Essential Punisher volume 1

As a little side step I'll now turn to Essential Punisher volume 1. This is one of the most unusual of all the Essential volumes as it is made up of many of the Punisher's appearances across multiple Marvel titles prior to getting his own ongoing series. Since over half the issues in this volume come from the various Spider-Man titles I've decided to include it in this series as another special. For what it's worth the volume originally came out before any of the issues in it had been reached by the other Essentials (and whilst all the Spider-Man issues have now been caught up with, at the time of writing the Captain America and Daredevil issues are still later than the most recent Essential volumes).

The issues contained here are:

• Amazing Spider-Man #129, #134-135, written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Ross Andru
• Giant-Size Spider-Man #4, written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Ross Andru
• Marvel Preview #2, written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Tony Dezuniga
• Marvel Super-Action #1, written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Tony Dezuniga
• Amazing Spider-Man #161-162, #174-175, written by Len Wein and drawn by Ross Andru
• Captain America #241, written by Mike W. Barr and drawn by Frank Springer
• Amazing Spider-Man #201-202, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Keith Pollard, & Annual #15, written by Denny O'Neil and drawn by Frank Miller
• Daredevil #182 (part) & 183-184, written by Frank Miller & Roger McKenzie, drawn by Frank Miller
• Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #81-82, written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Al Milgrom, and #83, written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Greg LaRocque
• The Punisher (limited series) #1-4, written by Steven Grant and drawn by Mike Zeck, & #5, plotted by Steven Grant, written by Jo Duffy and drawn by Mike Vosburg

Also included is the Punisher's entry from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. This appears to be from the Deluxe Edition. Because there are so many creators, some of the labels have been placed in a separate post.

This is a very different approach from the standard Essentials. Whereas most of the other volumes focus on a particular series and present an absolutely sequential run, only including issues from other series if they constitute the build up for the series or carry a crossover, this one is closer to a more conventional tradepaperback drawing together appearances from multiple titles, and also willing to present only the pages relevant to a character or storyline from a particular issue. It's a style that doesn't seem to have been repeated, probably because it steps a bit too far from the normal Essential approach. Nevertheless it's an interesting one-off, showing the Punisher over the years before he got his own ongoing series. (By all accounts for a long time a lot in Marvel had severe reservations about an ongoing series featuring a gun wielding protagonist who kills his opponents, despite having printed many Western comics in earlier years. But then that was a different age.)

In terms of continuity, reading this on its own can be a little confusing as it jumps through some ten years worth of Spider-Man developments. Some of them are mentioned in passing, such as taking a leave of absence from graduate school, or Jonah's breakdown, or twice we see people about to become the Green Goblin, but without the wider context it may confuse at first. Similarly the Daredevil issues overlap on Matt Murdock proposing to Heather Glenn whilst there are dark developments in her company, and the Captain America issue comes from a now forgotten period with Steve Rogers was working as a commercial artist. But this is par the course for crossovers and it's to the volume's credit that it (generally) didn't follow the pattern of early trade paperbacks that sought to cut out subplots and even rearrange the artwork in order to focus just on the reason for being collected. Instead it's nice to see the whole issues altogether, which better suits the collector that the Essential line appeals to. There is an exception with Daredevil #182 which only has the eight pages featuring the Punisher. This may have been part of a bigger Daredevil storyline but on their own the pages stand out. Still they are necessary for explaining the Punisher's escape after his previous capture.

But what about the Punisher himself? Well reading through these issues altogether it's clear that he was at times a victim of the Comics Code Authority rules, forcing Marvel to present a rather tamer version of the character than he could be, seen most notably with his use of "mercy bullets" that merely stun. The contrast is starkest between his 1970s appearances in the Spider-Man titles, printed with CCA approval, and those in Marvel Preview & Marvel Super-Action, both of which were part of Marvel's non-CCA approved magazine line aimed at somewhat older readers. Going into the 1980s issues, which start with Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15 there are signs that suggest the CCA rules were relaxed with the Punisher becoming harsher in his appearances, culminating in his first limited series where the character is more brutal and the violence more graphic than in anything previously seen with the CCA symbol on it.

This is also a sign of changing values in comics. The earliest superhero comics, and indeed the pulps that preceded them, emerged during a simpler era. Authority was good. Corrupt politicians, police officers and the like were rogues, not part of wider systemic failings. Heroes caught criminals but it was down to the system to deal with them. And the system invariably did, with many a villain's return mentioning either they had been released or they had escaped. Although it took a few years, heroes usually had a clear relationship with the law-enforcement community that gave their actions a stamp of legitimacy. And above all heroes were noble crusaders for the "right" values. Sometimes they even led the way - the first issue of Captain America had a cover showing him punching Hitler, months before the US entered the Second World War. The Silver Age broadly stuck to these conventions - Spider-Man might have been an outsider with a poor relationship with authority but there was never any doubt that he was on the side of right.

And then came the shocks of the late 1960s. American public opinion turned against the war in Vietnam. At home social changes and a backlash against them were causing ever more confrontation. And corruption was exposed at the very top of the system. Many of the old certainties fell away and the world was now a confused places. What was "right" now?

It was in this environment that both the Punisher, and his near contemporary Wolverine, were created. Both characters had an approach that was very different from the older generation of noble crusading heroes. Both took a much more dubious approach. Both characters enjoyed an early surge in popularity but also presented Marvel with a challenge given their nature. Consequently neither received an ongoing title until the late 1980s. But whereas Wolverine was in constant use due to his membership of the X-Men, the Punisher was used more sparingly.

Fundamentally the Punisher is a vigilante who serves as judge, jury and executioner. A soldier gone rogue, he perhaps reflected the 1970s belief that not all soldiers were noble crusaders and instead the military had produced monstrous killers who chose for themselves who would live and who would die. The Punisher might commit his atrocities on the streets of America rather than in the jungles of Vietnam, but he is a brutal killer never the less. His methods are such that at one stage he is shooting at any breach of the law no matter how minor - in one scene he shoots at a man merely for throwing aside a newspaper and missing a bin, and then when a taxi driver panics and jumps the lights he too is shot at. This particular storyline (Spectacular Spider-Man #81-83) focuses on the Punisher being apparently mad and ends with him being ruled insane. Later in the limited series it's revealed that he was in fact reacting to drugs he'd been unknowingly doped with, and once his system flushes them he reverts to normal - well for him that is.

Or perhaps not. The Punisher is an agent of justice, attacking only those who break the law. The law itself is not infallible - in the Daredevil issues we see Matt Murdock successfully get a man off a murder charge, only for his client to then calmly confess to the crime (Matt hadn't detected the lying because a pacemaker prevented a leap in the man's heart beat). As shown in his origin, the gangsters who killed the Punisher's family for witnessing an execution were able to evade prosecution by producing alibis, but weren't able to evade him. In such an environment the Punisher is a latter day cowboy, enforcing the law in places where the authorities fail and bringing justice to those who would otherwise be denied it. His victims have only themselves to blame for their fates and he is bringing those fats about efficiently. He is willing to work with other heroes and adapt to their values by using mercy bullets, and fundamentally is on their side.

Such are the two interpretations of the character. There are many wider issues flying around relating to the death penalty, to whether or not the police should be armed, to the efficiency of the legal system, to what rights law-breakers are still entitled, to the nature of a civilised society and so forth. Most of those questions are beyond the scope of this post but they do show how difficult the character can be to handle, especially when guest-starring in other titles. He can be a difficult ally of the lead hero or he can come into direct conflict over their values or somewhere in between. The conflict side is best shown in his encounter with Daredevil, whilst his alliance with Spider-Man is at its strongest in Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 when they work together to take down an arms dealer. With Captain America there's a curious reaction on each side. The Punisher admires Cap and finds he cannot bring himself to let Cap die, even if it means not blowing up a meeting of top mobsters. However Captain America is true to the traditional noble values including that even criminals have rights and is firmly opposed to the Punisher's methods, though stopping other criminals prevents him from taking the Punisher down. In many ways I think Cap and Daredevil make for the best characters to interact with the Punisher because they bring such a clash of outlooks and force it to the forefront.

That's not to say that Spider-Man has flawed values, far from it. But whereas Cap and Daredevil are both ultimately wedded to the system of enforcing both order and law, Spider-Man is wedded more to the responsibility to protect people and has always had a tense relationship with that system. He may never have resorted to the Punisher's methods, but he doesn't really serve as the best advocate for the system in this debate of contrasts. And so instead his encounters with the Punisher tend to downplay some of the harsher aspects of the latter, particularly with the widespread use of mercy bullets, and instead focus more on the adventures. In their early encounters the Punisher is willing to believe the word of criminals about Spider-Man's activities, but slowly he comes to accept the wallcrawler is seeking the same ends, if not quite the same means, and the two become reluctant allies in most of their 1970s stories. But two things change with the 1980s - there's both an increase in the bloodiness of the Punisher and also Spider-Man is now far condemning of his methods. A further contrast comes in the Spectacular issues which also involve Cloak and Dagger and contrast between their focused targeting of the drug scene and the Punisher's broad ranging approach to all crime.

When the Punisher gets his own solo slots the focus is invariably different. Curiously there's no attempt made to develop a supporting cast even though this could have helped to ground the character further. Perhaps all involved doubted there'd ever be an ongoing Punisher series (let alone the period when he had three!) and so didn't want to take up time building up things that would have no payoff. At the end of the Marvel Preview issue an FBI agent called Dave Hamilton does publicly declare a determination to bring down the Punisher but it's not followed up on in later appearances. The magazines do bring a personal edge to the Punisher, with the first one seeing him tracking down those responsible for turning ex-Marines into assassins and destroying them, whilst the second has a showdown with the gangsters who murdered his family. Whilst there's no clear chronology, the delay in the showdown is justified by the gangsters being inaccessible until they're moved, supposedly for protection from internal revenge killings for spawning the Punisher. Once that story is told the Punisher feels he hasn't had enough revenge as he didn't kill them all, so his mission continues.

The first solo series was a limited series in 1985-1986. On the face of it, it displays signs of changes midflow. Issues #1, 3 & 4 proclaim on the cover they are "in a four issue limited series", but #2 & 5 state "five issue". And the last issue has a change of creative team plus a caption on the first page thanking the new writer, artist and inker. Many wondered if this was a sign of a late in the day change of plans. However in researching this post it was apparently a combination of the printing department messing up, assuming the series would be the standard four issue length and requests for corrections were implemented then forgotten, and good old fashioned deadline problems. (Comic Book Resource: Comic Book Legends Revealed #196)

The story starts off with the Punisher (now given a name - Frank Castle - for the first time) escaping from jail and being offered help from a shadowy organisation known as "the Trust" which seeks to brainwash criminals into vigilantes modelled on the Punisher, even using his uniform. The Punisher initially goes solo but finds his plans spiralling out of control when he attempts to cause a gang war to make criminals wipe each other out. Eventually the Trust manipulate him into coming to them, in the hope of brainwashing him into their ultimate killer, but the Punisher manages to avoid the techniques and get Alaric, the leader in charge of the operation to leak all the information about the organisation. The ending is a surprise as the Punisher declines to kill Alaric, knowing that he's destroyed the organisation anyway, and sometimes it's best to walk away without killing. Then when he confronts Alaric's girlfriend, who had been using and manipulating him, and her car goes over the edge of a bridge the Punisher decides once again to walk away and do nothing. He also confronts the son of one his past kills who has been urged to take revenge and talks him out of it. It's an interesting ending suggesting that the Punisher is refining and reconsidering his methods beyond simply killing all criminals in sight, perhaps setting up the character to be a little more acceptable for an ongoing series. The limited series also brings back Jigsaw, the villain from Amazing Spider-Man #161-162 as the Punisher's first recurring adversary. Jigsaw survives largely because the Punisher has bigger fish to fry in each encounter, but does offer prospects of an ongoing conflict.

Overall the issues collected in this volume don't have a clear coherent direction, with multiple writers each doing their own thing with the character and some trying to undo previous developments. I doubt the Punisher was expected to be so popular when he was introduced - indeed I've read that co-creator Gerry Conway has said when he was writing Amazing Spider-Man he doubted the comics industry would last even a few more years - so there was never really a grand plan from the outset. As a result the character can oscillate between positions, pushed more by the Comics Code Authority rules than almost any other, but the limited series makes a good effort to find a happy medium between the extreme positions and make the character viable for further solo stories.

The decision to do the volume this way was a curious one, as it would have been far more conventional to lump together the two magazines, the limited series and the early issues of the ongoing series and not bother too much with the guest appearances. But instead an experiment was done in showing the development of the character, and it makes for an intriguing volume. I doubt they could have repeated this format too many times as it would lead to too many issues appearing multiple times, when many people buy multiple Essential volumes to build up an overall collection of classic Marvel runs and wouldn't react too favourably to being asked to keep buying the same material in new combinations. But as a one-off it's a nice approach.

Given this blog's primary focus it's fair to say that this volume's usefulness for the Spider-Man stories has rather diminished over time. When it came out it was the first time any of these issues had been Essentialised and so it offered an opportunity to get an advanced glimpse at them. Whilst this still applies for the Captain America and Daredevil issues, the volume now serves as a general sample of Spider-Man across ten years. The stories are generally good but the lack of the wider context to the many changes over the course of the decade means they can be confusing if one isn't familiar with the wider runs. However as an addition to those runs it serves as a good dip in and out.

Essential Spider-Man volume 8

We turn now to Essential Spider-Man volume 8 which reprints Amazing Spider-Man #161-185, Annual #11 and The Man called Nova #12, which contains half of Amazing‘s first-ever crossover with another title. As a bonus we also get the cover for Giant-Size Spider-Man #6 (an all reprint issue as the line entered its final days) and the entry on the Green Goblin from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

A quick word on Nova. This series lasted from 1976 to 1979 and featured a new young school student who suddenly gains special powers from aliens. (There’s a whole lot more about intergalactic police forces and things, but none of that comes up here.) It was an intentional homage to Spider-Man, and a less intentional homage to the Silver Age Green Lantern, created by Marv Wolfman (who wrote the series) and Len Wein.

Most of the stories in this volume are written by Wein, from #161-180, with Wolfman writing #182-185 and also the Nova issue. In between, we get a single issue by Bill Mantlo, who also scripts the main story in Annual #11 over a plot by Archie Goodwin. There’s also a short second story by Scott Edelman which is, I think, his only Spider-Man work. Almost all of the regular issues are drawn by Ross Andru apart from #181 which is by Sal Buscema, who also does the Nova issue. The main story in the annual is drawn by Don Perlin and the back up by John Romita Jr, doing his first ever Spider-Man work (although he had a thanks credit way back on Amazing #78 for suggesting the Prowler). What the above may not make too clear is that issue #181 is by the-then regular Spectacular team, and has all the hallmarks of a fill-in, right down to the preceding #180 announcing as next what turned out to be #182’s contents.

Publication-wise this is the period when the restraints on using Spider-Man really began to loosen. (As I’ve said previously, Spidey Super Stories doesn’t really count in this context.) We get the first ever crossover between Amazing and another title, whilst Spider-Man’s third regular title, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man launched the same month as Amazing #163. In addition Marvel Team-Up had its first annual just about the same time as Spectacular was launching, whilst the Amazing annual came out about the same time as the Nova crossover. And on top of all that 1976 also saw the publication of Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man. Whereas at the time of Giant-Size Spider-Man there was a notable restraint that, whether deliberately or not, prevented the character from appearing even three times in a single month, by 1977 such restraint was slipping out of the window. Okay it wasn’t yet at the point where Spider-Man had five monthly titles, most with annuals, a quarterly, various limited series and one-shots (some of which are essential chapters in the continuity) plus a few spin-off series and crossovers with other titles, but it was drifting that way.

(And if all that wasn’t enough this is also the period when The Amazing Spider-Man began on television. I’ve seen no more of that show than the odd clip on YouTube so I can’t comment on its quality (although other live action adaptations of Marvel characters were generally poorly received by fans until the Blade and X-Men movies, with the partial exception of The Incredible Hulk TV series). Overall it doesn’t seem to have overtly affected the comics – there was no attempt to introduce Captain Barbera or Julie Masters, let alone alter J. Jonah Jameson to match his screen portrayal – but from issue #184 onwards the legend “Marvel’s TV Sensation!” appeared on the cover of the issues. It may also have contributed to the decision to move Peter on from undergraduate to postgraduate study, though there had been a long running debate in the letter columns over whether he should graduate or not so this may just be a coincidence.)

The main saving grace of multiple titles and specials is if each of the various books has its own distinct niche and generally doesn’t require readers to pick up the other titles just to know what the heck’s going on. The latter was a problem back at the time of the original publication when most readers relied on newstand distribution but is equally a problem with the Essential series when the other titles may not yet have been reprinted, or else are not easily available on the bookshop shelves (and even when they are the price stacks up for multiple volumes) whether because they’re out of print or limited stock selection or whatever. In this regard Amazing does quite well at this stage (I’ll address the other titles when I get to those volumes), with only a few references to other books and the only “seen first elsewhere” appearance is the Hitman and it’s not really a problem. Far more of an issue is the return of Silvermane now restored to adulthood but noticeably younger and more active than before he sought to youthen himself. (This was covered in issue #123 of Daredevil, reprinted in Essential Daredevil #5.) The only other point of surprise is that in issue #173 Peter gets a letter stating he won’t be graduating this year due to too many failed grades, only to (almost) graduate in #185 – okay they’re a year apart publication-wise but the story speeds through far more quickly and presumably Peter made up (nearly) all the missing grades in night school, perhaps over in Spectacular but it’s not explicit.

I’ll start with the irregular material. Least essential is the cover to Giant-Size #6 – yet curiously the back cover reproduces it and trumpets a team-up with the Human Torch, suggesting copy written by someone unfamiliar with the contents – similarly Stan Lee is listed as an author on the front cover. The story in question originally saw print in Amazing Annual #4 and is available in either the original edition of Essential #4 or later editions of #3. The other single page is the Green Goblin’s Official Handbook entry from the early 1980s, possibly doubling as an unspoken advert for the Essential reprints of those. There’s a few new details in there such as birthplaces and physical statistics, but what really caught my eye is the absence of any reference to Norman Osborn having super strength due to the chemical explosion, suggesting this is a latter day retcon. Of the “bonus” stories, both pieces in Annual #11 are rather forgettable and whilst the main situations are new, some supporting events such as Mary Jane being left alone to her annoyance are starting to grate. Aunt May is shown at her most feisty as she goes protesting (more on this later), but compared to a similar scene in the regular issues it’s surprising her health can stand it.

The crossover with Nova may have been an important event in that title (or not, I’ve never read it but there is an Essential Nova reprinting the whole run), but from Spider-Man’s perspective it’s a completely ignorable story with no repercussions outside it. I wouldn’t be surprised if overseas reprints skipped it altogether. It just feels like a simple way to bring Marvel’s biggest and newest stars together. No real attempt is made to explore the similarities between the characters even though one hero’s uncle has just been killed. Really this story should have run in Team-Up but it was probably trying to boost sales on Nova.

The other unusual tale is #181, which as I noted above is a fill-in issue by the-then Spectacular team. It also feels like it was hanging around on file as it shows Aunt May up and about midway through an extended hospital stay, triggering a caption saying it takes place before all that. (However it may have been a rush commission – both Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema were particularly good at doing fast fill-in issues – and the error down to poor communication.) The story is a very simple vehicle for extended flashbacks to Spidey’s origin and the main characters in his world. It’s what the industry might now call a “jumping on” point that introduces all the extended details in one go. This might have been best run in Spectacular early on (ideally as the second story in a double-sized first issue but they didn’t do those back then), but here it can’t disguise its filler purpose.

What about the regular run? Well we’re on a roller coaster of events, but we also get one of my bugbears – subplots that appear very infrequently and take years to resolve. We get a particularly bad one here with the mystery of the Spider-Clone photos – back in issue #151 (in the previous volume) Spidey sensed he was being watched when disposing of the clone’s body. It’s not until issue #168 that we learn photos were taken to expose him, and it’s only in issue #180, over a year after Peter’s persuaded Jonah they’re fakes in #169, that we find out who took and sent them. It’s all too long given the overall importance of the incident. Another dangler comes in issue #170 when a mystery man rents Aunt May’s house, being willing to pay any price, but there’s no follow-up at all in the remaining fifteen issues in the volume. There’s a difference between carefully nurtured seeds and long forgotten ideas, and these veer towards the latter. On original reading it must have seemed an eternity between advancements (and even in the Essential era the time between volumes can mean more lengthy weights between threads).

Better handled are the developments relating to Harry Osborn and his psychiatrist, Dr Bart Hamilton, leading up to one of the best known stories in the volume, the third Green Goblin saga. It’s a good epic that combines may of the threads of Wein’s run, giving a suitable climax for most of the characters particularly Harry who finds redemption as he finally conquers the curse of the Green Goblin in a rather Freudian way and finds a happy ending. However we also get another round of Aunt May being taken ill by a sudden shock and I’ve lost count of just how many times that has been now. You can understand why some fans were just wishing she would just die and get it over with. And whilst Hamilton has a reason for his actions it’s still a Silver Age throwback “explanation” in lieu of a substantially fleshed out motive. Still it’s good to see a Green Goblin doing something other than torment Spider-Man/Peter for the first time in over 150 issues. Even if it is the same old “control the city’s underworld” aim – although that’s credible in the aftermath of the Kingpin’s apparent death in issue #164. And I don’t mind the killing off of the new Green Goblin – he’s a strictly one-story character and there’s always the possibility that one day something might make Harry re-don the costume so there’s no substantial loss.

The Kingpin drowning is equally not a problem as a standard “villain seemingly perishes but no body is seen” moment that doesn’t write the character off for good, comes at the end of another little epic, albeit one that doesn’t actually reveal itself as one until the final two issues where we learn that the Kingpin was behind schemes seen in various past issues as part of a master plan to bring his son Richard back from near death. This does, however, bring some more silly science and silly handling of scientists, as Spider-Man’s life force is transferred to Richard, then he staggers to Curt Connors’s who just happens to have the knowledge and equipment to temporarily re-energise him, then whip up a gadget to permanently recover the life-force. The whole transferable life-force idea sits uneasily with me anyway, but it’s also a bit silly that Connors seems to be an expert in just about any field of science that Spider-Man might have a major problem with, rather than a more specific biologist. Awkward problems often require such awkward solutions.

The other major ongoing thread are the developments in the life of J. Jonah Jameson as he continues his occasional schemes against Spider-Man, both trying to expose Spidey as having murdered Peter Parker and then taken his place (his interpretation of the Clone photos), and then he commissions a new Spider-Slayer, but this time from a different scientist, Marla Madison, and in the process is shown falling for a woman for the first time in the series. On a more tragic note he learns that his son is seemingly incurable of the Man-Wolf curse, giving us a chance to see a father’s grief. It’s good to see the character being developed beyond the easy cliché that he can so often be.

The series adds only a few villains to the Rouges’ Gallery and none of them are at all memorable for the right reasons – as well as the brief third Green Goblin and Spidey’s first encounter with Doctor Faustus (more normally a Captain America foe), we get just Jigsaw (although in the long run he’s more usually a Punisher foe), Will o’ the Wisp and the Rocket Racer in Wein’s issues. Marv Wolfman only has four issues in this volume but he gives us both the White Dragon and the Big Wheel. Yes stop laughing at the back. (It was quite a time for the sillier villains as the Big Wheel debuted just three months before the Hypno Hustler over in Spectacular.) Fans tend to split on the character between those who see him as a monumentally bad move for the series and those who just see a so-bad-he’s-good villain you have to laugh about. I’m inclined towards the former view as this isn’t a one-off story but a part of the continuing saga of the Rocket Racer (who, it has to be said, is another silly jump-on-the-latest-fad villain) and the storyline is presented in quite serious terms. Furthermore the same two issues we get a major development in Peter and Mary Jane’s relationship and really that shouldn’t be combined with intentional silliness.

That development comes as he asks her to marry him and she declines. Now the issue of Spider-Man marrying is always a touchy one that can set keyboards raging so for now I’ll primarily limit this to whether or not marriage was a good idea at this stage in the run. In my mind Peter Parker has always been the type who would settle down with the right woman if he met her and she would say yes. He may be young – only just about to graduate – but in a number of ways his values are those of an earlier generation. Remember he was raised by his aunt & uncle, a couple significantly older than most of his contemporaries’ parents – there are references in some stories that indicate they got engaged during the Great Depression. (And in the real world Peter Parker was created by two men both born in the 1920s. Stan Lee started work at 17 and got married in his mid twenties. Nobody seems to know anything about Steve Ditko’s personal life.) During his teenage years Peter was generally an extreme loner with the exception of his close relationship with his aunt & uncle. All of this points to his being quite likely to have an outlook on marriage that is at least a generation older than his contemporaries’, which probably includes couples not living together beforehand. And for a long time May (with some help from Anna) has played Cupid, introducing Peter and Mary Jane and then later encouraging both of them at key points – and here on her hospital bed she drops a blatant hint. Finally this is a time of great change for Peter as he’s about to graduate and move onto the next stage of his life and it’s understandable he doesn’t want to take that step on his own. So I can see this is entirely natural for Peter. And Mary Jane is a plausible wife – at this stage she is a university student and occasional actress, though as shown in Annual #11 in this volume her career is still at the crowd extra stage, who is on much the same level as Peter. Whilst she has her flaky, party loving side we’ve also seen a more serious side to her, as she’s come to care not just for Peter but also for May over their troubles – and she picks up on May’s hints faster than Peter. Ultimately at this point there would be nothing implausible about the two taking the next stage. Would it have aged Spider-Man? Well Spider-Man had been ageing for a while anyway – he started off midway through high school and the proposal comes just before he graduates with his first degree – a pretty major step forward in a person’s life. A couple being married in their 20s don’t automatically age overnight so from one perspective a marriage at this stage between these characters would have been quite workable and a natural development. Plus marriage was present in Peter’s circle of friends already, with Ned and Betty having tied the knot only recently, whilst Harry and Liz were now engaged and involved in wedding planning. So it’s not as if either marriage or changes to the status quo were alien to the series.

But Mary Jane says no, stating that she’s too free a spirit to be tied down. Which again is plausible. We don’t actually know very much about her background and family at this stage beyond having been a regular visitor to her Aunt Anna rather than being raised by her, and she’s less likely to have grown up being isolated from all but her parents, natural or de facto. So whilst Peter has the views and expectations of May’s generation, Mary Jane’s outlook is far more that of a younger generation where people were more cautious about rushing into marriage at so early an age. Plus there’s the elephant in the room or rather the Spider – could Peter really marry Mary Jane without revealing his identity to her first? After all several of his foes had already worked it out and this was the reason Gwen died. In the real world there are many married police officers et al, with spouses potentially at risk of reprisals, but they know about their spouses’ careers and have made an informed choice over a period of time. Could Peter really have gone through with this without telling her? The track record on married heroes is mixed in this regard but it’s one that would have to have been faced. Whereas Aunt May’s health was a justification for not telling her, with Mary Jane there could be no such excuse and that could have been the stumbling point, especially if he suddenly sprung it on her.

Finally from the point of view of story possibilities a marriage at this time would have cut off various options. At this point Spider-Man had not yet had any relationship in his costumed identity or even had any woman developing a crush on him. There were also other possibilities to explore for Peter Parker, such as an ex on the rebound. Which we get almost immediately with the return of Betty Brant Leeds who has found life with Ned in Paris impossible to take and so she returns to New York and seeks out Peter. Coming in the penultimate issue of the volume we naturally don’t get very far with it, but there are hints that she wants to renew things with Peter, whilst he is worried about where it’s going. In my review of the previous volume I noted my surprise at Peter serving as Ned’s best man, but here that brings a potential additional angle to these developments as there’s probably no-one it’s more hurtful to lose your wife to than your best man.

The remaining tales in this volume are more incidental, but still generate thrills and excitement as we charge through events. The very last story is a short six-page affair sees two major developments, one in the narrative and the other in production. Ross Andru did a five-year run on the title and bows out here (and largely stayed bowed out from Spider-Man for the rest of his life, drawing only a couple of annuals and a graphic novel in later years). He’s not the greatest Spider-Man artist of all time, but he brought to Amazing both an ability to maintain strong visual continuity with what had gone before and a solid dramatic style that complemented the action over five eventful years. Thus he leaves big shoes to fill.

In-story the final development is Peter Parker graduating – or not as the case may be! He’s one measly credit short because he failed to take a gym class – of all the things for Spider-Man to miss! But he can take that final class over the summer, and so we get a final page as Peter stands on the university steps facing the future with confidence. All in all this volume is a strong one with only a few individual lapses that don’t detract from the energy moving the series forward.

(Apologies for a rather longer piece than usual, but given one of the topics raised by this volume I felt extra space was needed to do it justice.)

Omitted material: Giant-Size Spider-Man 3

As I’ve noted in my reviews of the Essentials so far there are a handful of comics excluded, usually because Marvel no longer has the rights to print some of the guest stars. So occasionally, I’ll take a little diversion from the regular series to look at some of these issues. In that vein today I’m going to look at Giant-Size Spider-Man #3, written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Ross Andru, which contains a (sort-of) team-up with Doc Savage (and also a reprint of Amazing #16 but I covered that back with Essential Spider-Man volume 1).

Doc Savage is another character I can’t recall ever hearing about outside of this series so I did a little digging. He was the star of a long running series of pulp magazines in the 1930s and 1940s, which were later reprinted as paperback books in the 1960s through 1990s, and popped up in several other media over the years including radio and comics, with Marvel adapting a number of the books in the early 1970s. Less than a year after Giant-Size Spider-Man #3 came out, there was a movie Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze and Marvel (under the Curtis Magazines label) produced eight issues of a tie-in magazine comic. Nowadays DC own the rights to the character and have actually reprinted those eight issues in their Showcase Presents series (the equivalent of the Essentials). But it’s much harder to easily reprint what is now effectively an inter-company crossover.

The character himself is an adventurer/scientist who has been trained to excellence in numerous fields from birth. His skin isn’t actually made of bronze – I think it’s just tanned – and he operates from an office on the 86th floor of an unnamed New York City skyscraper, which is normally implicitly the Empire State Building but the art in this particular issue suggests otherwise. Doc Savage is frequently accompanied by up to five aides, later billed as “The Fabulous Five”, known as Ham, Johnny, Long Tom, Monk and Renny. All are skilled in particular fields. And this is all more information than you get in the issue itself.

This is a general irritation of mine that often guest stars are featured with a heavy assumption of familiarity. Now I’m writing this over 37 years after the issue was printed and I don’t live in the country of origin so maybe every American reader at the end of 1974 could be expected to know all about Doc Savage as much as, say, the Human Torch. But this issue was reprinted in the UK (in the Spider-Man Annual 1977) and Marvel would later have a key philosophy that “every issue is someone’s first” so I don’t think it unreasonable to expect better introductions.

Storywise this is an incredibly simplistic tale but told in an awkward flow that throws up internal contradictions. As it’s not too widely available, I’ll quickly summarise it:

Spider-Man is summoned to the site of a building due to be demolished by Desinna, a lady from a parallel dimension, who seeks his help and tells, via a projection, of her visit back in 1934 when the building was constructed. Back then she enlisted the help of Doc Savage and his aides to fight Tarros, a renegade scientist from her own dimension who through an accident had become a monstrous electrical aura. In the present day, Spider-Man fights off an appearance of Tarros through disrupting his electrical field by throwing a jackhammer into him. Back in 1934, Doc Savage and his aides eventually sealed Tarros in a cadmium foundation stone, but in the present day the demolition of the building is expected to release him again. Having heard the rest of Desinna’s story, Spidey picks up the jackhammer again and demolishes the foundation stone, declaring that he can sense the pain, and knows enough linguistics, to realise Tarros was only angry with Desinna and not the rampaging monster she claimed. Spidey comments on the different values of his era and Doc Savage’s – in Savage’s day “women were supposed to be demure little things, but nowadays we don’t take anything for granted.” The story ends with Tarros pulling Desinna home and Spidey swinging away, imagining Doc Savage and the five smiling approvingly at him for righting an old wrong.

To be blunt this is one of the worst Spider-Man “team-ups” I’ve read. It’s not completely necessary for the two leads in a story to meet but it’s a hard trick to pull off successfully. Here we get an incoherent mess because of the switching between timezones to keep both heroes in the picture, with the result that we get an appearance of Tarros in the present day before he’s been released which makes no sense at all. The tale itself is extremely simplistic and doesn’t deserve the extended 33 pages. Maybe the original Doc Savage pulps were over simplistic and formulaic, but by the 1970s one would expect so much more. And Spider-Man’s comments about how women were regarded in the 1930s? Again they’re vastly over-simplistic, though they may at least reflect the values of the original Doc Savage pulps.

All in all I don’t think this is a great loss to the Essentials and I hope its absence doesn’t give it a mythical status it doesn’t deserve.

(However the story could have benefited in a couple of areas from an Essential reprint. Both Desinna and Tarros are completely miscoloured on the cover compared to the inside pages, and black & white would have hidden that. There are also a few cases of printer errors where one of the colour plates, usually dark blue, has slipped out of line on an individual page creating misplaced blobs. The Essentials invariably filter out these.)

Essential Spider-Man volume 7

We come to Essential Spider-Man volume 7 which reprints Amazing Spider-Man #138-160, Annual #10 and Giant-Size Spider-Man #4-5. However it’s missing Giant-Size #3, due to rights problems as it contains a team-up with Doc Savage, a licensed character Marvel no longer has the rights for. This is the first of a handful of omissions in the Essential series, though whether it’s because the fees for use are too high or because current licenses make it simply impossible to clear regardless of money I have no idea. Fortunately, the story isn’t of any great significance and so can be easily skipped.

The volume covers the end of Gerry Conway’s run, ending with #149 and including the two Giant-Size issues, and begins Len Wein’s run with issue #151, including the Annual. In between, we get a single issue by Archie Goodwin. The art is mainly by Ross Andru with the exception of issue #150 and the annual by Gil Kane, and two other issues (#154-155) by Sal Buscema. As the credits suggest, the issues of Giant-Size reprinted here are a bit more integrated into the Amazing continuity, whereas the earlier ones shared Marvel Team-Up‘s then-writer and continuity. The Goodwin/Kane issue has credits suggesting a fill-in but it’s actually a very important part of the continuity, which I’ll come to a little later.

Otherwise it’s worth nothing that issues #140-149 coincided with Gerry Conway’s second run on Marvel Team-Up and thus was the last time a single writer handled all Spider-Man’s ongoing appearances. (Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man didn’t launch until the same month as Amazing #163.) There’s slightly more acknowledgement of Team-Up than usual with direct references across the two books to the encounters with the Scorpion (Amazing #145-146) and the Meteor Man (Team-Up #33-34) taking place back to back, with Team-Up #33 explicitly taking place between identified panels of Amazing #145. However we don’t get any direct crossovers between the two books and it’s possible to read one and not the other. In an era when most comics were purchased on the newsstands with mixed distribution, crossovers were a risky affair because not all readers could be expected to have reasonable access to all the titles involved. And even if they can, crossovers bring greater expense for those not regularly buying all the titles. But crossovers also risk trampling on individual titles’ own identity and ideally each book should have its own raison d’être. That’s a theme I may return for later volumes.

Amongst the new villains introduced are the Mindworm, the Grizzly, a new Mysterio, the Cyclone and the Fly, but none of them are really major long threats. And this brings up one of my bugbears – the casual killing off of major villains, just to replace them with ill-conceived successors. Whereas with the earlier (temporary) replacement of the Vulture there was at least a desire to have a younger version of the character, there is no particularly compelling reason for the replacement of Mysterio beyond creating a shock cliff-hanger of the revelation of the original’s death. And we don’t even get a dramatic death, just a statement of the fact long afterwards. It’s the beginning of the “off panel developments” that try to speed the storytelling up but just succeed in irritating.

There are a few other villains’ deaths in the volume but they’re handled more traditionally. Hammerhead is brought back from the dead in a fairly ludicrous way as an intangible ghost-like being who tricks Spider-Man and Dr Octopus (whose return is at least comic book science plausible – he found an escape chute and wrapped his steel arms round him) into using a device that restores him as a physical living being. The whole thing is silly enough (and it’s never really properly explained just how Hammerhead could become such a being) but the idea that a gangster throwback like Hammerhead has the scientific knowledge to engineer his resurrection just takes it even further. However at the end of the storyline his helicopter crashes into the river but there’s no body and so in the traditional manner he could easily come back. The Jackal’s death is clearly intended to be a permanent affair, but as he’s only been around for twenty issues and largely used in a single extended story arc he stands out more as a one off character – and indeed death preserves his dignity rather than turning him into a run of the mill recurring adversary. The revelation of his identity is a bit of a surprise and I honestly find it a little difficult to accept that an ageing college lecturer could be the Jackal, especially as he didn’t gain special powers or anything – the villain is physically highly agile and also has great access to resources that would be beyond the average lecturer’s salary. Now back in the Silver Age it was one of the conventions that all supervillains gained the additional abilities to produce their own costumes and equipment no matter their powers or background, but the further one gets from that age the sillier this convention gets. As for the storyline behind Miles Warren’s descent into the Jackal I find it actually quite believable (though as ever one has to accept the comic book science for what it is) – a lot of childless lecturers and teachers do find themselves looking at their students almost as the children they never had and a sudden unexpected death can be a shock. For someone who had developed the ability to reproduce life the opportunity to try and overturn the tragedy – and the horror at nearly being stopped would bring a natural violent reaction and subsequent descent into the madness of the Jackal is understandable.

What about the Clone Saga itself? Well it’s the most notorious story in this volume, but on reflection it’s actually not as large as it seems. We get the steady build up of who the mystery woman is and the effect she has on those around her (including shocking Aunt May into yet another hospital bout – was she ever going to die?), but these are background events to fights with the Cyclone and Scorpion. The Jackal’s revenge only takes up three issues, with the Spider-clone appearing in just one and even then purely to provide a fight sequence, and the story is primarily about dealing with the ghost of Gwen Stacy rather than about introducing confusion about who is who. The latter point is dealt with in the course of a single issue as the surviving Spider-Man wonders if he’s the original or the clone, but eventually realises he’s the original because of his emotional response to Mary Jane. It’s a single issue that settles the matter, even if it was seemingly forgotten in the mid 1990s (amazingly so when one learns that a Marvel Milestone reprint of it was actually put out bagged with one of the regular issues during the 1990s Clone Saga) and there’s broadly a clear deck as Len Wein takes over.

The relationship with Mary Jane is steadily built up over Conway’s later issues, with the two finally kissing as Peter departs for Paris, but the seeming return of Gwen Stacy places a major obstacle in their paths. Following on from my comments on volume 6 about what Gwen represented, it’s perhaps fitting that the final scene of Conway’s run sees Peter and Mary Jane going into his flat and closing the door behind them (remember this was still an era when things weren’t so explicit but it’s clear what’s happening – this is also widely reckoned to be Peter’s first time).

As well as these major developments we also get several more straightforward adventures, with some particular good moments in a two-parter with the Scorpion that shows Spider-Man at his angriest but also has a hilarious epilogue as the Scorpion is forced to apologise to Aunt May for frightening her – and gets an earful from her, including the declaration that he’s worse than Spider-Man. It’s a good reminder that the Scorpion is perhaps the villain most like Spider-Man gone wrong – an ordinary man whose gained powers based on an insect but who lacks responsibility and is just out for himself. This may also be why some more explicitly spider-derived villains like the Tarantula don’t work so well, as they’re more derived from the costume and insect name rather than deeper elements of the character.

Another point not handled so well is Spider-Man’s appearance in Paris. The coincidence of Spider-Man showing up in distant cities and countries that Peter Parker is visiting is one that’s always been awkwardly handled. Here Spider-Man makes an initial effort to avoiding being seen by Joe Robertson, even going to the point of knocking Robbie back out, but once he’s spotted he has to resort to remote controlled tape recorders to make it seem both he and Peter are present. Now maybe it would be too much of a stretch in a book entitled Spider-Man, but I would experiment with giving Peter a nondescript second identity as a totally mysterious figure who could do the heavy lifting overseas without the risk of the red and blue giving things away. Here it just strains belief that Robbie hasn’t figured out the identity (and his reaction in other issues, particularly the Annual when the Fly shows up at the Bugle, suggests he hasn’t), even if Jonah is too obsessed to work it out.

As well as the regular issues we get two Giant-Size issues, though as noted above one other has been omitted. However I didn’t really notice its omission, especially considering the two that are included. One of them gives us a rather forgettable team-up with the Punisher that takes Spidey well out of his normal element to fight an international arms dealer with the battle ending in the South American jungle and Spidey being taken home by UN authorities – is this the same Spider-Man who spends much of his time fleeing the authorities in New York?! The other is an encounter with the Lizard and the Man-Thing in the Florida swamps that feels a bit of a retread of old material, though material set back in New York does advance the Gwen Stacy subplot.

The second half of the volume covers the beginning of Len Wein’s run on the title. It’s here that we get what has become another irritating feature of comics – the tendency for long running mysteries and subplots that leak out a few panels at a time before being seemingly forgotten about for months at a time. We also get some good developments, particularly the return of Harry Osborn and the start of his relationship with Liz Allen, and some long awaited events such as the wedding of Ned Leeds and Betty Brant, where curiously Peter serves as best man and Mary Jane as matron of honour. Leaving aside Peter and Betty’s history making that awkward, Peter and Ned have never been shown as such close friends that this would be a natural choice. Yes Ned is a poorly sketched out character about whom we know very little (which is probably why contemporary readers repeatedly suspected him of being various mystery villains) and crucially we’ve never seen his friendships outside the Bugle and Betty, but it just feels like convention for the sake of convention (although in later years it would give an added edge to certain events).

I’ve already covered the silliness of Hammerhead’s return, whilst we also get Doctor Octopus still turning to Aunt May as yet another writer continues this rather unbelievable state of affairs. Otherwise the main stories here are a mixture of short events, though several see matters being manipulated by the same unseen villain, and we get everything from the tragedy of issue #153 as an ex football star turned computer scientist dies saving his daughter to the comedy of the final showdown with the Spider-Mobile. Once again I’m surprised at just how little Spider-Man’s car was ever actually used – was this down to the writers actively resisting it, or did the merchandising agreements fall through meaning no toy was ever produced to need promoting? (A quick internet search shows no sign of one.)

Annual #10 sees a newly written story for the first time in eight years, though it’s not the most original of tales as we get the introduction of the Fly, in a somewhat recycled plot as J. Jonah Jameson decides that what’s needed to bring down Spider-Man is a new superhero and turns to the brother of the Scorpion’s creator, only for a fugitive criminal to get in on the act. Whilst in the early years Jonah’s hatred of Spider-Man could naturally lead to the financing of such projects, it’s hard to believe he hasn’t finally learnt his lesson by now and resorted to more subtle methods such as investigators (particularly given the number of characters who’ve by now worked out the places where Spider-Man is most likely to be found). Jonah is a tricky character to handle who can descend into parody at times (in particular watch as Robbie counts the number of secretaries he goes through after Betty Brant leaves upon marrying Ned) but surely some steps forward can be taken?

As I’ve indicated somewhat, I find this volume more so-so than many of its predecessors. In some regards the series is beginning to tread water again with a number of good individual tales but other than the Clone Sage there are generally repetitive and/or silly developments. Now this may be part of the curse of reading by the Essential volume as plot arcs get cut off arbitrarily, but some of the developments in story telling such as off panel deaths of major villains and random scenes setting up subplots that are then left aside for many issues, are ones that tend to irritate far more than they reward.

Essential Spider-Man volume 6

The next volume under consideration is Essential Spider-Man volume 6 which reprints Amazing Spider-Man #114-137, plus Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1 & Giant-Size Spider-Man #1-2. First, a quick word about the latter books.

The Giant-Size titles were a brief lived Marvel line, which combined new extra long stories with classic reprints, all at a higher price (and later went over to all reprints before finishing completely). Some of them tied into the relevant regular comic quite well – for instance Giant-Size Avengers advanced the Celestial Madonna storyline considerably – but some were completely stand-alone. Giant-Size Spider-Man is a little unusual in that continuity-wise it’s closer to Marvel Team-Up than Amazing Spider-Man, but apart from the first issue tying in with Team-Up #23 it’s not particularly noticeable, hence the ongoing debate over which series it should be collected with. Looking back it’s easy to see why they didn’t last – readers were paying twice as much as a regular issue but not getting twice as much new story, whilst they also relied on retailers carrying them alongside the regular series – a familiar problem to later generations. In the 1990s Marvel tried something similar with the Unlimited line, which lasted a bit longer.

Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1 appears to have been the prototype for the line, as the series was quickly replaced with named individual titles. This issue unfortunately suffers from being the only one in this volume to be reproduced from printed pages, as opposed to the separations used elsewhere. I guess that’s the curse of being a single-issue series without the hero’s name in the recorded title and thus an easy target for clearing out the archives. Otherwise the issues are reproduced quite well, with no obvious howlers.

Nominally we’ve reached a period when Spider-Man now had three regular titles – or indeed four if we include Spidey Super Stories. However there were sufficient exceptions that this didn’t happen in reality. Marvel Team-Up adopted the practice of instead starring the Human Torch in the same months as Giant-Size Spider-Man was published. And Spidey Super Stories was the first example of a Spider-Man comic that was outside the regular continuity, being aimed at a very different audience altogether. It was a simple comic of very short stories designed to help young children learn to read and was produced to tie in with Spider-Man’s appearances on television in a segment of The Electric Company for much the same effect. But because all of this was aimed at a very different audience with no impact on the regular titles, it doesn’t really count as excessive use of the character. (That said, in about 1984 Marvel UK decided that the audience for their weekly Spider-Man comic was too young for the current US material, and were especially worried about Spider-Man’s costume change. So they dropped the reprints of the latest US stories in favour of other material including Spidey Super Stories and after a year and a half the title folded. If you’ve ever been horrified by some of the many things Marvel US has done to try to make the character “younger” and “more accessible”, it could have been so much worse.)

Turning back to the main series, all the stories in this volume are written by Gerry Conway with the exceptions of Amazing #116-118, which carries an amended reprint of Spectacular Spider-Man magazine #1 by Stan Lee, but with modifications by Conway to place it in the current continuity and add some mystery, and Giant-Size Spider-Man #1 & 2 which are by Len Wein, the-then regular writer on Marvel Team-Up The art is by a mixture of John Romita, Gil Kane and Ross Andru.

Quite a lot happens in these issues with several ongoing themes including the war between Doctor Octopus and Hammerhead, the death of Gwen Stacy and the steadily growing bond between Peter and Mary Jane, the death of the original Green Goblin, Norman Osborn, and his son Harry’s descent into madness as the new Green Goblin, and the creation of the Spider-Mobile. On top of all that we get many other individual stories. In general the run is pretty solid with peaks of excitement, particularly issues #121 & 122 which carry probably the most famous of all Spider-Man stories – The Night Gwen Stacy Died/The Goblin’s Last Stand.

So much has been written about these two issues that it’s hard to know what to add. For many this is the end of the Silver Age and it’s not hard to see why – the Silver Age comics operated in an innocent, clean, almost childlike world where the hero would always triumph, the girl would always be saved and so forth, and on another level where the real world didn’t intrude so much. Now the Spider-Man series up to this point had defied that last bit somewhat, featuring everything from school bullying to drug taking to the atrocities of the Vietnam War, so in one regard you can ask just how innocent the Spider-Man stories really were. That said there are aspects where I think the Silver Age fantasy rules did still apply (and where later retcons have trodden all over them). Much has been written about Peter Parker’s sex life and whether Gwen Stacy was still a virgin (at least until “Sins Past” came along). I’m going to go with that she was and thus they had never done it – not because of forensic analysis of the number of stories where Peter calls at her home and is explicitly shown leaving etc..., but rather because of the whole ideal of childhood innocence that the Silver Age comics embody is at odds with it. Attempts to retroactively flesh Gwen out into a “real character” appropriate for today’s comic audience thus miss the point – she’s a part of the Age of Innocence and her death symbolises the death of that age.

The story is a little rushed and there are some omissions that are surprising from a modern perspective. Gwen and Peter’s last moments together take place off-panel, and our last image of a conscious Gwen is as she stands alone in Peter & Harry’s flat just as the Goblin shows up in the distance. She’s unconscious throughout the fight – not a person, just an object to be fought over – and dies without knowing why she’s been kidnapped. If the story were told today there would be far more focus on Gwen, giving her a send-off and yes, she would die knowing her boyfriend was Spider-Man (in fact she’d probably have known for some time by now) and that’s why she’d been targeted.

There’s also a bit of repetitiveness here. Harry is on drugs again – okay addiction isn’t something you just press a reset button on and get cured but it seems a little easy to keep turning to it as a way of creating problems for the Osborns, and only for that purpose. The Green Goblin is also becoming ridiculously clichéd – this the third time Norman Osborn suffers a breakdown that makes him remember he’s the Green Goblin and must dispose of Spider-Man/Peter Parker. The villain had done nothing else for over ninety issues and was becoming tired. Sometimes I wonder why the Green Goblins are considered Spider-Man’s greatest enemies when for much of their history they’re not terribly effective villains. Yes they have spectacular moments, and the long term effects of Norman Osborn’s legacy were pretty devastating, but as recurring foes they generally lack that something that conventional arch enemies have on each appearance. The edge of being responsible for the death of the hero’s girlfriend is blunted by the Green Goblin being killed off in the very next issue – also incidentally a sign that not all the Silver Age conventions were gone just yet, in later years he’d have flown away without meeting justice. I’m in two minds about this – leaving aside the convention of the villain meeting a deserved fate, he was a worn-out character, but on the other hand it was the real beginning (after a false step with the Vulture) of the process of killing off too many members of the rogues’ gallery without providing adequate long-term replacements.

Needless to say the story is still a strong one that deserves its impact on the whole genre.

The volume picks up where the previous one left off in the midst of the Doctor Octopus/Hammerhead conflict as they fight to be the new crime lord of New York. Now just how many villains have wanted this? Hammerhead at least comes with an explanation as we learn how he has no memories of before his surgery and he is now driven by his imagination of Prohibition era gangster movies. But Doctor Octopus is an archenemy without a great purpose who needs more development. And not the development we get – his relationship with Aunt May, leading up to their unsuccessful wedding. Erm... well... yes... Okay they do have a history of fondness for one another, going right back to the first annual, but I have a hard time accepting that May would so readily agree to marriage, especially without telling Peter or Anna Watson. And the coincidence of her inheriting the island complete with nuclear power plant and uranium mine? Sorry, I just find it all too silly.

This run of issues introduces several new villains as well, including Hammerhead, Jonas Harrow, the Tarantula, the Man-Wolf and the Jackal. The last remains an unknown quantity by the end of this particular volume, but there’s a sense of big things to come. However of even greater significance is the arrival of the Punisher. And he’s quite some way from the most familiar portrayal of the character. We don’t find out much about him at this stage (despite #135’s cover promising his origin) and he’s not yet at the stage of casually gunning down every criminal going, but with hindsight there’s something odd about the way Spider-Man is twice willing to team up with him, or for that matter do little about the bullets flying around.

Going the other way, as well as the original Green Goblin we also see the seeming deaths of Doctor Octopus and Hammerhead when a nuclear power plant explodes, and the Kangaroo whose arrogance and stupidity leads him to leap into a nuclear furnace. As deaths go, these aren’t as dramatic as the Goblin’s, and there are no bodies shown, so it’s hard to say if these were intended to be anything more than typical “villain seemingly perishes but will return” moments, though I don’t think this Kangaroo ever returned.

On the villain replacement front, we briefly get a new Vulture. For some reason many Spidey writers have tried to either transform the Vulture or replace him altogether, but have never managed to make the new versions stick (and sometimes in story the original has returned to dispose of the replacements). Perhaps some villains just can’t be replaced.

Not that writers stop trying. The other story arc involves Harry Osborn’s descent into becoming the new Green Goblin. On paper there’s a lot to be said for the idea, as it makes for even more tension in the conflict than when Norman rode the glider. But Harry doesn’t quite live up to expectations. Sure he concocts an elaborate threat and presents Spidey with a real challenge, but there is something lacking at this stage. The idea of replacing the father with a vengeful son would be revisited a few times, most notably with Spencer and Alistair Smythe, but here it’s not just yet developed.

In addition we see the return of Liz Allen after over a hundred issues, with the revelation that she is the step-sister of the Molten Man. That revelation is reasonably believable (she’s hardly the first supporting character to have a villain in the family), but her return also brings some poor continuity about the high school years, with statements that Mary Jane knew Peter and Liz during those years, that Liz and Mary Jane didn’t get on, that Peter fought Flash over Liz, and then that Peter and Liz were an item until she broke off and disappeared. None of this really matches what we saw in those years – Peter and Flash may have clashed over Liz but it was down to her flirting to make Flash (and Betty) jealous, and she was the one with the unrealised crush. This is a fairly major change in the continuity, and ultimately unnecessary. I presume the idea was to have an ex-girlfriend back on the scene as a potential spanner in the works of Peter and Mary Jane, but there’s none of this in sight and instead Liz rapidly slots into the group of friends without any tensions.

Now I have no idea how accessible the Ditko years were to the average reader in 1974. It may have been the case that there had been no substantial reprint run and one could only read the early days if they’d been reading and keeping since 1962, and thus few people would have noticed or cared at the time. (The fact that issues #116-118 could get away with a modified reprint of a story from about four years earlier doesn’t actually tell us much on this score as the Spectacular Spider-Man magazine was a flop with poor distribution.) But even if that was the case it’s still sloppy to make such an alteration to the characters’ back stories and thus the story potentials from them. (And nothing much was actually done with the changes – but was this more sloppiness or did someone point the error out?)

We get several guest stars from other Marvel titles, despite Spider-Man now having a dedicated own series for such encounters. Of these, the Hulk storyline contains a memorable battle and does at least work with the flow of the ongoing storyline. So too does the appearance of Luke Cage as Spider-Man faces the accusation of murdering Norman Osborn. I am not particularly familiar with either Cage or the black stereotypes of the era so I’m not well placed to comment on whether he’s a stereotypical or mould break character, other than to say I didn’t notice anything I’m aware is perceived as insulting. The Giant-Size Spider-Man issues offer us Dracula and Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung-Fu. These came during waves of horror & martial arts crazes and now stand out as tie-ins, with somewhat hackneyed plots. The former story also sees Spidey easily borrowing a plane from the Fantastic Four in order to reach a liner at sea. I’m not too keen on the idea of Spider-Man having such easy access to equipment. This is probably why the Spider-Mobile is used so sparingly – it’s an awkward commercial intrusion into Spider-Man’s life (as indeed it was in the real world) and doesn’t add much other than some comedy.

The one other moment that caught my eye is Mary Jane’s dilemma about reporting her witnessing of a murder, and the implication that a silent witness is almost as bad, given Conway’s late 1980s storyline involving the consequences of a similar situation. It’s very easy to pontificate on such a situation from the comfort of a keyboard, without having to face the consequences of either reprisals or the law (or both), but confidence in witness protection is so often lacking, resulting in many never coming forward.

In terms of inclusions and omissions, it was sensible in my opinion to retain the Richard Raleigh storyline, even though it’s pretty weak and doesn’t make a great deal of sense, as it hadn’t previously been reprinted in the original Essential run (although subsequent new editions have changed that). Some changes have been made here, the main one being that the crooked Raleigh now does his villainous activity in disguise as the Disruptor, a rather forgettable villain. Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1 also fits in quite well, even though I’m no fan of Morbius or the Man Wolf, but Giant-Size Spider-Man would probably have been better off in the relevant Marvel Team-Up volumes. The one thing I might have included that isn’t here is King-Size Spider-Man #9 which despite the name is in fact the ninth Amazing annual. This is another (truncated) reprint but of Spectacular Spider-Man magazine #2, a rare Green Goblin story that up to this point hadn’t to my knowledge been seen anywhere else despite being set-up in the regular continuity of the series. This should have been reprinted back in Essential Spider-Man #4, and indeed was in the later editions, but this would have been the first chance to right that wrong.

All in all this is a generally solid run and possibly the single most significant period for Spider-Man after Stan Lee stopped writing the character. It does have its bizarre moments such as Doc Ock & Aunt May or the Man Wolf, showing that every writer can have their bad moments, but these are more than outweighed by the high drama points. And it’s worth noting that the volume ends at one of those rare points in Spider-Man’s history when just about all the ongoing plots have been resolved (the Jackal is just a villain on the loose rather than a mystery identity at this point). It’s perhaps the end of the first long era of Spider-Man, an era in which so many of the traditions and conventions had been broken.