Spidey Super-Saturdays: Amazing #4

“Nothing Can Stop… The Sandman!”

The Lurid Cover: A four-panel story all by itself. 1: Spider-Man and the Sandman meet on the street. 2: Spidey tries to embrace the Sandman, who shrinks his waist to make himself more huggable. 3: Sandman surprises Spidey by allowing him to penetrate him right away, and by dripping his sandy man-junk over Spidey’s leg. 4: Sandman takes the initiative, pinning Spidey down and lowering himself onto his middle area. This filth is later passed around prisons as currency.

Opening Splash Hype: Last time, Dr. Octopus was the “strangest foe of all time.” Now the Sandman is “the most fantastic foe of all!” In other news, this is the “record-breaking fourth issue!” I love that claim. Every time a new issue of a comic comes out, it shatters the old record of publication by one!

The Story: In the first page, Spider-Man is defeated by a trio of crooks who point out that they haven’t actually robbed the store they were casing yet. Spider-Man, a masked vigilante with super-strength, webs, and no legal authority to fight crime, is nonetheless stymied by this technicality. Then they chase him off by calling for the police. Spider-Man vows never to jump into a situation “until I know what the score is,” you dig?

It is such a solemn vow that he takes an entire page to forget all about it and leap after some guy the cops are chasing – the Sandman.

The next couple of pages get weird. An innocent kid like Spidey isn’t ready for the raw machismo of the Sandman. He tries to embrace him like on the cover, but the Sandman isn’t so easy to pin down. He slips through Spidey’s fingers, and we learn that he’s in high demand from Maine to Mexico. Since he has the power “to harden any part of me that I want to,” it’s not hard to see why! As Spidey points out, he’s like the dark, dangerous version of Mr. Fantastic. “Ugh! Your jaw is like iron!” That ain’t the only thing, kid. Then Sandman hits him with a hip thrust that makes Patrick Swayze’s Johnny look like a dead pope. Spidey’s mask is broken; he’s exposed, vulnerable, afraid of what people will think if they know the real him. Metaphor, anyone? How did Wertham let this one get by?

On the next page, we learn that Sandman’s finger can re-shape to fit whatever opening he puts it into. Dirty!

Then for a while we have Sandman’s reign of terror, intercut with Peter’s usual personal problems. The agony of repairing his costume – you know, the incredibly intricate web-lined one he designed and sewed in the first place. The angst of breaking off a pity date from Liz. Not getting an advance from Jonah for photos he hasn’t taken; we readers conclude that Jonah is making perfect sense and recoil in horror.

But things pick up again when the Sandman, on the run from the law, ducks into a local high school – which just so happens to be the same New York high school attended by his arch-foe! This is Stan’s way of evoking New York City’s small-town charm, where there are only two high schools – the one the hero attends, and the other one they play football against if the subplot demands it.

What is this “most fantastic foe’s” diabolical master-plan? He wants the school principal to issue him a high school diploma, even though he never passed, let alone obeyed, physics. Winning the Award for Pointless Heroism is Principal Davis, who stands on his principles (homophone alert!) – instead of giving the madman what he wants and getting him away from the students as soon as possible, he defies him.

Fortunately, Spider-Man comes to the rescue. A battle begins, a true contest between titans that rages all over the high school. Sandman seems unbeatable.

Then Spider-Man sucks him up with a vacuum cleaner, defeating him. This actually happens.

We learn a lot in this issue: Umbrellas are for pansies. Sentient sand with shape shifting abilities is rendered powerless once contained within a canvas vacuum bag. And if a photojournalist – say, Peter Parker – fails to take pictures of an event – say, Spider-Man fighting the Sandman – it is ethical for him to re-create the event using trickery – say, Spider-Man tossing around some fire bucket sand – because it’s like shooting another take for a movie. Because a fictional movie is just like news coverage of real life. And it is therefore okay to sell these faked photos to a major newspaper for money, especially if the owner of the paper is some jerk who won’t even pay you for photos you didn’t take.

Oh, and according to the ads, hypnotism is dead easy.

Spidey Super-Saturdays: Amazing # 3

“Spider-Man Versus Doctor Octopus”

The Lurid Cover: Now that’s how you slip some hot homoerotic tentacle bondage past the Comics Code Authority.

Opening Splash Hype: I just adore the carnival-barker attention to craft here. Not only is Doctor Octopus the “strangest foe of all time” (really?), he’s also “the only enemy to ever defeat Spider-Man.” What, ever? In all four, count them, four issues, this is the only time he’s ever been defeated? I mean, yeah, he beat the Tinkerer, natch, and the Vulture, but it was really the cops that caught the Chameleon. And in one sense, the Burglar defeated Spidey worse than anyone save the Goblin.

The Story: Anyway, the introduction of one of Spider-Man’s greatest villains begins with a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” In the first page, our hero easily clobbers a gang of thugs ripping off a warehouse. Afterward, he complains to himself that it’s getting too easy, that he wishes he could have a worthy opponent. At this point, anyone who’s ever read a story before knows exactly what’s coming.

Next we meet Doctor Octopus, a Genius – as in, “Wile E. Coyote, suuuperrr-GEN-i-us!” He’s so smart, he can use mechanical arms to conduct a “nuclear experiment.” It’s clear from the artwork that either Lee and Ditko had no idea what one looks like, or science back then was a lot less careful with atoms. Doc is standing behind some kind of leaded glass, while reaching around on either side with his arms. Apparently radiation can’t go around a small barrier the width of a man. He’s doing classic comic book science, dumping stuff from test tubes into a glass beaker, but something goes wrong.

Fortunately, the good doctor has hired a crack staff of level-headed professionals: “LOOK! The radiation-meter has gone whacky!” (That can happen when you don’t spring for the name-brand Geiger counter, I guess.) “Something is wrong! There’s gonna be a blow up!”

There is indeed a “blow-up,” after which Doctor Octopus dies of acute radiation poisoning.

No, wait, sorry, that’s what should have happened. Instead, his arms are fused to his barrel-shaped torso and his brain is damaged. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of damage that causes him to simply forget his times tables. No, he’s been turned from an arrogant “genius” to an arrogant evil genius.

Pretty soon he’s holding the staff of his hospital hostage, while at the same time sending them out for equipment and supplies. I’m not sure how that works. Maybe they take alternating shifts as hostages and couriers.

Spidey, on his way to get pictures of the injured doctor for the newspaper, decides to rescue the hostages instead. But he gets more than he bargained for with Doc Ock – he’s overwhelmed by the many arms and the fact that the guy can snap his webbing. After a brief, one-sided battle, the doctor shows his utter contempt for Spider-Man by just tossing him out a window.

Now, the Spider-Man of today would just dust himself off and head back inside. But this was still early in Peter’s career, and he was something of a sensitive lad, the kind that runs away crying when cops are mean to him (as we saw in Amazing #1). He is so humiliated, he spends several panels moping and thinking about the end of his superhero career. (Maybe he knows that most new super-heroes don’t catch on, but he never explicitly says so.)

Meanwhile, Doctor Octopus is taking over an atomic research facility for some unspecified megalomaniacal reason.

Everything changes when the Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm stops by Peter’s school for a presentation. His biggest message is simply not to give up, no matter how many setbacks you have. It’s just what Peter needs to hear, inspiring him to try again. And it’s another part of the complicated Spider-Man/Human Torch relationship.

Spidey’s second battle with Dr. Octopus goes better – he’s ready for him, his spider-sense helps him dodge attacks, and he invents a chemical that fuses two of Doc’s metal arms together. Then he makes his breakthrough discoveries – webbing Doc’s eyes blinds him and makes it harder for him to attack, and despite the strength of the metal arms, the guy they’re attached to is just an out-of-shape scientist with a glass jaw. Now – that isn’t always the case; in other stories it seems as though Doc’s face stands up to spider-strength surprisingly well, when he really should go down every time.

In fact a second glance at this issue reveals that Doctor Octopus believes he does have super-strength, though it’s unclear whether he means through his metal arms, or his actual muscles. My Essential copy of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe claims he has an ordinary, even portly, body with all strength coming from the arms.

But before I start to obsess, perhaps I should move on… with my comprehensive look at every issue of Amazing Spider-Man... Um.

In the end, Spidey goes to thank the Human Torch for his help, and we find Johnny hearing this from his doctor: “Good news, Torch! Your temperature is down…!” That’s right. Apparently his fever was making him feel unwell. Things like that would make me too confused to fight crime.

Spidey Super-Saturdays: Amazing #2

“Duel to the Death with the Vulture” In which Peter starts taking pictures of himself in action to earn money, and gets a kick out of selling them to J. Jonah Jameson, “publisher of NOW Magazine.”

There’s a good “how-to” scene in here after his first fight with the Vulture. He recalls that he developed his costume and webbing back when he was just going to be an entertainer. But now that he’s committing to being a super-hero, he gets serious. He designs a concealable belt full of extra web cartridges so he won’t run out, and a spot for a miniature camera. In this same scene, we see him using his science acumen to develop a device that will disable the Vulture’s flying power. Of course, Stan isn’t a science genius, so we don’t get even a bare-bones explanation of how it’s supposed to work.

Whatever it is, it works like a charm, and Peter manages to sell more pictures to Jonah. This early Jonah is a little too generous; he gives Peter a big enough bonus that he can pay the rent (? Apparently the Parkers rented their house?), and buy his aunt those kitchen appliances she wanted. That’s too much coin to come from a notorious skinflint, but it was a simpler time, when photos of a man who can stick to walls and spin webs was considered something amazing.

The Vulture is probably one of my least favorite Spider-Man villains. An old guy who can fly just isn’t that menacing, no matter how well they try to sell it. I like the Evil Old Guy/Heroic Young Guy adversarial relationship, but it’s much more satisfying against someone like Dr. Octopus, as we’ll see soon.

The second story in the issue is the first major clunker. “The Uncanny Threat of the Terrible Tinkerer!” Terrible being the operative word. It’s Spider-Man versus aliens, and not even half as interesting as that would seem.

There are exactly two bits of interest for me: One is the panel showing off the technical stuff of Spidey’s web shooter, with little caption boxes and arrows pointing out various parts such as the “Palm release button” and the “adjustable nozzle.” I was always a sucker for those little diagrams when I was a kid. The other point is that we see the spider-sense being used as a way to advance the plot: Peter senses evil, investigates – bingo! You got your story going right there. (It’s a little more subtle than Whedon’s Angel TV series, when convenient psychic visions told the protagonists where to start.) I’m glad this wasn’t overdone in Spider-Man as the series went along – sometimes he just swings around town and stumbles into a crime.

Spidey Super-Saturdays: Amazing #1

The Amazing Fantasy #15 debut was so successful that Marvel followed it up by giving Spider-Man his own book. And it’s a surprisingly strong follow-up. It sets up so much of what Spider-Man will become known for, and right out of the gate. I’m not going to do a page-by-page breakdown, but there are several highlights.

The opening splash shows Spidey facing a lot of pointing, accusing fingers, including that of future New York Mayor J. Jonah Jameson, while the epithets “Freak!” and “Public Menace!” hover in front of his face. He is going to be the misunderstood hero, the one who not only has to face crooks and super-villains, but he’ll be hated and reviled for it by lots of people. It feeds into Marvel’s “I’m a hero, oh woe is me” attitude, but it’s refreshing compared to someone like the universally beloved Superman. Sure, I admire Supes, who doesn't? But who do I root for? The very inspiring symbol of American heroism itself? Or the guy who is never going to get credit for what he does, who often has the whole world against him -- and who keeps fighting for the little guy against impossible odds anyway? I made my choice as a kid, and never looked back.

The next couple of pages are a good, clean recap of the origin: got bit, uncle murdered, caught burglar. But it also gives us the consequences of that origin. Uncle Ben was apparently the breadwinner of the family, and without him, Peter and Aunt May need money. He considers quitting his job, but May won’t hear of it; he considers stealing money as Spider-Man, but immediately rejects it. He tries performing again, but apparently the producers don’t know how to make a check out to “cash.”

Then Jonah comes out against him, and his future gigs are cancelled. Jonah’s early argument is that Spidey is a vigilante, a bad influence on kids, a monster, and a phony. Oh, and by the way, his own son is a heroic astronaut. Even after Spidey saves his son’s space capsule during a botched re-entry, Jonah claims it was deliberate sabotage by Spider-Man that set back the space program by weeks. By the end of this story, the public is afraid of him, even his own aunt.

And in this installment of Peter Parker, Potential Super-Villain: He finds himself wondering if people won’t accept his attempts to do good, is becoming a menace the only option left to him?

The set-up to actually rescuing the space capsule takes a while, but once we're there, Ditko’s panels of Spidey dangling by a web from a speeding vehicle really capture the excitement.

The second half of the issue, “Spider-Man vs. the Chameleon,” starts with some classic Marvel cross-promotion, as Spidey decides the solution to his financial worries is to join the Fantastic Four. So kids, as you’re out there hunting for a job, try this approach: Break in through the window, smash their security equipment, throw around the staff, and shoot them with webs. I mean, it didn’t work for Spider-Man, but that’s only because the FF are a non-profit group with no salaries or profits who believe that he is a wanted criminal.

All of that has nothing to do with the rest of the story, except that somehow the Chameleon deduces from it that Spider-Man needs money. So he sets him up as the fall guy when he steals some missile defense plans.

In this adventure, we see the first instances of him using spider-webbing as a slingshot to propel himself several blocks through the air, followed by a web parachute. We learn he’s strong enough to rip the door off a helicopter. He has some sort of “spider-sense” that can detect the Chameleon even when he’s disguised as a cop. And he runs out of web fluid at a pivotal moment.

In the end, the cops catch the Chameleon, but Spidey thinks they’re after him, and he runs off crying. *Crying.* Not only does he not defeat the villain, but he loses his dignity. Kind of puts all those Bendis stories where the hero fails in perspective.

Spidey Super-Saturdays: Amazing Fantasy 15, Continued

Continued from last week...

Part 2 begins with Spidey as a major TV sensation, and it shows something you don’t see much in comics anymore – a sense of awe. People watching him stick to walls, spin a web. Their jaws dangle, they hold their heads. This was still early days in the Marvel Universe; you could still shock the average person on the street. Nowadays there are so many characters flying around that the sheer fact of them fails to impress. “Honey, the TV said Namor’s attacking the city again. Better take your umbrella.”

By the next page (8), Spider-Man has become an egotistical jerk, telling people to talk to his agent, looking out for Number One, which in case you didn’t know, “that means – ME!” But he also blows off a cop’s plea, and allows a thief to get away. This is our example of “power without responsibility.”

He’s still loving to his aunt and uncle. After all, they just bought him what every teenage boy dreams of – a new microscope. Going back to the idea of early Spider-Man as a potential super-villain, I’m reminded that some of the worst villains usually have a deep love for one or two people, while holding Peter’s attitude that “the rest of the world can go hang for all I care.” See Black Adam as written by Geoff Johns, for example.

Page 9 – Uncle Ben has been murdered. Yet another hero finds his motivation as a victim of crime, seeing its consequences first-hand. At first, all he wants is vengeance, and he knows he has the power to get it. But the killer is hiding out “in the old Acme warehouse,” so he’d best watch out for giant magnets and rocket skates and the like.

Page 10 – Spidey goes web-swinging for the first time, to cross town fast. When he confronts the bad guy, the Burglar is astonished by him – apparently he hasn’t been keeping track of Spider-Man’s extensive media coverage from a couple of pages ago.

Page 11 – The final confrontation is just a few panels, but it covers the basics: Web the gun, use spider-strength to punch the guy out. But then, the big ironic twist – the bad guy who killed his uncle is the same guy he allowed to escape! It’s so shocking he suddenly has pupils in his white eye plates! He realizes that his choices do have consequences. He finally gets what Edmund Burke wrote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

This is also the first time that Spidey dangles a bad guy from a web for the cops to find.

Our final panel shows Peter walking off into a city that looms over him, his head hung with the weight of his failure. The caption overhead introduces the power/responsibility phrase that will become his famous mantra. And there’s a reason it endures. It’s basic civic duty stuff, but as comic book morals go, it’s one of the best.

Modern writers tend to over-emphasize Peter’s basic sense of guilt for everything. In small doses, it can be endearing. But they claim that it's his core character trait. Bendis, for example, likes to have him running on about how it’s all his fault, no matter what. His "great responsibility" is apparently all-encompassing. It makes him annoying, like a cute girl saying "I'm ugly" just so those around her will argue with her and make her feel better. We know it's not Peter's fault, so quit making us think it all the time.

A more balanced view, seen here, is that the tenuous blame he may deserve for allowing Ben's murder to happen teaches him about taking on a wider responsibility, but only proportionate to his powers. He has neither infinite power nor infinite responsibility. Like the rest of us, he can't stand idly by and let the world become worse around him. If you have the ability to make the world a better place, you'd damn well better do it. You have no excuses not to. And that’s why the guy was my hero from the get-go.

Spidey Super-Saturdays: Amazing Fantasy 15

As a way to keep myself going in this blog, I'm starting an Amazing Spider-Man Project. A look -- sometimes a mere glance -- at every issue of Amazing, from the first issue through the classics to the bad stuff and back again. My partners in this: the back issues of Amazing and Marvel Tales that I own, plus Graphic Imaging Technology, Inc.'s Complete Collection DVD that covers the entire series up through June, 2006. One of my favorite things.

Caveat: I have no scanner, nor any plans to get one. There will be few if any graphics for this, so ready yourself now as I prepare to fill your mind with word-pictures. Also, first time out? Wordy.

Amazing Fantasy #15

Where it all began.

In the opening splash page, we meet Peter Parker for the very first time. It’s a compact and telling intro. A group of high school kids straight out of late 1950s TV shows greets each other: “Say, gang, we need one more guy for the dance! How about Peter Parker, over there?” I am curious about this unnamed opening speaker. What is the minimum number of young gentlemen required for a dance at their school? Is it so everyone has partners? As a guy, wouldn’t you want a higher ratio of women to men, unless… he feels the love that dare not speak its name? Of course. Right out of the gate, Stan Lee flouts the homophobia of the Comics Code and subtly promotes inclusion in the very same panel in which the teens will treat Peter as an outcast. It’s irony at a higher level.

“Are you kiddin? That bookworm wouldn’t know a cha-cha from a waltz.” Flash Thompson, ladies and gentlemen, the archetypal high school foil – big, brawny, popular, and an expert on ballroom dancing. And in one balloon, he gives us Peter’s public image, a nerd.

Blonde bimbo Liz Allen confirms it in the next balloon: “Peter Parker? He’s Midtown High’s only professional wallflower!” It’s not just that he has nerdy tendencies; apparently there are no other nerds in the entire school for him to hang out with. But at least he’s receiving financial compensation from the school. Liz also does us the service of repeating Peter’s name, to help us remember it right away. A trick more screenwriters should learn and use.

Ditko’s art in this panel also reinforces the dialogue. The “gang” is a clot of grinning, squinty-eyed jerks; Flash is waving Peter away dismissively. Peter stands off to one side, slumped, defeated, a sweater vest-wearing four-eyes, a pile of books under his arm. But behind him, his shadow hits the wall as a silhouetted figure standing proudly against a spider-web, our glimpse at his looming destiny.

In page 2, Pete doesn’t fare any better. In fact, it hovers on the line between making him sympathetic and just plain pathetic. He starts off waking up to his loving Uncle Ben, saying, “Gosh, Uncle Ben.” In the next panel, we meet Aunt May, who is already suffering from acute osteoporosis, her back curved like a question mark as she shuffles into the kitchen, bringing “Petey” his wheatcakes. Pete’s uncle, who is 60 if he is a day, tells her not to fatten him up too much, as he can “hardly out-wrestle” the sixteen year-old. Cheers to the loving family; jeers to the acre of corn.

Pete is also a suck-up in chemistry class: “I’ll do my best, sir!” Apparently all the adults like this fine young man. “But alas, other teen-agers can sometimes, unwittingly, be so very cruel to a shy young man…” Peter asks “Sally” if she’s busy tonight, but she’s only got eyes for the dreamboat Flash Thompson: “I admire your taste, doll! Get lost, bookworm!” Then he knocks Peter’s books out of his hand.

Of course, Lee is feeding into the whole adolescent power fantasy thing, along with the myth that girls always go for the jerks over the “nice guy.” If only they’d look beyond the shallow surface to see how great the nice guy is and how awful the popular guy is, then all would be right with the world. But now that I’m older than the intended audience, I’ve moved beyond that perspective. Peter is getting shot down because he brings nothing to the table. He may not be an athlete like Flash, but he also lacks charm and wit, at least initially. (We’ll know better later.) His idea of showing a teenage girl a good time is to take her to the new science exhibit, while Flash wants to take her to dances in his cool convertible. Peter doesn’t know what Sally likes, which shows he hasn’t been doing the right kind of homework, and the fact that she’s had to reject him “umpteen” times shows he can’t take a hint. I feel sorry for him, but he’s got a lot to learn.

Oh, and how does he react to this cruelty? “Some day I’ll show them! (sob) Some day they’ll be sorry! – Sorry that they laughed at me!” …he says as he storms into the “Experiments in Radioactivity” lab. If I didn’t know better, that would sound like the ravings of a future super-villain. Heroes want you on their side; villains want you to suffer for when you wronged them.

On the other hand, it’s 1963. Just six years after Sputnik, and Flash and the gang are not doing their part to promote the advancement of American science.

Page 3. (I’ll pick up the pace in future issues, I promise, but this is the iconic story, and besides, it’s short.) Peter witnesses one of the worst scientific demonstrations in history. As scientists demonstrate “radioactive rays,” a spider slides down its thread, getting bombarded. Then it lands on Peter and bites him, transferring its powers into him. One of the most familiar origins in comic book history, and what gets me is how pure it is. I mean, the word “radioactive” might as well be “magic” for all the sense it makes from a plausibility standpoint. It’s pseudoscience at its most basic, but from a storytelling perspective it’s compact and efficient. The exact mechanics of how it happens aren’t important. We respond to everything that is concentrated in that moment. It’s a tiny event, a few seconds in which a tiny creature makes one feeble act and dies. And yet it is utterly transformative, a moment from which springs a great adventure. A man becomes far more than he was, and how? An accident? Or fate?

It’s important to emphasize that Peter’s powers stem from a scientific environment, no matter how fake. This is going to be the meat of Spider-Man’s milieu: dealing with scientific disasters and characters whose powers come, intentionally or no, from weird experiments and fantastic technology. Yeah, he’ll also fight street criminals, but whenever he drifts too far from this crime/science arena, he’ll be out of his element. That can be good for the occasional story – making him a fish out of water can make him more of an underdog, or just more of a comic foil for whoever he’s helping. Those stories, however, shouldn’t be of any lasting consequence. There’s a universal comics law that characters with their own title don’t experience major changes in a team book. In the same way, you wouldn’t have Batman experience major status quo-altering changes in a cosmic adventure with aliens, or Spider-Man as the result of magic… I think you know where I’m going with that one. (And if you don't, then I welcome you to the exciting world of comics and comics-related bloggery. Beware "One More Day" -- it was written by Sutter Cane.)

Of course, Peter has no idea what’s happening to him at first. He feels weird, and says so. How do the scientists react? “Holy crap, that kid feels sick! Maybe we shouldn’t be firing radioactive rays in an open, unshielded lab with absolutely no safety precautions whatsoever”? Nope, that would make too much sense. Instead, they mock him: “Too bad, he must have a weak stomach!” Yeah, f*ck him, the little pantywaist. “Oh, boo hoo, the nasty radioactivity is making my head hurt! You’re too much of a sissy for science, that’s how much you suck!”

Fortunately for humanity, and the efficiency of the story, Peter is then nearly run down by a speeding car. The unseen drunks behind the wheel identifies him as a daydreaming egghead, because for the third time in two pages, he drops the pile of books he insists on carrying everywhere.

But all that is forgotten as he leaps to safety and clings to a wall. He is astonished, and rightly so. It would be amazing even if his feet weren’t sticking to the wall despite being encased in socks and heavy brown shoes. (You can make all the explanations you want about tiny fibers sticking from his skin and through his costume, or whatever, but the shoe thing doesn’t even make pseudo-sense. We don’t care, of course – the idea is too neat to quibble about such things.)

By the end of page four, Peter has discovered strength, agility, and apparently improved eyesight. (Because you know the old saying, “He’s got eyes like a… spider.”) He decides the easiest way to score some quick cash is in a wrestling contest. But he makes a costume to disguise himself, because he’s still stricken with an acute fear of failure.

On page five, he humiliates Crusher Hogan in the wrestling ring. If you were beaten by a guy wearing Peter’s makeshift costume, you’d die of embarrassment. (Or you’d notice, “Hey, he’s sticking to that tall wrestling ring pole, despite the fact that he’s wearing heavy rubber boots,” and your brain would explode.)

Page six shows Peter creating his new persona. He needs “showmanship” for his wrestling career, so he creates a spider-themed costume. I’m not sure how long he’s meant to take to sew it, but the way he narrates his every move, you get the sense that it doesn’t take more than an evening. Even if it took a week, it’s surprising how much detail he puts into it. I mean, I understand teenage geek obsessive-ness and all, but the costume does have a lot of intricate web detail you’d think he wouldn’t have the time or interest for. Maybe if Ditko and Lee had shown an earlier panel demonstrating how into cosplay Peter was…

(I'm reminded of a Bill Hicks bit, in which he imagines CNN if Ted Turner was getting regular lovin': "It's all gonna work out! Here's sports!" What does the well-laid hero's costume look like? The Spirit? "There ya go, a mask. Done!" "Well, it doesn't really evoke a 'spirit' persona... Maybe something a little scarier, makes you look like a guy came back from the dead?" "Done!" "It doesn't even really hide your secret ident--" "Done! Anybody needs me to make a cameo in a character-based installment of my own strip, I'll be over a P'Gell's. But if you see the mask hanging on the doorknob, come back later.")

Peter also realizes that as a spider, he needs a web. Apparently enough time has passed that he knows he can’t make it the natural way, thank God. So, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, he rigs up a couple of web-shooters, which shoot thread with “strong liquid cement at the end.” The sort of thing your average science major can do.

Check back next time for the second half, with more dramatic irony... with a vengeance!

Doom!

What he said. Because really, who doesn't love a good Shaft reference?

And the series really is a great celebration of villainy. Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil is this year's Super-Villain Team-Up: MODOK's 11. Except each issue is, "I just pulled that amazing caper so I could pull this even bigger caper next issue." And nobody knows what's really going on except Doom. As it should be.