missed her - but Stan is drawing a line under that sub-plot as well. There's a nice little flashback to ASM1 to explain who John Jameson is, which can't be a coincidence. And it's kicking off what, for Amazing Spider-Man, is a rare three-part story-arc.

Issue 42 centred around one of Stan's favourite plot devices - Spidey must defeat a friend without harming them. But the most memorable scene in the story is the last one, so much so we don't even notice the trail for "Marvel Superheroes on TV" at the foot of the page.

The pace is kept up in Amazing Spider-Man 42, which brings a super-powerful John Jameson to the fore, forcing Spider-Man to battle one of his few supporters. The story is thematically similar to Spidey's battles with the Lizard - a friend is transformed temporarily into a villain and Spidey has to defeat them without harming the innocent human being behind the "baddie". But Stan carries it off well, never losing sight of the Rhino waiting on the sidelines for his comeback in ASM43. And rounds the issue with one of the most iconic scenes in Amazing Spider-Man ... the first appearance of Mary Jane Watson.

It was a plot device that had been around since Amazing Spider-Man 15 ... Aunt May and her friend Mrs Watson trying to fix Peter up with niece Mary Jane Watson, with Peter assuming she'd some kind of speccie geek, like him. It's doubtful that Steve Ditko could have carried off this moment quite as well as Romita did.

So impactful was this revelation on my twelve-year-old sensibilities that I missed entirely the panel at the bottom of the page that told us that Marvel Superheroes were going to be on television. Not in the UK, they weren't. I wouldn't see any of these cartoons until very recently, when they were released on DVD. (I'll cover these in more detail in a future blog.)

Considering Marvel must have been making money out of these cartoons, this ad looks like it was flung together a bit hurriedly ... but then, Marty Goodman wasn't renowned for throwing money at his comics. The double page CBS ad with Superman, that ran at the same time, was produced by professionals.

Stan had mentioned that Captain America, Iron Man, Sub-Marine, Hulk and Thor were going to be on TV in the Bullpen Bulletins in ASM 41. But ASM42 carried a full page house ad. I didn't make the connection at the time, but Marvel had obviously sold the rights to the characters appearing in the anthology titles that had their roots in the Atlas days - Journey into Mystery, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. Presumably, no one wanted the Strange Tales characters - Dr Strange and Nick Fury. Or maybe Marty Goodman was holding these two back for bigger things that never quite panned out. I guess we'll never know.

But the conclusion of the Rhino storyline beckoned and I put thoughts of Marvel tv cartoons to one side and again concentrated on the adventures of Spider-Man. John Romita was without equal at designing attention-grabbing cover art, and Amazing Spider-Man 43's was no exception.

Romita gets a great sense of motion into this Spidey-in-jeopardy cover. It really does look like Spidey's being thrown around like a rag doll. Inside the book, Romita draws what remains the definitive version of Mary Jane. (Kirsten Dunst? What was Sam Raimi thinking?)

Inside the book, Stan had clearly grasped the plotting by the, um, horns and was mixing Peter's new interest in Mary Jane with cool action sequences and even had Spider-Man go to Dr Curt Connors (sometimes also the Lizard) to concoct a fluid that would dissolve the unstoppable villain's protective hide. The first battle with the Rhino was memorable because - as usual - Spidey's getting his butt kicked and, in this instance, he's pulled to safety by one of New York's finest. It's a nice touch where a cop risks his life for Spider-Man while the general public has only shown up to see Spidey get pounded.

And, incredibly, this was about as far as I got with the Romita issues back in 1966. I wouldn't read the Lizard story (ASM44 & 45) and the Kingpin story (ASM50 & 51) until much later. More fool me. One Ditko comic I found in an unlikely place some time during 1967 was Amazing Spider-Man 30. Coming across it was a strange bit of synchronicity and ties in with my only sighting of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon which, unless someone corrects me, was shown only on Scottish television.

SPIDER-MAN GLIMPSED ON-SCREEEN

The mid-1960s was a curious time to be growing up. As I've noted in other posts, the culture was divided between post-war austerity and the youthful optimism of the upcoming generation. For the well-to-do, the Summer of Love was just around the corner, but for kids living in working class areas, life was all about getting entertainment on the cheap. And comics were a great source of cheap entertainment.

In the post-wars years, buying new comics was a bit of a luxury. Fortunately, many shop-keepers were just as cost-conscious as their customers and would often have a plentiful supply of second-hand reading material we could swap (2-for-1) or buy.

Though the picture above shows American kids in 1946 checking out the comics in a corner tobacconist shop, the British experience wasn't much different. US comics were quite well-distributed over here (if a little erratically) and, unlike home-grown comics (or "papers", as we called them), had a perceived after-market value. So we too were able to find shops that had piles of used American comics we could riffle through, looking for issues we'd missed, bargains (second-hand shops didn't charge any more for 80-page annuals than they did for regular issues) or something we knew a mate would swap us two or three comics for.

If anyone's interested, the comics on the counter in the shop picture above are Police Comics 53 (Apr 46), 55 (Jun 46) and Feature Comics 100 (Jul 46).

And because of the way US comics were distributed in Britain, sometimes quite old comics would turn up a year or two later on newsagents' spinner racks, clean and shiny and brand-new, where they'd obviously sat forgotten in a warehouse until someone dug them out and boxed them out to retail outlets along with newer arrivals. In fact, UK distributors of American comics Thorpe and Porter arranged for the UK variants of Marvel Comics to have the month removed from the covers to facilitate just that sort of subterfuge.

So it was, during the summer holidays of 1968, that I came across that copy of Amazing Spider-Man 30 (cover-dated Nov 65) in a newsagents while on holiday visiting my grandparents in the Mansewood area of Glasgow.

By the summer of 1968, Amazing Spider-Man was up to issue 62 or 63 ... but I was only interested in the Ditko version. Where I didn't have the original comic, I usually had the Marvel Tales or Amazing Spider-Man Annual reprint. So you can imagine how happy I was to come across the missing issue 30, separated from my beloved Marvel Comics by around 450 miles.

I must have read that comic from cover to cover about 50 times during that holiday. It got so I knew the dialogue by heart, and even to this day, to me it's probably the most familiar issue of Amazing Spider-Man. And even more strange, it's not an especially great issue. Back in 1968, I thought The Cat was a bit of a weak villain. He was just a burglar, for goodness sake. The scariest thing he could do was swing his grappling iron around his head and cause Spidey to stumble. Pretty lame, right? But it was the only comic I had to hand, so I was going to read it to death.

Back in the summer of 1967, I read this comic so many times, I could recite the caption boxes and speech balloons by heart. And yet, it was never one of my favourite Ditko issues.

But looking back on it now, one thing I did notice was that Stan had misinterpreted what Ditko intended with the opening pages of ASM30. The scene has Spidey trying to foil a robbery carried out by masked goons in purple costumes. Stan has the dialogue reveal that said goons are working for The Cat. Yet these are the very same goons that are working for the Master Planner (Dr Octopus) in ASM31-ASM33. It's easy to blame Stan for this, and others have written to that effect. But bear in mind, Ditko wasn't talking to Stan by this time, and obviously hadn't explained what was going on in any border notes like Jack Kirby would have. So it's probably a bit unfair to lay this error at Lee's door, even if he did write the misleading balloons.

Left: a page featuring Spidey battling the purple henchmen from Amazing Spider-Man 30. Right: Spidey battles the very same henchmen in ASM33. Who were they working for? Stan sure didn't know, but my money's on The Master Planner.

And, for my part, despite the number of times I read that comic, I never recognised the purple guys when they turned up in the very next adventure. My research suggested that the mistake was noted when Marvel reprinted the story in Marvel Tales 23 (Nov 1969), though I've since checked the reprint and didn't see a sign of any such note. However, in the grand scheme of things, it really was the most trivial of mistakes in the history of No-Prizes.

The other thing that made this holiday trip to Glasgow so memorable was I was able to catch an episode of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon on television. Most Brits will remember this series from the house ads that Marvel ran beginning in their November 1967 issues. The show certainly didn't screen in the London area. If anyone reading this has any info to add about other regions the cartoon was transmitted in, I'd be very interested to know.

This ad would have come out too late for me to have been forewarned that there even was a Spider-Man cartoon, as it wouldn't have reached the UK till November or December. And even now, I've never seen an episode of the Fantastic Four cartoon.

It's so long ago now, I can't remember what the episode was about. In many ways it didn't matter. The thrill my 13 year old self experienced seeing Spider-Man moving - swinging through Manhattan - for the first time was huge indeed. These days it's probably hard to understand, with three Sam Raimi movies and two by the other chap under our belts, but in 1968, it was a Really Big Thing.

In the early 1960s, tv cartoons were dominated by the Hanna-Barbera company. The founders had been responsible for the heyday of MGM's Tom & Jerry shorts, produced for cinema distribution. The pair, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, had won seven Oscars for their work on the cat and mouse cartoon and in 1957, as MGM wound down production on their theatrical shorts, Hanna and Barbera formed the legendary tv production company and set to work on their first original series, a half hour show comprising of Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Pixie and Dixie, the latter a variation on the Tom & Jerry formula. The series won them an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in the field of Children's Programming.

This was the style of tv cartoons to dominate the airwaves for the next few years. When Hanna-Barbera moved from syndication to network, their shows aped the style of popular tv sit-coms (The Flintstones was based on The Honeymooners, Top Cat was a take on the Phil Silvers Show). But in the UK we wouldn't see a show that looked beyond funny animals and similar themes until Hanna-Barbera commissioned comic book artist Doug Wildey to design their dramatically dramatic adventure animated show Jonny Quest in 1964. 

One of the highlights of my pre-teen years was the Hanna-Barbera show Jonny Quest, with its Lizard Men and its Living Mummies, it was the go-to show for all self-respecting nerds in the 1960s.

Jonny Quest was different because the animation art was rendered in a more "realistic" way. It used sf and fantasy themes as the basis for its plots and it mostly avoided the goofy and clownish sound effects ("Boing!", "Honk!") that peppered shows like Huckleberry Hound and Quickdraw McGraw. I especially remember the episode that featured an unstoppable living mummy ("The Curse of Anubis") and the story with the mechanical spider ("The Robot Spy").

There had been "realistic" action adventure animation shows before Jonny Quest - Alex Toth's Space Angel for Cambria Productions three years earlier, which I don't remember ever seeing in the UK - but Quest was the one that set a new bar for tv cartoon shows.

After the less-than-successful, one-season Marvel Superheroes tv show in 1966, Marty Goodman looked to get his big two titles on network television, as opposed to going the lower-budgeted syndication route. I have a pretty strong suspicion that Stan Lee might have had a persuading role in that decision.

I never saw any episodes of the Fantastic Four cartoon, which was produced by Hanna-Barbera under the supervision of comic book legend Alex Toth, but I did manage to see an episode of Spider-Man when it aired on Scottish television in 1968, and have since got hold of a DVD box set of all three seasons.

The show didn't use the logo from the comic, which was a bit of a disappointment for me back in 1968, and though Betty Brant was long gone from the comic by this time, she was prominently featured in the cartoon. They didn't make her very pretty, though.

The Spider-Man show was produced by Grantray-Lawrence, who'd produced the earlier Marvel Superheroes show. With Spider-Man they had a larger budget to play with and it showed.

The very first episode featured Dr Octopus, though the plot wasn't like anything from any of the comics. Curiously, it took Spider-Man out of his familiar urban environment and placed him on top of a remote mountain where Doc Ock has his lair.

Though it's mostly remembered for its insanely catchy theme song (it's going through your head right now, isn't it?), some stories stuck quite closely to the plots of the comic books, though simplified. The half-hour slot was composed of two adventures running about 11 minutes each with a couple of ad breaks.

The show did take liberties with the back story of Peter Parker, and in the very first adventure had him arriving at the mountain hideout of Dr Octopus in his own car, something that would have been way beyond the means of the comic book Parker. The supporting cast was limited mostly to just Jonah Jameson and Betty Brant, though the occasional episode might show Aunt May. Characters like Flash Thompson and Liz Allen were absent and Peter seemed to be a full-time employee of The Daily Bugle rather than a high school or university student.

The Spider-Man tv show worked best when Spidey was in his familiar New York surroundings, but also worked pretty well when it followed the storylines from the comics, as with "Where Crawls the Lizard".

The stories were kind of fun and in some cases, as with "Where Crawls the Lizard", followed the old Steve Ditko stories exactly. Reports of a man-size lizard bring Peter Parker to the Florida Everglades where he first battles the creature underwater. He discovers that the husband of Martha Connors - a two-armed scientist working on a cure for "swamp fever", not limb replacement - has disappeared. Spidey quickly figures out who the Lizard is. Using Dr Connors' lab, he concocts an antidote and, in a showdown in an old Spanish fort, pours the serum down the Lizard's throat.

The quality of the series deteriorated a little with the second and third seasons. Grantray-Lawrence went out of business and Krantz Animation took over, with Ralph Bakshi as the supervisor. Unfortunately, the budgets were smaller and Bakshi took to recycling as much of the animation from the earlier shows as he could to save money.

Looking at the show now, it does seem quite clunky, and the voice-actors' performances appear over-dramatic, but at the time, it was quite an innovation and further indication of how well Marvel's fortunes had fared in the five years from 1961 to 1966. Stan had created the MMMS to transform readers into customers and encouraged Marty Goodman to embrace licensing and merchandising, to further capitalise on revenue generated by the company's new, successful characters.

What I wouldn't have given back in 1966 to have been able to order an Incredible Hulk sweatshirt, but I had no idea where to get $3.95 from.

By getting Marvel characters on to television, Marvel had begun their unstoppable rise. After the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four cartoons came the Spidey Super-Stories segments on The Electric Company, The Amazing Spider-Man (live action, 1977), The Incredible Hulk (live action, 1977), Fantastic Four (1978), Spider-Man (live action, Toei Company, 1978), Spider-Woman (1979), Spider-Man (1981), Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends (1981), The Incredible Hulk (1982), X-Men (1992), Iron Man (1994), Fantastic Four (1994), Spider-Man (1994), The Incredible Hulk (1996), Silver Surfer (1998), Spider-Man Unlimited (1999), The Avengers: United They Stand (1999), X-Men Evolution (2000), Spider-Man the New Animated Series (2003), Fantastic Four: The World's Greatest Heroes (2006), Spectacular Spider-Man (2008), Wolverine and the X-Men (2008), Iron Man: Armoured Adventures (2009), The Superhero Squad Show (toy tie-in, 2009), Black Panther (2010), The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (2010), Marvel Anime (2010), Ultimate Spider-Man (2012), Avengers Assemble (2013), Hulk and the Agents of SMASH (2013), Agents of SHIELD (live action, 2013), Marvel Disk Wars (2014), Agent Carter (2015), Powers (2015) and Daredevil (2015).

But in 1967, the company was less than a year away from the end of the constricting distribution contract it had with the DC-owned Independent News, and would soon be in a position to publish more than its allotted 12 titles a month. The beginning of Marvel's massive expansion phase was just round the corner.

Next: Catches Thieves ... Just Like Flies

... Does whatever a Spider can

AS A KID in the Sixties, I was first a reader of DC Comics, then discovered Marvel. My introduction to the work of Stan Lee and his collaborators was a bit of a slow burn ... I didn't really start reading the flagship Marvel title The Amazing Spider-Man until mid-1965, by which time Lee and Ditko were in full swing.

Okay, this kid is reading a comic in the 1940s, but his experience wouldn't have been much different from mine. The Superman behind him is the November 1947 issue, though the Ha Ha Comics he's reading is from mid-1943. See if you can identify any others ...

In my last blog entry, I described how I had come to be a regular reader of the title and how Stan Lee's and Steve Ditko completely different approach to superhero stories captivated my imagination and made me feel they really understood my life. I didn't realise at the time they were telling stories that resonated with any number of teenagers and tweenagers, and it was this that started Marvel's inexorable rise to dominance of the comic business. And I had got as far as Amazing Spider-Man 26, which left an unconscious and helpless Spider-Man in the hands of The Green Goblin, the Crime Master and their baying hordes of gangsters ... a development that had me holding my breath until I could track down the next issue to discover Spidey's fate.

A brilliant "hero in jeopardy" cover from Steve Ditko encloses one of my favourite Spider-Man stories of the 1960s. Look at that great cathartic moment at the foot of page 4 as Spider-Man breaks free of the ship's anchor chain that's been holding him (not quite) helpless.

I needn't have worried. Even though Spidey has been trussed up with heavy duty chains, the gangsters are unable to tear off his mask (which he glued in place with webbing last ish, remember?), and he's not about to sit still while they polish him off. For, just as Spidey breaks the grip of the gangsters holding on to him, the police arrive. The distraction allows Spidey the space he needs to literally break free of his chains in one of the greatest single panels of Ditko's entire Spider-Man run. And we're only on page 4 ...

The Green Goblin hangs back, leaving Spidey and the three police officers to battle with the Crime Master's goons over three epic pages. The Goblin escapes but Spidey trails The Crime Master beneath the dockside pilings, losing him in the sewers. Later, when Spidey confronts Frederick Foswell in Jameson's office with his suspicions that Foswell is The Crime Master, the real Crime Master is lurking on a rooftop outside the Bugle building. Cornered by tipped-off police officers, The Crime Master is shot and unmasked. Turns out Foswell has been working on the story for Jameson and uncovered The Crime Master's identity ... a mobster called Nick "Lucky" Lewis. (Stan must've really liked the nickname "Lucky" because he gave it to the gangster Lucky Lobo in ASM23, as well.)

From Amazing Spider-Man Annual 2 - The Crime Master.

Again, readers were left wondering who The Green Goblin really was. I remember reading somewhere that Stan and Steve had very different ideas on the Goblin's real identity. After a quick search of the Internet I found some quotes from a Steve Ditko interview that had appeared in US fan-magazine, Starlog: "Stan's synopsis for The Green Goblin," said Ditko, "had a movie crew, on location, finding an Egyptian-like sarcophagus. Inside was an ancient, mythological demon, the Green Goblin. He naturally came to life. On my own, I changed Stan's mythological demon into a human villain."

From Amazing Spider-Man Annual 1 - The Green Goblin (riding his pre-glider broomstick).

This fits in with Ditko's commonly known antipathy towards super-human or fantasy-based foes for Spider-Man, something I had noticed even back in 1965 and covered in my previous blog entry.

As for The Goblin's civilian identity, I also recall reading someplace that Ditko wanted to have The Goblin turn out to be a complete non-entity, as he felt it more realistic. But he must have changed his mind as the story in Amazing Spider-Man 26-27 unfolded because in Starlog, Ditko later recounted, "I had to have some definite ideas: who he was, his profession and how he fit into the Spider-Man story world. I was even going to use an earlier, planted character associated with J. Jonah Jameson: he [was to] be [revealed as] the Green Goblin. It was like a subplot working its way until it was ready to play an active role."

This makes me suspect very strongly that Ditko may have been lining up Foswell to be the civilian alter ego of The Green Goblin ... though it's possible he really was going to reveal the Goblin to be someone we'd never seen before. I guess we'll never know for sure, because that story was the last time Ditko would ever draw the character.

In the closing few pages of ASM27, the identity of the mystery villain is revealed, our suspicions about Foswell prove to be unfounded, Spidey reaches the end of the road with the Incredible Shrinking Costume, and Peter meets the nosiest man in the universe, Barney Bushkin. This would have taken up an entire issue of a modern comic.

The last few pages of ASM27 deal with the nasty shop-bought costume that had been giving Spidey so many problems and his efforts to find another outlet for his crime pictures, which leads him to Barney Bushkin, perhaps the nosiest newspaper picture editor ever. And the comic finishes with Peter and his Aunt May happily going off to the movies together, a rare moment of stability in Peter Parker's normally hectic and unpredictable private life.

So I suppose after this startlingly good brace of issues, the only place for Lee and Ditko to go was down. And, perhaps a little unfairly, Amazing Spider-Man 28, featuring The Molten Man, was never one of my favourites.

In retrospect though, I suppose this would have been a pretty popular issue with most kids. It's certainly action-packed - Spidey's battle with The Molten Man goes on for an epic seven pages. But for me it lacks the cleverness and subtleties apparent in the Spidey-fights of the last few issues. You have to wonder if Ditko constructed a long - and it has to be said, repetitive - toe-to-toe slugfest because he'd been told to by Stan.

Though the cover design is striking, I'm not sure what story it's telling. And I think the second cover/splash page is a bit bland too. However, the interior 7-page battle between Spidey and the Molten Man is pretty epic.

The more interesting components in this story are: the scene in which Peter manages to switch the cheap shop-bought costume for his original at Professor Smythe's lab - though the coincidence of Smythe's assistant being transformed into The Molten Man just as Peter Parker was visiting stretched the definition of "coincidence" even for my 11-year-old sensibilities - and; Peter's high school graduation.

Now, back in 1965, I didn't have much grasp of what "graduation" entailed. We didn't have that in the UK back then. The biggest educational challenge that faced me was the "11-plus", an exam that determined whether you'd be sent to an academic "grammar school", or be dumped with the dunces in a "secondary modern", after the summer holidays. But graduation seemed cool and exciting, and even I could gather that it was a big day for Peter and his fellow students. The fact that this ceremony marked an exit for Liz Allan from the series pretty much escaped me at the time and I was only reminded of it while reviewing the story for this blog.

I was never much of a fan of Liz Allan. My first bias was always towards girls with dark hair, so Liz didn't appeal to me on that level. But she always seemed a bit of a game-player, and even at my tender years, I found that annoying. She wouldn't return to the comic until much later, by which time Gerry Conway was writing the series and I had long lost interest in it.

So, was ASM28 a filler issue? I think, kind of ... Molten Man is a pretty uninspired villain and I think was just there to provide a peg to hang the story of Peter's graduation on. What's more interesting here is that, at this point, Marvel Comics were allowing their characters to grow and develop. Moving Peter on to University was a massive step and where other companies' characters pretty much stayed static in their lives (Clark Kent was a reporter for the Daily Planet for, what, 25 years? Never promoted, never changed papers, never made editor?), Stan's characters' lives would change as the years passed. That all pretty much stopped when Stan relinquished editorial control of the Marvel line and the suits decided that all character development should be frozen to better serve Marvel's growing number of licensing deals.

Just about the best hero-in-danger cover of the entire Spider-Man run. Putting the audience's eye-level at the surface of the water makes us feel like we're right in there with Spidey ...

I liked Amazing Spider-Man 29 a lot better, though it too was a bit of a filler issue. It featured the return of The Scorpion, the thug that Jameson arranged to be given super-powers back in Amazing Spider-Man 20, which came out before I began buying the title on a regular basis. I'd catch up with ASM20 a bit later when it was reprinted in Marvel Tales. But issue 29 offered a recap, so I didn't feel too much out of the loop.

First, let's take a look at that cover. Steve Ditko had already demonstrated a liking for placing Spider-Man in real danger on the covers. No other Marvel character faced cover jeopardy with quite the same regularity or intensity as Spider-Man. Towards the end of Giant Man's run, some attempt had been made to bring a similar sense of peril to the Tales to Astonish covers, but these had largely failed because they had made Giant Man seem like he was ineffective, rather than generating reader concern for the character.

It must have been fairly obvious to Stan that the whole Giant Man thing wasn't working. Trying to apply the hero-in-jeopardy schtick to Giant Man failed because it's hard to believe a 25-foot guy could be under threat from any normal-sized person. The situation on the cover of Tales to Astonish 68 is just plain daft.

But Amazing Spider-Man 29 ... now that is a jeopardy cover. I have written about this one on my website, in conjunction with the book I wrote a while back, How To Draw and Sell Comic Strips, offering it as an example of the perfect comic cover. And what made the Scorpion more than a bit scary was that he plainly didn't care whether he killed Spider-Man or Spider-Man killed him. Even as a kid I recognised that that is possibly the most dangerous type of person you could ever meet.

I'll come back to Amazing Spider-Man 30 a bit later, as I missed it in its original run and wouldn't discover a copy until a couple of years later ...

Amazing Spider-Man 31 was the start of an even bigger Spidey saga, that would run across three issues and is still, for my money, the best Spider-Man story ever.

The start of a super-saga ... this would be one of the last times that Ditko would put a secondary cover on page of of the story. This scene refers to the closing fight with the Master Planner's goons that starts on page 17.

The structure and pacing of the storytelling is pitch perfect. Spider-Man has a run-in with some masked goons who are stealing scientific equipment for "The Master Planner" and making their getaway via helicopter. They're well organised and obviously well funded. But he loses track of them after he causes their copter to crash into the East River. All this is quickly forgotten as Peter heads off to Empire State University for his first day of college, little suspecting that Aunt May has been feeling quite ill. When his aunt takes a turn for the worse that evening, Peter is shocked to hear Doc Bromwell wants to send her to hospital. The next day, lost in thought, Peter doesn't hear Flash trying to introduce him to two new friends, Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy. They think he's ignoring them and Peter's high school history looks set to repeat itself. In the meantime, Bugle reporter Frederick Foswell, disguised as police stool-pigeon Patch, is also on the trail of the technology robbers. A chance meeting between the pair sends Spidey back down to the docks where the same masked goons are heisting more scientific equipment. There's an inconclusive battle but the thieves get away. And while Peter regrets not taking pictures of the fight for Jonah Jameson, at the hospital Aunt May's tests indicate she's sicker than Dr Bromwell thought.

An unprecedented eight pages are spent on Peter Parker's problems with Aunt May and his (lack of) college social life. Yet none of this is unimportant, and will become the very heartbeat of this whole masterful story. By this point, Steve Ditko was being credited with plotting by Stan, so there's little doubt that lavishing that amount of space on material that isn't superhero action was all Ditko's idea.

Essentially, the entire issue is setting up what will follow ... but stick with it. It's going to be worth it.

The cover essentially tells the reader the entire plot. The splash page was the first Ditko had drawn that formed the opening of the story. And the violence of Peter's frustration is a startling moment for any 11 year old reader.

Amazing Spider-Man 32 is where the whole thing really gets going. Steve Ditko's splash page breaks with tradition and actually forms the opening panel of the story, instead of acting as a second cover. Admittedly, it's a little dull, but I see this page's function as a kind of movie-style establishing shot, so the readers know exactly where the following action takes place.

Immediately, Ditko abandons the idea of keeping the identity of The Master Planner a secret. He probably realised that he'd over-played that hand in the battle between The Green Goblin and the Crime Master for control of the city's mobs and just dumped the idea. So we see Doctor Octopus issuing orders to his henchmen, but identifying himself to them as The Master Planner. Why was he keeping his identity a secret? Who knows? Not me ... probably not Ditko, either.

Meanwhile, Aunt May's doctors tell Peter that May is dying of radioactive poisoning. Horrified, Peter realises that it's because of a transfusion May received of Peter's blood back in Amazing Spider-Man 10 and it's his super-power that is killing her. As Spider-Man, Peter manages to enlist the aid of Dr Curt Connors - the former Lizard - to find a cure for Aunt May. Connors identifies the problem and orders a rare isotope, ISO-36, which he'll use to neutralise the radioactivity. But Doc Ock gets wind of the delivery and has his goons steal the rare element. Spider-Man goes after the thieves and starts tearing up the town to find them. Of course he does find Doc Ock's underwater lair and there's a mighty battle, but the structure is weakened by the two enemies flinging heavy plant equipment at each other and, with sections of the ceiling coming down, Doc Ock clears off, leaving Spidey trapped beneath some machinery ...

There's cliffhangers and there's cliffhangers. This one, surely, must be the grandaddy of them all.

When I originally read this in the early months of 1966, I was stressed breathless by Peter's predicament, so "in" the story was I at this point. The thought of having to try to find the next part of the story - given the erratic distribution of American comics to UK shops - made it even worse. I probably felt like that for about half an hour ... then something else distracted my attention and I carried on with all the other stuff I did - swapping gum cards, playing war, climbing trees ... that sort of thing.

Probably Marvel's most memorable moment, and definitely Spider-Man's -  wringing such high drama out of such a simple situation is a testament to the storytelling skills of both Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

When Amazing Spider-Man 33 finally did roll around, probably around March of 1966, I was ready for it. Stan and Steve didn't have some rubbishy movie serial type resolution planned for Spidey. There was no "with one bound Spider-Man was free" kind of escape. Nope, they kept Spidey under that machinery for five pages. It's an extraordinary piece of storytelling. As each second drags past, and as each drop of water falls on Spidey from above, I was right there with him, straining uselessly against the dead weight above even as Spidey did.

And when he does somehow find the strength to heave that giant block of cast iron off his shoulders, it's the greatest moment in comics.

Yes, I said the greatest moment in comics ... anyone want to argue? Thought not.

But even then, Ditko wasn't finished. With the underwater structure crumbling around him, Spidey grasps the life-giving cannister of ISO-36 to his chest and stumbles through the rising waters. The ceiling gives way, enveloping Spider-Man in a bruising torrent of water. Somehow he finds his way to the surface and crawls exhausted from the water, only to find eight of The Master Planner's goons waiting for him. For goodness sake, Steve, give this kid a break ...

Three pivotal points in this story - Spidey not realising he's beaten The Master Planner's henchmen, recognising that Betty was just too highly strung to make an acceptable girlfriend for a superhero, and then understanding that if he stands up to Jameson, he might finally get reasonable payment for his first class crime pictures.

The battle with the goons is incredible, not because Spider-Man does so well, but because he does so badly. Exhausted, battered and on the point of collapse, Spidey keeps on swinging, even after the last goon is prostrate, hardly even realising he's won. 

Spidey manages to get the precious isotope delivered to Dr Connors, even finding a few moments to photograph the arrest of The Master Planner's goon squad by the police, but when he goes to The Daily Bugle to deliver the pix, he runs into Betty. When she sees his battered, bruised face, she goes into neurotic meltdown and rushes off sobbing. I think it was at this point that Peter caught up with my 11 year old self and realised what a pain in the butt Betty was. Finally, tired of Jonah Jameson's shenanigans, Peter decides that he'll use his exclusive photos of the police breaking up The Master Planner's gang to gouge the cost of Aunt May's hospital care out of the skinflint publisher. It's as though Peter has addressed each of the responsibilities that have been weighing him down and has finally dealt with them ... 

Thinking about it in retrospect, it's almost as though the final page of issue 33 is Ditko's farewell to the character and the book he helped create. And it would have been the perfect place for Ditko to stop ... but that's not what happened.

The issue ends quietly enough - I love Ditko's very cinematic split shot of Peter walking away. Others would ape this trick in later comics, notably Jim Steranko. But after the emotional rollercoaster of ASM33, how could the following issue ever hope to stack up?

Where before Stan and Steve had flirted with an extended storyline in ASM26 & 27, this was the first time that a Spider-Man tale had taken up three consecutive issues. Stan and Jack had been doing that kind of thing for a while over on Fantastic Four - at this point the Frightful Four saga was just winding down - and Ditko had told a multi-part story on Doctor Strange (Strange Tales 130-146), which began before ASM 31-33 and ended when Ditko left Marvel with the July 1966 issues. But these Spider-Man comics are a bit of a watershed in that a single coherent story ran across three issues of the comics. Even with Stan's and Jack's multi-parters, the storytelling involved one plotline seguing into another then returning to the previous storyline again - Fantastic Four 36-45 is just that; three intertwined plotlines (The Frightful Four, the loss of powers and Doctor Doom, The Inhumans) rather than a single story.

And I think that's all great. I'm all for an epic storyline - as long as the story is epic. Stan and Steve certainly delivered during the Master Planner arc. No one could complain that the tale lacks action, characterisation and emotional resonance. But as I've said before, the concept of continued stories would have its detractors - me included - as time wore on. Not because I think continued stories are bad, but because they became over-used and a crutch for lazy writers who didn't want to think up a new plot every month.

The remaining five issues of Steve Ditko's tenure as plotter and artist offered nothing as ground-breaking as the Master Planner saga. Even though he seems to be setting Spider-Man up for a return bout with Kraven the Hunter cheerfully enough, nothing he did with the title after this would have the verve and energy of anything he'd done in the first 33 issues.

After ratcheting up the tension to "11" in the issues before this one, ASM34 settles down to a more sedate "7.5". Here, it looks as though Ditko has given up on the second-cover idea for the comic's splash page and is now using page 1 to begin the story proper, just like Jack Kirby.

In all fairness, Amazing Spider-Man 34 isn't a bad comic by any stretch. It has some great developments - Peter trying to strike up a conversation with Gwen Stacy for the first time and getting knocked back, and the plotline with Betty Brant exiting Peter's life - but it can only compare poorly with the issues that immediately preceded it. It does, however, bring back an old foe, albeit not a super-powered one ...

There's a bit of a feeling that Ditko is marking time here. He's reverted back to using Page 1 as a second cover and the art seems a bit less detailed.

Amazing Spider-Man 35, on the other hand, bears some hallmarks of being a bit of a filler issue. The villain, the Molten Man, is in my view a b-team character. I wasn't mad about him in ASM28, so I wasn't overjoyed to see him back. The drawing seems a bit thinner and a bit less detailed than we've been used to. The final page seems very rushed indeed, not typical for Ditko, who never, as far as I know, ever missed a deadline. There's a funny bit where Spidey battles the Molten Man accompanied only by Artie Simek's sound effects, but that really does seem much more a Stan thing to do than a Steve idea ...

The last few covers have been very light on background detail and the interior art lacks the meticulous effort that made issues like ASM25 such a delight. And look at that pointlessly large panel of Spidey on page 11 ...

By the time I got to Amazing Spider-Man 36, I really did feel that Steve Ditko was just phoning the work in. As with the previous issue, Steve Ditko's art seems a bit rushed, lacking the detail that he'd put into the first 33 issues. Where before he'd stick with the basic six-panel layout, using larger panels to emphasise a dramatic point, now it seemed as if he was just jamming in big panels to save himself a bit of drawing. It did occur to me that it could have been because sometime around this point, Marvel (and DC) switched from the larger twice-up artwork to the smaller half-up size. Could this be why Ditko's art looks so ... thin? So I did some checking (actually, I looked at the IDW Artists' Edition of Steranko's SHIELD) and found that the date of the switch was around November 1967, more than a year after these issues of Spider-Man came out. So I couldn't even allow Ditko that excuse. Then, thinking about it, the three covers from ASM 34 on also lacked real jeopardy. No, there's little doubt ... by this point Ditko was just going through the motions ...

The cover was a big improvement over recent issues, but the splash page did look a bit crude. On the bright side, the interior story and art was almost a return to form for Ditko ... sadly, it wouldn't last.

Issue 37 of Amazing Spider-Man did seem to be a bit of a rally for Ditko. The cover had real menace, the issue introduced Norman Osborn as a slightly dodgy associate of the issue's villain, Professor Stromm, and even the artwork seemed a bit more detailed, like Ditko actually cared again. Overall I quite liked this issue the best of the post Master Planner Spider-Man comics. But as it turned out, ASM37 was just a blip.

The cover of this issue is an obvious paste-up, the splash page is the weirdest ever seen in a Ditko Spider-Man comic and the interior story is a bit "meh", lacking in any real danger. We should have seen the writing on the wall ...

Amazing Spider-Man 38 was the saddest issue of the entire Ditko run on the character, for oh-so-many reasons. For a start, there was no cover. That's right, Ditko left before drawing a cover for the issue. This meant the Bullpen had to paste something together in a hurry. The main image of Spider-Man was lifted from a panel on page 13. The three lower images are just action panels from the story pasted in. There's not even an attempt at a background behind Spidey, so my guess would be that no one realised until right on deadline that Steve wasn't planning on turning in any cover art for this issue.

The interior story is just about okay, very similar to the Meteor Man tale in issue 36, but just kind of bland and unmemorable. The only vaguely interesting bit is where Norman Osborn disguises himself and hires a bunch of gangster goons to kill Spider-Man. At this stage, we readers can only guess what his beef with Spidey is. But it does seem that even at this late stage, Ditko was setting Norman O up for something bigger than just the role of a walk-on trouble-maker.

Yet, for all my misgivings about Steve Ditko leaving The Amazing Spider-Man, the fact is that by the end of 1966, the title would be racking up an impressive 340,000 sales, overtaking Fantastic Four as Marvel's best-selling title and, though DC's core Superman and Batman titles were all still a long way ahead, this would begin to change over the next two years ...

But issue 39 of Spider-Man would confirm our worst fears. Steve Ditko had walked out on his two seminal characters, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. From Amazing Spider-Man 39 onwards, a new hand would wield the pencil, and Stan Lee would return as plotter and scripter both ... and to be fair, do a very good job of it.

In the wake of Ditko's departure, the dynamic of the creative team behind the character would change drastically, not necessarily for the worse ...

But that's all for the next blog entry in this series, where I'll look at the impact of John Romita and how Marvel's increasing inroads into television and other forms of licensing would change the fortunes of the company ...

Next: New hands on the tiller