Essential Power Man and Iron Fist volume 2 - creator labels

We have yet another volume with lots of creators so here's a separate post to carry the labels for them.

Essential Ghost Rider volume 3 - creator labels

Once more there's a volume with a lot of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for them.

Essential Moon Knight volume 2

Essential Moon Knight volume 2 carries issues #11-30 of his first series. Most of the issues are written by Doug Moench with some back-ups and/or fill-ins by Jack C. Harris, Alan Zelenetz, Denny O'Neil and Steven Grant. The art is mainly by Bill Sienkiewicz with other contributions, mainly on back-ups, by Denys Cowan, Jimmy Janes, Vicente Alcazar, Greg LaRocque, Keith Pollard, Joe Brozowski and Kevin Nowlan.

Issue #15 represents a minor landmark in US comics history as it saw the series shifted to become a direct market only title, also receiving an increase in both pages and price. Together with Ka-Zar and Micronauts, the title had experienced strong sales in comic shops but poor returns on the newsstands and this move allowed each series to survive and even specialise without the restrictions of the newsstands - for one thing the Comics Code Authority stamp disappears after issue #15. However it also made the title inaccessible to those without easy access to a comic shop (and there were several reasons why subscriptions weren't a viable solution for all) and it effectively marked the beginning of a slow market retreat to the ghettos of the comic shops. In cases where a book appealed primarily to the niche of buyers that had already moved over to the direct market it doubtlessly made more sense to do this than try to raise newsstand sales but in the long term it contributed to much of the industry deserting a broader market and making it harder to recruit new readers to keep up overall interest.

However the direct market switch brings with it a much more experimental approach. Story lengths now vary considerably, ranging from lengthy multi-part epics to stories that only take up part of a single issue. The rear of the issues are sometimes enhanced by features such as editorials, commentary by creators, guides to equipment, galleries of images and so forth. Even the covers experiment a bit including a striking black and white cover on issue #24, reproduced as the volume's cover. Only two guest stars appear in the direct market only issues and one is the Werewolf, appropriately returning after the conclusion of his own series to now encounter its breakout character. The character's intervening time is explained by having been on the run from a cult. The other is Brother Voodoo, stepping out of a similar limbo to appear in a story set in Haiti complete with zombies. Daredevil and his foe the Jester appear in one of the last issues also available on newsstands, and the Thing makes a two-page cameo billed on the cover of one of the first direct market only issues (an appearance probably planned when the series was still on general release) but otherwise the series keeps very much to itself. Again this makes sense given the direct market only format as it could needlessly annoy newsstand fans of other characters to deny them the chance to see a guest appearance. And the Micronauts and Ka-Zar, the only other characters for whom this would not be an issue, are not exactly naturals to appear in the grim and gritty world Moon Knight inhabits.

In contrast to the turmoil of the first volume, this one shows a remarkable degree of stability with a firm focus of the character's crime fighting side, with occasional dipping into his mercenary past but with the Egyptian deity elements largely confined to statues that may have powers or it may just be the beliefs of those around them. The supporting cast is primarily that already established albeit with the addition of Detective Flint, a police officer who regularly supplies Moon Knight with information. For the most part the supporting characters remain on the sidelines though the very first issue here deals with Frenchie's revenge when an ex-girlfriend reappears only to be murdered for failing to deliver a supply of cocaine.

Marlene is the main exception, with some prominent roles throughout the run and her continuing displeasure with the way Moon Knights various identities are becoming personas in their own right, feeling that she has helped create a monster. One storyline sees her brother Peter, a doctor, suffering at the hands of his patients who has been twisted by drugs into Morpheus, a being who cannot voluntarily sleep and who can project nightmares into others via a mental link with Peter. At first it seems that Morpheus could be a recurring foe but his powers are neutralised in his return appearance when Peter exploits the link to feedback psionic energy, dying in the process. Marlene's grief is wisely not dwelt on but it adds to her growing dissatisfaction with Moon Knight's approach and identities to the point where she decides to leave him. When new foe the Black Spectre turns out to be an outside candidate for Mayor, Marlene agrees to go under cover but comes to believe in Carson Knowles and sees Moon Knight's public accusations as persecution. She subsequently discovers the truth and returns to him but it's a reminder of how strong and independent she can be. In another storyline she winds up taking the job of bodyguard for a terrorist and the series all but shows her sleeping with him as part of her mission. The character is a far cry from the average superhero girlfriend.

And Moon Knight is not the average superhero. His identity crisis continues to bubble away, with ever increasing - and sometimes contradictory - insistence that he is any particular persona at a precise moment, to the confusion of those around him. During his second encounter with Morpheus he experiences a nightmare in which Steven Grant, Jake Lockley and Marc Spector all attack him, showing up his worst nightmare. Later on Grant is sitting at home when he witnesses a vision of Marc Spector angrily lashing out at others but unable to finish himself off, with Grant commenting that through Moon Knight they are all paying for Spector's sins. Of all his identities it's Marc Spector that he tries to avoid the most, yet Spector is his original persona. For the most part Moon Knight seems able to keep on top of the confusion but there are indications that he may eventually break down into a mess of contradictory and warring selves. Otherwise the character continues in what appears to be a Batman mould but coming out some years before Frank Miller reached Gotham City it seems the flow of inspiration was not all one way. Moon Knight continues to be put through a variety of problems both at home and abroad, including facing the loss of everything he has, but he manages to come through thanks to his guile and gadgets.

His Marc Spector persona is not completely sidelined as a number of issues carry back-up stories highlighting aspects of his career, including some set during his days as a mercenary - there's a particularly dark story where he's commissioned to steal a box from one sculptor for another and it turns out to contain the head of the Gorgon Medusa. In a reversal of the traditional myth Spector uses a mirror to turn the head's back on itself and upon its wielder. Other back-up stories range from present day tales by alternate creators, some of them perhaps auditioning to take over the series if needs be, to tales of the statue of Khonshu and how the statue scared a crook in a museum into locking himself in a sarcophagus or how it seemingly used its power to clear a minefield and help a bunch of stereotypical British soldiers in American uniforms to win the battle of El Alamein. Such tales wouldn't appear in most Marvel series but here they help to enhance the background to the series and were doubtlessly a welcome change from adverts when the series's price increased.

Although a lot of the issues have single part stories mainly dealing with one-off urban villains, there are some that take the series in different directions and introduce potential recurring adversaries, though not all survive. As noted above the threat of Morpheus is neutralised early on, but in the opposite direction the character of Stained Glass Scarlet seemingly starts out as a one-off, a sorrowful nun turned mother turned recluse living in an abandoned church who finds herself shooting her gangster son dead. But subsequently she becomes a crossbow-wielding vigilante, declaring war on mobsters in general and Moon Knight finds himself ultimate missing on purpose and letting her escape. The difference between Moon Knight, operating outside the police but usually with their tacit approval and individual support as he generally seeks to bring crooks to justice, and Scarlet, operating completely on her own as she seeks to execute them, may seem a hair split at first but it's a core dividing line as to how vigilantes are usually portrayed in comics and the source of much philosophical debate. Elsewhere the Black Spectre explicitly models himself on Moon Knight but his failed venture into politics somewhat restrains his potential for reuse. Elsewhere the foes are one-offs - various mobster types and terrorists but also corrupt police officers and those who seek to purge the force of them as well as a man driven mad by childhood abuse seeking vengeance on his just deceased father.

The longest story in the volume is an epic adventure that pits Moon Knight, Marlene and Frenchie against a group of terrorists hell-bent on the destruction of the west. The Third World Army is a coalition of terrorist groups from across the political spectrum, headed by the anarchist Nimrod Strange. Privately disavowing their public political goals, they are fanatics who will take aid from right and left wing dictatorships only to play them off against one another to bring the world to its knees. Few take them seriously but the Mossad has realised their true threat. When Benjamin Abramov, Marc's oldest friend, is gunned down in the mansion by the organisations top assassin the Master Sniper, it begins a journey that takes Moon Knight to Switzerland, Israel, Lebanon, the Indian Ocean and finally back to New York. Along the way Moon Knight, Marlene and Frenchie have to infiltrate the organisation, with Marlene becoming one of Strange's elite female bodyguards and harem. Strange himself adopts armour to become Arsenal and almost kills Moon Knight before departing to hijack multiple oil tankers and use them to destroy Manhattan, in a plan lifted directly from US anti-terrorism planning. The pace of the story is relentless and it doesn't pull its punches either with a number of atrocities depicted including the gunning down of a congregation at a synagogue. Arsenal becomes another foe whose long term potential is sacrificed on the altar of a dramatic resolution to the story but it works. It's a tough storyline that combines the global threat with the personal element as Moon Knight seeks to complete Ben's work as well as repay Arsenal for his slights. At a guess this storyline (in issues #17 to #20) was the first to be prepared for the direct market and it shows a willingness to stretch beyond the confines of the Comics Code authority without being gratuitous simply for its own sake. It's a good example of how the series adapts to changed conditions and sets out to offer something truly unique.

In general this is a series that does well to rise to the challenges set, continuing to offer a hero with a very unusual identity situation whilst also adapting well to its changed market position and experimenting within the format and outlet. There are some themes handled here that are more adult than those found in the Comics Code Authority books on the newsstand, but never once does it feel like its being puerile or gratuitous just to show off its freedom. Instead it continues to build a solid and distinctive series, using the expanded page count to explore multiple stories and features and allow other creators onto the characters without feeling like quick fill-ins. Sienkiewicz's art looks amazing in black and white and Moench's scripts remain strong, producing quite a solid volume.

Omitted material: Power Man and Iron Fist 73

Missing from Essential Power Man and Iron Fist volume 1 is issue #73, which features an encounter with the licensed character Rom. It is written by Mary Jo Duffy and drawn by Greg LaRocque.

Rom is a toy that I only vaguely remember seeing in the Action Man catalogue. He was released as a standalone toy in the States; an action figure with light up features and weapons. He was imported to the United Kigdom by Palitoy to be part of their spaceman line of Action Man figures in the early 1980s but in general the toy wasn't a success. However there was a tie-in Marvel series that lasted seventy-five issues and several annuals, and the character made many appearances in other Marvel titles.

As I previously suspected this issue is the missing link in the subplot about the relationship between Colleen Wing and Bob Diamond, showing how the two get together for the first time. But it's also the first part of a crossover with Rom's own title. Here we get a glimpse of just how terrifying the alien Spaceknight can seem to humans as he lands on the streets of New York and then starts pointing weird lights at them before shooting a select few with a ray gun, leaving just ashes on the street. Power Man and Iron Fist get called in by first the pimp of a victim and then by the Fantastic Four and take on Rom only to discover the truth - he is destroying alien invaders called Dire Wraiths who have infiltrated human society. Such is their level of influence that they're able to suppress many reports about Rom, preventing most humans from discovering the truth. There's an inevitable battle owing to the initial misunderstanding before all three heroes join forces against a group of Wraiths and then agree to work together further over in Rom's own title.

As is often the case with small crossovers, the opening part is largely a set-up to get the various players working together before the main action elsewhere and so this issue can seem a little light on plot. But instead we get some quite good horror as we experience Rom from the perspective of the unfamiliar, and it's a chilling sight. There are some intriguing moments such as when Rom's Analyser can't scan Power Man and later the Neutraliser cancels Danny's iron fist, showing the Spaceknight to be a truly formidable force. By this stage Rom had come a long way beyond his humble toy origins and works well here. Unfortunately this does slightly sideline the actual stars of the series but overall the issue keeps true to the book's general direction and makes the most of the unfamiliar.

Essential Punisher volume 1 - creator labels

We have a volume with a lot of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

Essential Web of Spider-Man volume 1 - creator labels

Yet again we have a volume with a lot of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

Essential Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man volume 4

Next up is Essential Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man volume 4, containing Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #75-96 and Annual #4. As bonus material we get Spider-Man’s entry from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. This one’s from the Deluxe Edition, as shown by the length and a villains’ list from about 1987 that doesn’t yet include Venom.

The writing is pretty solid with Bill Mantlo writing the first two-thirds and also the main story in the annual, and Al Milgrom writing the last third. A back-up story in the annual is by Bob DeNatale. Most of the issues are drawn by Milgrom, apart from fill-ins by Ron Frenz (his first ever Spider-Man work), Greg LaRocque and Dave Simons, and a special issue drawn by a mix of Milgrom and cartoonist Fred Hembeck. The annual stories are drawn by Kerry Gammill & Sal Buscema and Ron Randall.

There’s a strong degree of consistency throughout the volume. Unfortunately the flow is at times slightly distorted by attempts to tie in explicitly to individual issues of Amazing which gives the impression that Spider-Man has abandoned a situation only to return to it. It’s most prominent with issue #87 where Spider-Man reflects upon having lost his spider-sense in an Amazing issue, despite having used it in Spectacular #86 which led directly into this one, and with issue #96 where instead of going straight after the Answer who’s captured Dagger, Spider-Man detours into events in Amazing where he ditches his black alien costume and resumes wearing the red & blue one. I presume there was a Marvel policy at the time to keep the placing of events clear, but when a character has multiple titles it gets messy with multi-part stories. And of course there’s a major exception to this in the era with the whole of Secret Wars taking place in the gap between Spectacular #89 & 90, written by the-then editor-in-chief, so such a strict chronological approach isn’t always necessary. When Spidey returns from the Secret Wars he comes with a new black costume that responds to his thoughts, can change its appearance into civilian clothes and flows on and off at will. The saga of the costume is primarily focused upon in the contemporary Amazing issues (not yet reached in the Essentials but I’ll rant about that elsewhere), and when this volume is read in isolation the developments with the costume can come as a surprise at times.

However whilst the costume may be developed elsewhere there’s a very important aspect of Spider-Man’s life developed across this volume as it charts the growth of his relationship with the Black Cat. Having once again survived a seeming death, Felicia Hardy returns for good and sides with Spider-Man in the conflict between the Owl and Doctor Octopus. This shows the clear chemistry between the two and the Cat’s bravery, but she comes to grief when she gets cornered and badly shot and stabbed, leading to a prolonged stay in hospital. But in pain comes joy as both she and Spider-Man come to realise their true feelings for each other. Spider-Man saves her again from Doctor Octopus and then after she is released from hospital the two start swinging across town together and jointly facing menaces such as the Hobgoblin. Unfortunately the two take some time to adapt to each other’s style and there are moments when Spidey is over concerned about the Cat. However he decides to share more of his life with her. This leads into what could have been a crucial issue which is unfortunately played all wrong by wider events.

Assistant Editors’ Month was one of the earliest company wide events at Marvel. The premise was that as all the regular editors were away at the San Diego Comic Convention, and in their absence their assistants were in charge for a month and were doing things a bit differently from the norm. Some books had little more than a one or two page story featuring the assistant editor in question (e.g. New Defenders), others went further and put the characters into some quite bizarre situations (e.g. Avengers which saw the team appear on David Letterman’s late night chat show, or Alpha Flight which saw two all white characters having a fight in a snow-storm represented by just blank panels and dialogue/captions). Crack Comics: Assistant Editors’ Month is a section and Assistant Editors’ Month Online is a whole blog both devoted to his event. Each looks at individual books from the month, giving a flavour of what was going on. The premise sounds good and it did lead to some quite fun titles – an especially hilarious one was Marvel Team-Up #137. Unfortunately the crude nature of company wide events is such that they often intrude upon the regular flow of a title and can cause unfortunate consequences. This is certainly true of issue #86 in which cartoonist Fred Hembeck draws the main story in his own unique style, alongside some pages set at the Marvel offices in which regular penciller Al Milgrom learns this from Assistant Editor Bob DeNatale. Even without the art the story is played for more laughs than usual, featuring the Fly discovering that his insect nature is taking him over, to the point where he’s stealing garbage to eat, and sees a fight in the Daily Bugle offices. On its own this would be fine, but the issue sees Spider-Man starting to share the secrets of his alter-ego with the Cat, climaxing in his decision to take her home and reveal his identity. The tone of the script and the artwork is all wrong for such an event – indeed in the comic itself Hembeck’s art is prematurely ended by the return of editor Danny Fingeroth who quickly arranges more regular Milgrom art for the last two pages – and it would have been better to defer that a month. Unfortunately another company-wide event created a hard point that prevented such a pushback, as issue #89 ends with Spider-Man disappearing off to appear in Secret Wars.

Once Assistant Editors’ Month is over normal service is resumed as Spider-Man takes the Cat home to his flat and reveals his identity. And then we get a twist on a problem for many superhero relationships where the other-half is aware of both sides of the hero’s life – Felicia can’t stand his life as Peter Parker, finding it mundane and boring and preferring him to be Spider-Man all the time. This side makes a lot of sense as Felicia is a thrill seeker who doesn’t care much for her life out of the costume. But it can get silly such as when she almost freaks out at Spider-Man taking the mask off, preferring him with the mask on. It’s one thing for a person to wish their other half focused exclusively on one side of their lives, but to be so repulsed by the other side strains credulity. It also leads to problems as Felicia is frequently careless in searching for Spider-Man, turning up at his flat or the Bugle or even Aunt May’s home searching for Peter without appreciating just how important keeping the secret is to Peter. Despite this the two continue as partners but a further fight, this time with Mr Hyde and the Cobra, leaves Felicia realising she is severely weak in battle without any powers. This leads to her searching all over the city for a super-power and foolishly accepting help from a shadowy form who turns out to be the Kingpin. The Cat winds up with enhanced agility, and the bad luck powers that a real black cat is supposed to bring. The latter is a curious probability based power that causes those attacking her to suffer exceptional bad luck – floors give way, weapons break apart or slip out of hands, people trip and so forth. However she doesn’t seem to realise that the Kingpin has ulterior plans as the powers slowly start to affect Spider-Man as well. Despite this, once Spider-Man returns from the Secret Wars the two continue their teaming together, with a back-up story in the annual even showing the two aiming for a quiet evening in together, albeit with complications caused by a visit from one of the Cat’s ex partners in crime. By the final issue in this volume Spider-Man has discovered where the powers came from but not yet their full extent and there are signs of tensions that could potentially crack the relationship wide open. But up to now the relationship has developed with general credibility, other than Felicia’s reaction to the unmasking, and the two do work well as a team. It’s a bold development for the series but it pulls it off well.

One significant development happens outside these pages but impacts on the series nonetheless. Up to now Spectacular had found a particular niche by focusing upon Peter’s life in graduate school, providing a separate supporting cast to spread the load of multiple titles. But during the time of these issues that life comes to a close when he decides that, due to all the conflicting pressures in his life and the high cost of the Cat’s medical bills, he must take a leave of absence from graduate school and drops out. However curiously this development is shown in the pages of Amazing rather than Spectacular, and the epilogue to his graduate school days comes in Marvel Team-Up. Really all these should have been shown in the series where they were the main focus, and it’s not as if there wasn’t room for them as issues #80 and #84, both one part stories with no long term developments, could easily have been dropped to make room. (Or for that matter #85 which sees the Hobgoblin gaining super-strength, a development that belonged in Amazing so the complaint runs both ways.) Given the heavy focus upon the Black Cat at this stage the loss of the graduate school doesn’t immediately cause problems as the series still has a distinct focus from Amazing. But it leaves the series one Black Cat away from the risks of over-exposure and creative burnout that can come when a character has too many titles without each offering something distinctly different.

As part of this we get some developments with the more traditional supporting cast, particularly towards the end of the volume with Flash Thompson who is repeatedly disappearing for activities he won’t share with Sha Shan, and then coming back bruised. When Sha Shan turns to Peter for help, Flash assumes they’re having an affair, setting things up for a potential confrontation. Now although Sha Shan had been fully returned to Flash’s life in the early issues of Spectacular the storyline really belongs in Amazing, both because of Flash’s traditional status but also because of the ongoing mystery of the Hobgoblin’s identity. It’s another sign of the barriers that kept the titles distinct starting to break down and it’s questionable whether this was a wise move. Another sign of this comes with issue #80 which tells a story of Jonah Jameson setting out to prove he still has his journalistic skills as he exposes corruption on the docks, with some unwanted help from Spider-Man. Again this story really belonged in Amazing. So too should have the main annual story, which sees Aunt May receiving letters from her first suitor, a Depression era criminal who has now been released and each finds their minds wandering back to their youth whilst Ben and Peter between them save May from making a mistake.

However we do get some good developments amongst the villains. Most prominent throughout the run is the Kingpin, who more than ever before is now a permanent presence in the series, sitting up I his office block directing the crime below him. When the 1990s animated series made so much use of the Kingpin in this way many were surprised, but here is where that all began. The Kingpin is given quite a lot of good material, whether facing down the Punisher, negotiating information with Jonah, arranging for the Black Cat to obtain super powers or seeking a cure for his wife’s condition. The character is treated with dignity and respect, reinforcing his sense of menace but also showing his understanding of his role in the wider city, such as when he willingly helps Spider-Man to locate Doctor Octopus and the Owl, lest the city be otherwise destroyed. The Kingpin also seeks to develop new henchmen and assassins, but the revival of Silvermane proves messy due to Dagger having absorbed his life-force, resulting in the Maggia leader’s cyborg body going on a rampage in search of her. The one new villain introduced here, the Answer, only lasts a few issues before he too is absorbed. The Answer is an interesting character, a super-smart intellectual who always seeks to work out “the answer” to each and every problem he encounters. He makes for a foe who is very difficult to defeat and ultimately only falls when he inadvertently sacrifices himself to revive Dagger so she can stop Silvermane.

We get several other villains in the course of the story, including the aforementioned Hobgoblin, Fly, Mr Hyde and Cobra, plus a brief appearance by the Rose and also some others normally associated with other series such as the Blob from the X-Men, and the Gladiator, more normally a Daredevil foe. In the latter case Spider-Man does find himself wondering if he should get involved or not, but eventually does get involved. Another Daredevil foe who shows up is the Owl, but he’s very much playing second fiddle to his rival, Doctor Octopus who gets some of his best ever material here.

The rivalry between Spidey and Doc Ock reaches its fiercest here. Ock is even more of a nasty, vicious toad of a man, seeking to blow up New York with a neutron bomb as a means to demonstrate his genius. This truly is a warped individual driven by a determination to make a name for himself and it’s little surprise that Spider-Man is so enraged that he tears off Doc Ock’s tentacles. The Black Cat then shatters the controls but finds that Doc Ock can still control his detached tentacles as they grab and hold her, then his men shoot her repeatedly. Each crawls away to recover, but a return showdown looms, with Doc Ock refusing sedation for the operation to reattach his tentacles and then showing up in the Cat’s hospital room to tell Spider-Man that in one day’s time they will fight for the last time. This leads to a dramatic climax as Peter goes through what could be his final day of life, spending some time with friends, negotiating much more firmly with Jonah over the price of photos then ever before and answering back about his absences and seeming lax attitude to his studies. We then get a tremendous battle in which Spidey beats Doc Ock not just physically but also emotionally, especially when he humiliates his foe by saving him. This is one of the best Doctor Octopus stories the Spider-Man books have yet done, finally getting a clear grasp on the character and working with his warped objectives for once.

Conflict of a different kind comes in encounters with multiple vigilantes. A strong two-parters sees the return of both Cloak and Dagger and also the Punisher. Whilst Cloak and Dagger are much the same as before, punishing just those who push drugs (whilst curing the addicts) and going all the way up to the Kingpin, the Punisher is even worse than usual, shooting any infraction of the law whatsoever. In a rampage he shoots a man for throwing away a newspaper and missing the bin, and then when a taxi driver panics and flees through a red light he too gets shot. The Punisher also goes after the Kingpin, but makes the mistake of taking the Kingpin’s wife Vanessa hostage, and is beaten up by her husband. As a gesture of contempt the Punisher is left alive and taken to court where he’s confined to a mental institution, leaving Peter wondering if he too will one day succumb to the same fate of extreme madness.

Whilst this volume contains its fair share of action, the real focus is on ongoing character development, building up not only Spider-Man and the Black Cat but also many of their foes. If there’s any weakness, it stems from wider Marvel policies such as the one that mistakenly forced too rigid a chronology upon Spider-Man’s multiple titles and also tried to develop subplots in more than one book at a time, or the interference by line wide events like Assistant Editors’ Month. But whilst there are signs that the distinctiveness of the multiple titles could break down in future, it hasn’t happened at this stage and instead we get an extremely solid run where successive issues build on their predecessors to give a solid and rounded whole.

Essential Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man volume 3

We come now to Essential Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man volume 3, containing Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #54-74 and Annual #3.

The writing is quite consistent with Roger Stern handling issues #54-60 and plotting #61, then Bill Mantlo scripts that issue and writes #62-74. The only other writer is David Anthony Kraft on the annual. However the art situation remains unstable, with Ed Hannigan handling nine issues between #60 and #72, and others being drawn by a mixture of Marie Severin, Luke McDonnell, Jim Shooter, John Byrne, Greg LaRocque, Bob Hall, Rick Leonardi and Al Milgrom, whilst Jim Sherman & Alan Weiss handle the annual. For those wondering, yes that’s the Jim Shooter who was Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief at the time. The art can be a little variable but the whole run is held together by some strong writing, with both Stern and Mantlo having a strong grasp on what makes Spider-Man work best.

Several themes run throughout this volume with a major one being Peter’s relationship with various women. The Black Cat reappears right at the very end but otherwise the focus is on Debra Whitman and Marcy Kane, both of whom are largely confined to this title as the focus remains primarily on Peter’s graduate school work (with perhaps a few too many raids on the campus but fortunately there are no more menaces being directly caused by lecturers), albeit with some notable appearances by the Daily Bugle side of affairs and the inevitable clashes of the two’s demands. It’s these clashes that are the main wedge between Marcy and Peter even as other barriers between them fall, especially after she is humiliatingly revealed to be a fake blond now forced to wear a wig because dye is destroying her natural hair. Peter’s sympathetic shoulder makes her start to reconsider her view of him as does his saving her life when the department is attacked by Moonstone, and she offers to help him study, leading to his attempts at a come on one evening with “Come here beautiful”! But it all comes to a crashing halt when he runs off to fight Electro and her harsh critical attitude returns. It’s hard to tell if there was ever that much potential for a proper relationship between the two without making major changes to Marcy’s character to what was originally shown. It’s true that many a real life ice-queen has melted and long term development could have shifted her over time, but at the core the basic conflict between them was Marcy’s single-minded focus on her academic career and Peter’s inability to commit in such a way because of all his other obligations and responsibilities. No amount of pleading about his financial circumstances could change that, and there would only have been one way that Marcy could have accepted he had higher purposes. But it would have been Catch 22 – a relationship could never have become serious enough for him to reveal his identity without him having already revealed it! (And remember he had proposed to Mary Jane without doing so.)

It’s not just any chance with Marcy that founders on this problem but also Peter’s teaching assistantship, with Dr Sloan sharing the view that Peter isn’t committed enough to devote the time required for his duties. Was this also an attempt to youthen Peter? His teaching duties hadn’t been that prominent but might there have been worries that by putting him on the far side of the lectern he was being made “inaccessible” to the perceived readership? It’s hard to say for sure and it would be wrong to assume that the recurrent belief amongst creators in the 1990s and 2000s that Spider-Man had “aged” and was “too inaccessible” was necessarily the prevailing concern of the early 1980s. But what this development definitely doesn’t share with the later decades is a sense of being suddenly forced upon the character. Instead it comes across as an entirely natural development of the problems that had been plaguing Peter for many issues.

There’s more development of Debra Whitman, and again it shows one of Peter’s worse sides as he fails to realise what’s going on around him and comes out with sharp comments that hurt her far more than he realises or intends. Debra is nervous and insecure but also clearly full of affection and seeking someone to give it all to. Instead she winds up obsessing over a guy who seems out of her league, repeatedly rushes out on her and who can be rather dismissive at times, whilst her alternative suitor Biff Rifkin seems to care more for her than she does for him. But whilst Debra may have difficulty when she tries to understand a physics text book in the hope that she can pull herself up to Peter’s level, she does demonstrate herself to be one of the most intelligent people in Spider-Man’s entire world when she puts together all her observations of Peter’s running off and his incredible strength as she follows him up a staircase and sees Spider-Man swing away. It’s a bold step forward for one of the supporting cast to now be in the know and there were no end of story possibilities – to take just a few, Debra could have confided her discovery to Peter and it became the spark for their relationship to really take off, or Peter could have tried to convince her that she was mistaken as he’d done whenever other got close in the past, or Debra could have kept the secret to herself and provided Peter with support and cover without him realising it, (though the latter is a bit close to Pete Ross and Superboy). We do at least get the realistic scenario of Debra’s initial reaction being sheer worry that Peter is out there constantly risking his life and her confiding her fears in a therapist, but then the story takes a very silly and rushed turn in order to wrap everything up before the return of the Black Cat and issue #75.

I don’t know what standard operating practices and ethics in the field of therapy were back in 1982 but I seriously doubt they involved breaching patients’ confidentiality to the objects of perceived delusions, or having third parties listening in on sessions, let alone the deliberate engineering of treatment designed to shock a person out of their delusions. But this is precisely what happens as the therapist tries to get Peter to pretend to be Spider-Man in order to convince Debra she’s deluded. Peter to his credit wants nothing to do with the plan, even when the therapist arrogantly assumes that this means he doesn’t care, but does try to help in his own way. This leads up to issue #74 where we get the major revelations about Debra, namely that she is a battered wife who has run away from her husband with help from Biff. This could have led to some further significant developments such as Peter helping to coax Debra out of her fantasies and face up to her past, perhaps even a trip to the mid-west to settle things with her husband. But instead we get one of the most simplistic cures of mental problems imaginable. Peter, to his great credit, decides to reveal to Debra that she’s not deluded at all and that he really is Spider-Man, so he visits her at her flat and lets her unmask him. And suddenly in an instance, everything is made right again. Debra realises that Peter couldn’t possibly be Spidey and has only done this to help her, and suddenly her delusions, fantasies and insecurities fade away. The next day she boards a bus to head back to the mid-west to divorce her husband and start over, with a hint that she will eventually settle with Biff (who also gets a one issue turn around as we learn that he’s been devoted to Debra since they were undergraduates but her delusions prevented her from realising it). Debra wouldn’t be seen again for over two decades (although she appeared in the 1990s cartoon where she was turned into Peter’s lab partner and scientific equal, who took to dating Flash Thompson!) and the whole thing just feels like a long-term plot plan was suddenly rushed through in a few issues when big changes were looming and Debra had become surplus to requirements.

It’s not the only rapid change thrown on us. In another issue we learn that Peter has had limited contact with Flash Thompson of late – okay good friends do often drift apart when their life courses no longer bring them into regular contact – and that both have drifted away from Harry Osborn and Liz Allen, who’ve disappeared off to the suburbs and got married with neither Peter nor Flash present. It’s an astounding revelation considering how close all four had been for years even if Harry did want to sever his ties to the past. It’s hard to know who to blame for this one as Harry had basically drifted out of the titles with his last major storyline some four years earlier and only a handful of background appearances since then. But it would have been better to actually show the wedding as a sign of the character evolving and make that the happy ending moment. Instead we get a glimpse of married life in New Jersey suburbia, as Liz’s past catches up with them in the form of the Molten Man. The story itself is a straightforward tale of Spider-Man blundering into a difficult situation and causing the Molten Man to go on the rampage, but in the course of it we see Harry showing more strength than in a long time as he stands up to his step-brother-in-law and fights back. The Osborn home may be burnt down but the ending of the story shows Harry and Liz have found their happily ever after as the neighbours come to their aid. Spidey’s comments that it’s a paradise in which he and his villains don’t belong helps to underline the sense of final closure.

That story also ends with the Molten Man seemingly transformed after being shoved into a swimming pool causes him to revert to his premolten form. It may be typical comic book science but it’s one of a number of cases in these issues of villains undergoing transformations of one sort or another. We also get a closure for the Man-Wolf as the moonstone is finally expelled from John Jameson’s system, whilst Will o’ the Wisp is restored to his form, the Smuggler and the Gibbon both seemingly go straight, the Beetle gets a new set of armour, the Robot Master is sort-of revived as a robotic duplicate, and Silvermane is transformed from an aged man in a broken body to a psychotic cyborg. For some villains there’s a sense of closure, for others their threat level is enhanced, particularly the Beetle whose previous costume always looked rather goofy. Silvermane’s transformation is the one I’m least comfortable with. Whilst the character when first introduced was initially seeking to revitalise his ageing body, his more recent appearances had shown him with a young enough body to be credible as a senior crime lord. And yes non-costumed crime lords are quite common in the Spider-Man stories, with the Kingpin standing at their apex, but Silvermane was the second most important one and didn’t really need to be transformed to maintain his threat level. The new cyborg body initially sees him as a rampaging creature, which could be a familiarisation factor, but it just feels like a new creation tacked onto an existing character when they could have been made an independent entity without drastically altering the story.

There aren’t many new villains introduced in these issues, but there are several brought in from other Marvel titles such as Moonstone, Nitro and the Ringer, whilst the Boomerang, Killer Shrike and the Owl had all  previously fought Spidey in Marvel Team-Up but now make it over to his headline titles for the first time. By far the most significant of these imports for the long run is the Jack O’Lantern, brought over from the pages of Machine Man (where he was co-created by Steve Ditko), who would later go on to assume the mantle of one of Spider-Man’s main foes. He gets but a single issue here though it establishes some of his key features including strategic thinking but also a willingness to turn tail and run when he realises he’s outclassed.

Some of Spider-Man’s more traditional foes make appearances, including Electro, Kraven and Doctor Octopus. The last comes at the end as part of the build-up for a major storyline that sees him in conflict with the Owl, which is best covered in the next Essential Spectacular volume, but we do get the touching story of Ollie Osnick, a lonely child who idolises Doc Ock to the point of getting his own tentacles and forming his own supervillains’ fan club. It makes for an interesting and comedic prelude to the main event as Spider-Man tracks down Ollie in a city nervous about the real Doc Ock being on the loose. It’s fortunate that Ollie abandons his worship of Doc Ock and never meets the real thing, who at the end passes a bin with the artificial arms and ripped up posters… and couldn’t care less. The Electro story is more conventional but shows Peter developing a special suit to tackle a particular foe. Whereas Iron Man or Batman can easily just have a new special costume manufactured to spec, Spider-Man has to take an old rubber mattress to create a special insulated suit that’s not 100% protection and is boiling hot to boot. Kraven’s story adds a bit to the character, showing how much honour means to him and that it is not enough to have Spider-Man dead but that he can only be satisfied if he does it rightly, a point that eludes his mistress Calypso.

The main creation in these issues are Cloak and Dagger. The two survivors of horrific experiments with drugs, they find their bodies transformed into powerful weapons and they now launch a war on drug dealers, showing a willingness to murder. This willingness brings them into conflict with Spider-Man in both their stories, but he isn’t always able to stop them in time. Wisely, the anti-drugs message isn’t overdone, nor is the debate over vigilante execution against criminal rights. However, another issue is less reserved on a controversial matter. Issue #71 focuses on the issue of hand gun control with Peter and Robbie as the voices of control – Robbie comes out with so many statistics that it’s not credible even for a newspaper editor to have off the top of his head – whilst Lance Bannon mutters the anti-control arguments of self-protection and Jonah is surprisingly balanced, ending the issue by asking what’s to be done about illegal guns in a city that already has one of the strongest control laws in the country. The presentation of the characters are rather one sided although the narrative aims at more balance by showing a number of gun deaths in breakout panels, including cleaning accidents, a father accidentally killing his son who is make a surprise visit, two parents gunned down in the street by a mugger whilst their child watches (a homage to Batman – wisely we don’t get a reminder of Uncle Ben’s death as it would have been the third time in a dozen issues) and a couple murdered in bed by a burglar. In the main story we get further killings, including a shopkeeper gunning down a robber (who had already been neutralised by Spider-Man) and a policeman dying taking on gun smugglers. Gun control is an awkward enough subject to write about at the best of times (and I’m merciful that the debate in the UK is tame compared to the US) but this issue feels rather preachy whilst at the same time trying to present itself as a more balanced take on the subject. There’s a credit of “Additional dialogue by Tom DeFalco” – was this a case of a writer and editor bringing different political perspectives to the issue? (Whilst I’ve heard that Mantlo’s politics were generally liberal and progressive I’ve no idea about DeFalco’s – or for that matter if he was adding on his own initiative or to orders from on high.)

As I mentioned, the gun control issue doesn’t touch on Uncle Ben’s death, probably because other issues do. Issue #68 sees Peter and Aunt May visiting the cemetery, with Nathan watching from a distance (a nice subtle sign that Nathan has been fully accepted into the family by Peter), whilst issue #60 is a double-sized issue celebrating five years of Spectacular and includes a seventeen page retelling of the original story from Amazing Fantasy #15 (including previous additions from Spectacular Spider-Man magazine #1 and Amazing Spider-Man #94). Much of the retelling matches the original story but there are some individual additions and enhancements to scenes. Amongst the most significant additions are an announcement that the demonstration is showing just how safely radiation can be controlled, hence the openness that allows the spider in; Peter actually killing the spider after it bites him (so there’s no possibility of anyone else having got powers at the same time); and there’s some more fleshing out what I feel is the most awkward part. Far too often in comics a special accident gives a character great power... and the ability to make costumes, to manufacture special equipment and to somehow obtain all the raw materials necessary without anyone noticing. Here we get the addition that the Spider-Man costume is adapted from a suit thrown away by a dance class whilst Peter now develops the web fluid in extra time in the school labs (and it’s credible the school über science geek would be allowed to do this) and has been studying polymers for two years. Whilst it’s still not perfect, it’s probably the best that can be done with the material available that has long established that Peter has no supporting help and uses artificial webs (with all the problems he’s had with weakened formulas, empty cartridges and badly maintained webshooters over the years). It’s easy to understand why so many latter day versions of Spider-Man, including the alien costume, Spider-Man 2099 and the Sam Raimi movies, have instead gone for built in organic webs but it’s impossible to retcon this in the original comics. Otherwise this retelling is pretty standard – maybe it’s a few pages too long but it shows that the original story can be retold without having to add too many layers (for instance there’s no mention of the Burglar’s motivations as this is primarily about the birth of Spider-Man). The only slight discontinuity is the same as in Amazing#94, namely that Peter is shown committing himself to use his powers to protect others immediately, when in the original comics it took a few more stories before that became his primary purpose.

In general, this is a solid run on the title but there isn’t anything that really leaps out as truly awesome. But sometimes spectacular highs are matched by equally spectacular lows and a solid consistently good run is overall more preferable. Both main writers have a strong grasp of both Spider-Man’s character and his past, and all the elements are respected to show the character at his classic best, fighting to help others despite the gruelling toll it takes on his alter-ego’s life.