"SPIDER-MAN: FREAK! PUBLIC MENACE!"
Writer: Stan Lee/Penciller: Steve Ditko/Inker: Steve Ditko/Colourist: Stan Goldberg/Letterer: Jon D'Agostino/Editor: Stan Lee/Cover Art: Steve Ditko
Synopsis: After the death of his Uncle Ben, Peter Parker returns to performing as Spider-Man to earn enough money to support his Aunt May, but the influential newspaper publisher, J Jonah Jameson, aims to discredit the wall-crawler in any way he can...
Review: This may be bias talking, but I've always felt that Spider-Man holds up to a modern reader far better than any other Marvel comic of the Silver Age. Take a look at the Silver Age adventures of Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, or the X-Men; none of these characters exactly thrived during the 60s, and in each case, I would argue that it took completely different creative teams to really get the most out of them. Yes, Fantastic Four is also a hell of a lot of fun, but it took Lee and Kirby a year or so before they started telling consistently great stories. This is not the case, however, for Spider-Man, whose stories are practically perfect from the off. Yes, it'll take Stan and Steve a few more issues to build up the supporting characters, and to start introducing some of the major villains, but in terms of the quality of storytelling, I'd say they couldn't have made a much better start.
I think this is all down to the fact that they focused so heavily on Peter Parker as a character. Comics like Iron Man, Hulk, and even Thor (in his earliest stories) were far more plot-based, and left little room for characterisation, so breathless was the pace at which the stories would rollick along. This first story, from Spider-Man's first issue, is different. It's a rather slow-moving tale, concerned more with exploring our hero's emotions as he is faced with the struggles and prejudice of the world. There isn't even a supervillain for him to fight; the closest thing this story has to an antagonist is J Jonah Jameson, and he can hardly be called a supervillain.
As much as I adore Spidey's rogues' gallery, I must confess that I think this approach was the right one. It gives us more time with Peter as a character, getting to understand him as a person, instead of just a guy who puts on a flamboyant costume and goes out fighting criminals. We see his angst, his pain, his uncertainty about what direction he wants to take his life (or where fate is steering him). This is perhaps best depicted at the end of page 6, in which Peter violently hammers his fists against a wall in his frustration at the fact that he can't support his aunt in the way he wants to.
I feel that the story's attention to continuity is significant as well; it would appear to start immediately after the tragic end of Amazing Fantasy #15, with Peter alone in his bedroom, hurling his Spider-Man costume against the wall and cursing its very existence. We also get a brief recap of the origin story, which curiously omits the detail that Spidey allowed the Burglar run past him at the TV studio, thereby completely ignoring the whole 'with great power, comes great responsibility' thing.
This is a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things, and is really the only one that I can level at this story, because everything else is so strong. It might seem a bit odd that Lee and Ditko chose to begin Spider-Man's adventures proper without any crime-fighting (Spidey doesn't even think of this as a possible avenue for himself), and instead focus on a story in which he struggles to find a job, suffers bad publicity, and is the subject of a witch-hunt, but Spider-Man has always been completely unique in the world of superhero comics, and I love this rather offbeat start to his ongoing adventures.
Rating: 4.5/5
"THE CHAMELEON!"
Writer: Stan Lee/Penciller: Steve Ditko/Inker: Steve Ditko/Colourist: Stan Goldberg/Letterer: John Duffy/Editor: Stan Lee
Synopsis: The Chameleon, master of disguise, plans to frame Spider-Man for the theft of some top secret missile defence plans...
Review: For my money, Spider-Man has the best rogues' gallery in all of comics, and I feel that the Chameleon is one of his more underrated adversaries. No, he may not have the most exciting of abilities, but he has a beautiful, somewhat eerie design thanks to Steve Ditko, and he's featured in some truly great stories over the years. I must confess that this is not one of his finest outings, but I'm still rather fond of it, as fond as I am of the Chameleon's use of a vest stuffed to bursting with masks and wigs (this is long before he gained the ability to shapeshift).
It's a rather directionless tale, one that boasts a whole heap of the kinds of oddities you will only find in early Marvel comics of the Silver Age: Peter's surname being misprinted as 'Palmer', the Chameleon using a device to send a message to Spider-Man via his spider-sense (how the Chameleon even knows spider-sense exists, I'm not sure, but that's hardly the more perplexing question), and a strange scene in which Peter is visiting the spider exhibit at a local museum (perhaps he's trying to find out more about how his powers work? Maybe?). These little quirks can be either charming or distractingly silly depending on how you look at them. They certainly drag the story down from being something really good, but I must confess that I get a bit of a kick out of seeing the comic finding its feet in its early days.
Less charming (at least for me) is the appearance of the Fantastic Four. Now, obviously, the FF appear on the cover of this issue in order to get people to buy it. The FF were already a great success in their own book, so why not use them to bolster the sales of this new one? The problem is that the brief tussle with the Fantastic Four is completely pointless, and comes across as little more than the clear marketing ploy that it is. The fight scene itself is pretty fun, admittedly, and Spidey's desire to join the FF in order to make some money is at least in keeping with what we've seen of the character so far, but I start enjoying the story a lot more once the Chameleon is introduced.
Spider-Man's ultimate showdown with the Chameleon is nothing too spectacular, although I like the scene where Spidey rips the door off the villain's escape helicopter, and I absolutely adore the final moments, in which the Chameleon tries to escape under cover of darkness; the blue-toned Spider-Man using his spider-sense to locate the villain in the dark is gorgeously rendered by Ditko. This second story ends with a welcome return to the themes of the first, with the police quick to believe the worst of a man dressed in a spider costume, causing the hero to flee into the night, tearful, angry, and wishing he had never got his powers in the first place. It's an effective and solemn end to a mixed bag of a story, and readers at the time must have been on tenterhooks to see what choice the character would take next. This first encounter with a supervillain isn't great by any stretch - and the presence of a communist submarine dates it rather badly - but it's a fun little romp nonetheless, with the typically brilliant Ditko art, and the typically snappy Lee dialogue.
Rating: 3/5
So overall, a pretty resounding success for a first issue, despite a couple of hiccups. Next time, Spider-Man faces his most deadly enemy yet in the form of the Vulture, and things get really strange when he pays a visit to the Tinkerer's shop!
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