sonotadream

Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #1-6 - Stan Lee/Steve Ditko

Let’s start the adventures of Spider- Man for real.

Still dealing with the fallout of Uncle Ben's death, Peter and Aunt May are having money problems. Wanting to help, Peter considers becoming a criminal, but baulks when he thinks about how disappointed Aunt May would be, so he calls his agent instead.

He books a show and it goes well, except for the fact he can't cash a check addressed to Spider-Man. And J. Jonah Jameson starts a crusade against him on his paper, the Daily Bugle, and on TV.

Just a reminder: at this point, Spider-Man is a guy who makes tricks on stage and TV. He committed one (1) act of vigilantism. I find this level of vitriol unwarranted, honestly.

Peter thinks, not without reason, that neither the Fantastic Four or Ant-Man have to deal with this.

However, when Jameson's son, who's test flying a orbital plane, gets in trouble, Peter jumps at the chance to help him. The capsule lost a piece and it's surprisingly easy to convince the Air Force to give him a spare and then convince a pilot to fly him close to the (still falling) capsule. Spider-Man saves the day, but Jameson and the Daily Bugle chalk it up to a publicity stunt.

Peter is feeling like he can’t win, but decides the best way to earn some money is to get a job with the Fantastic Four. In order to apply, he breaks into the Baxter Building and starts a demonstration of his powers, i. e. , a fight. He’s doing well, until Reed stops everyone by becoming a literal human shield. Finally, Peter explains he’d like a job with the team, and they explain they’re not a monetary enterprise - all the money goes into scientific research (although, they have their own building, while Peter and Aunt May are risking eviction).

Also, they read the Daily Bugle and they don’t associate with criminals. Peter is genuinely hurt by this and leaves, saying he doesn’t need them anyway.

Meanwhile, the Chameleon, whose superpower is that he can become anyone with his realistic disguises, decides to frame Spider-Man in his “steal secret plans for the commies” plot. He tricks Peter into meeting with him on top of the building he’s robbing with a promise of money and almost succeeds, but Spider-Man gets the cops on his side long enough to apprehend him.

Peter's money woes are coming to an end, though. The Vulture starts showing up around the city, but no one can get close enough to take a good picture. Peter figures he can and makes enough selling the pictures to the Daily Bugle that he pays an year's worth of rent.

He also figures the Vulture's wings work due to magnetism and creates a little device to counteract them, facilitating the Vulture's arrest.

Peter gets so confident in his crime-fighting/photographer abilities that when Jameson call for Doctor Octopus’ pictures, he volunteers his services without a second thought.

Otto Octavius is a renowned nuclear scientist who built himself a set of four mechanical arms to help his work. An unfortunate accident fuses the arms to his body and affects his mind, compounding his sense of superiority and his paranoia.

When Peter arrives at the hospital, he finds that Octavius has taken some staff hostage. Thinking it’ll be an easy fight, Peter crashes through the window to confront Octavius, but gets his ass beaten. Discouraged, he returns home without the photos and ready to give up Spider-Man. Doctor Octopus escapes the hospital and decides to take over a nuclear plant.

However, the next day at school, he attends a lecture by the Human Torch (he’s doing this instead of joining the rest of the Fantastic Four in searching for Doctor Octopus because he’s used his flame too much). Johnny’s talk about the importance of not giving up inspires Peter to get back into the fight and he defeats Doctor Octopus. He makes sure to stop by Johnny’s place to let him know (although he had sincerely thanked him for his words earlier).

Next up, another iconic Spider-Man villain: the Sandman. Flint Marko is an escaped convict who hid in a nuclear test zone and now has the ability to transform his body into sand on command. He’s now in New York to rob some banks. Peter tries to stop him, but his mask gets ripped off and he has to flee.

He get to see a bit of his life outside of Spider-Man. Aunt May is kind and spoils him, but his peers at school don’t like him very much. He convinced Liz Allan to go on a date, but then tells her he might have to cancel and she’s naturally annoyed, choosing to go out with Flash Thompson instead - oh, the teenage drama! (Later, Spider-Man rescues Liz from an hostage situation and she decides they're in love and forgets about both Flash and Peter).

Despite his powers, the Sandman has been having trouble evading the police and he hides at Peter’s school. He takes a few hostages, gets sieged by the police and then Spider-Man tricks him and vacuums his sand form.

So, things are going well in the Spider-Man front - despite Jameson's insistence that he's a menace, the police don't actually have a problem with Spider-Man, although they would like he stuck around long enough to fill a report. Peter Parker’s social life, otoh, just took another hit. He wonders if Spider-Man is worth it, but decides he must go on.

Next up, the inevitable confrontation with Doctor Doom! It was bound to happen!

Doom survived his fall in his last confrontation with the Fantastic Four by igniting his belt jets once he was under cloud cover. In a (rare) moment of introspection, he decides he needs an ally in order to defeat the Fantastic Four once and for all.

That ally is, of course, Spider-Man, who is, of course, not interested in becoming a villain.

Doom switches to Plan B, where he kidnaps Spider-Man and blackmails the Fantastic Four into disbanding to save his life.

He builds a device capable of tracking Spider-Man and starts wandering around the city.

At the same time, Flash thinks it would be hilarious to jump in front of Peter dressed as Spider-Man, in hopes that he'll faint or something. Which results in Doom kidnapping the wrong Spider-Man.

Peter is none the wiser, until Doom televises is threats and his schoolmates call him to let him know that Flash went missing while dressed as Spider-Man. Peter considers leaving Flash to his fate, but decides he must do the right thing.

Peter finds Doom and they fight for a few pages, until the Fantastic Four show up and Doom decides he doesn't want to fight all these superheroes at the same time.

Peter also leaves before meeting up with the Fantastic Four, although Reed figures out he was there, and Flash gets to play the hero at school, to Peter's chagrin.

We finish up with another iconic villain, the Lizard. He first shows up in a swamp in Florida and rumours of his existence quickly make their way to New York, where a Daily Bugle headline challenges Spider-Man to fight him.

Peter asks Jameson to send him to Florida, but he refuses - the headline's only purpose was to sell newspapers. So Peter visits Jameson as Spider-Man and gets him to change his mind.

We are robbed of the comedy of errors of Jameson and Peter chasing the Lizard together because, once they arrive on Florida, Peter quickly makes an excuse to go off on his own.

He finds the Lizard on his swamp, but he turns out to be stronger than Peter expected - he also has very thick, resistant skin and the ability to control other reptiles, namely alligators. Defeated in the first bout, Peter swings away to a nearby house, where he finds a woman crying.

She explains that her husband, Dr. Curt Connors, is the Lizard.

Connors was a surgeon, until he lost his arm in the war. After that, he started studying reptiles, specifically their ability to regrow limbs, and he formulated a serum capable of doing just that - in rabbits.

He then tested the serum in himself and it worked - and kept working, turning Connors into the Lizard. He started working in an antidote, but his mental state kept deteriorating, to the point he barely recognises his wife and son and now plans to steal the original serum and rule the Earth with an army of lizards.

Using Connors’ lab, Peter manages to finish the antidote and sets out to confront the Lizard.

They fight in an abandoned Spanish fort and Peter succeeds in turning Connors human again. He leaves the reunited Connors family in a positive note.

Things don't go so well with Jameson - having failed to take photos of the Lizard, Peter bought some from a roadside vendor, which Jameson declares are a hoax and so is the Lizard.

In conclusion, Spider-Man is one of my favourite superheroes and it’s fun to see where it all started. It’s a different flavour from the Fantastic Four - the stories are relatively smaller scale and there’s more of a civilian supporting cast, especially in the later issues - but the fact they crossover a couple of times starts to give the Marvel universe its shape.

Random stuff

Spider-Man has his own spider signal: a flash light that projects a close up of his face.

I love that his eyeliner is always on point.

There's half an issue where Peter's name is Palmer.

There's another half issue where Spider-Man deals with the Terrible Tinkerer and stops an alien invasion.

He pranks Jameson by leaving a web cushion on his chair.

Peter forgets to take pictures of his fight with the Sandman, so he stages some by throwing some sand into the air.

There's a special frequency that only spiders hear and that two villains use to communicate directly with Spider-Man.

The way the spider sense works is not very clear. It warns of danger, sure, but also allows Peter to track people, and fails to recognize that Doctor Doom is kidnapping Flash on the other side of a fence.

The Connors kid is very impressed that Spider-Man is a scientist.