SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP: AFTERWORD

With every volume to date of IDW's Spider-Man newspaper strip collections now in the rear-view mirror, I've read all of the strip's first decade of publication -- January 1st, 1977 - December 31st, 1986 -- and so I thought this would be a good time to sum up my thoughts on the whole thing. The verdict, in case there were any doubts, is that I really like it... for the most part. This version of Spider-Man feels more real to me somehow than most comic book versions. Not realistic, because it’s a far cry from that, but more... natural? Correct? Don’t get me wrong; I have great fondness for most of the late eighties/nineties Spider-Man comics I grew up with. I adore Roger Stern’s run too, more than I can articulate (though I tried some years ago). And I love the original 1960s-era Stan Lee/John Romita run nearly as much.

But this is different from all of those. It’s its own thing, but it feels more true to my own idea of what Spider-Man is meant to be. And I suspect part of the reason for that goes back to the formative years of my childhood, and the book I mentioned several times over the course of these reviews: THE BEST OF SPIDER-MAN, published in 1986. When I announced my first round of Spidey strip reviews in 2017, I said of that book:

"When I was a youngster -- say, maybe seven or eight years old -- I had a book called THE BEST OF SPIDER-MAN, which reprinted a handful of story arcs from the earlier years of the Spidey strip. I very nearly read the cover off that thing, to the point that it became one of the most battered, dog-eared books I owned. In a way, it was more formative of my understanding of Spider-Man than the monthly comics, since I had never really been a regular ongoing reader at that point."

And it's true. Though I was a Spider-Man fan from a very young age -- the first comic I can remember owning was AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #245 -- I dind't start reading with real regularity until the Gerry Conway run on SPECTACULAR and WEB circa 1987 or '88 -- and even then, I was only picking up random issues from spinner racks as I saw them. I didn't become an actual, honest-to-goodness montly reader of Spider-Man until somewhere around AMAZING #360 in 1992.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 11

SEPTEMBER 1st, 1980 – NOVEMBER 1st, 1980
NOVEMBER 2nd, 1980 – JANUARY 11th, 1981
By Stan Lee & John Romita

Morose over breaking up with Carole, Peter pays a visit to Aunt May but finds her living in terror over a mystery man called “the Protector”. May explains that this guy has been shaking down the elderly in her neighborhood, demanding protection money in exchange for not roughing them up. Eager for something to take his mind off Carole, Peter sends May to stay with Anna Watson and awaits the Protector’s impending arrival.

Side note: Recall that briefly when the strip started in 1977, Aunt May and Anna were roommates as they had been during the Lee/Romita comic book run a decade earlier. Then, quickly, it was established that no, May lived by herself (albeit in an apartment rather than a house, which is still the case here), but it seemed as if Anna was her neighbor. But now, it looks like Anna lives someplace else entirely, away from the neighborhood and out of the Protector’s reach! She sure moves a lot.

Anyway, the Protector does show up, and surely this is one of John Romita’s finest character designs. He’s just a big bruiser with curly hair, a cowboy hat, an open vest with no shirt underneath, and a bullwhip. And wouldn’t you know it, just as he’s about to come to blows with Peter, Mary Jane arrives and starts flirting with him!

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 10

MAY 25th, 1980 – AUGUST 31st, 1980
By Stan Lee & John Romita

It’s bizarre, but somehow Stan Lee and John Romita seem to have decided that Mary Jane and Carole just can’t coexist simultaneously in the ongoing SPIDER-MAN newspaper saga. Carole only developed into Peter’s girlfriend while MJ was out of the picture with Kraven. When MJ returned to town, it coincided with Carole leaving to hide out from the Loomis Cult. Carole eventually returned to New York and she and Mary Jane shared maybe a week’s worth of time as supporting characters before MJ just sort of dropped off the map as Peter picked things up with Carole again.

On one hand, I understand that Carole has been positioned at this point as Peter’s main squeeze, but it’s just bizarre to write Mary Jane out (or simply ignore her) whenever Carole’s around. It’s not like there’s precedent for this. Back during their legendary run on THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, Lee and Romita had Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy both vie for Peter’s affections, and once Peter settled (fairly quickly) on Gwen, MJ stuck around as a member of the gang. They didn’t just send her off into limbo when Peter and Gwen got serious.

Though I suppose this speaks to one glaring problem with the newspaper incarnation of Spider-Man: there really isn’t a “gang”, at least not in the same way there was in the comics. Sure, Mary Jane is around somewhere. So are Harry and Flash. But for the most part, none of them put in appearances unless the current story arc calls for it. MJ was the catalyst that got the Rattler storyline going way back when. Harry and Flash only pop up when their disco is needed as the backdrop for the ongoing drama. It’s not like the old days, where Lee and Romita would check in on everybody once an issue or so just to remind readers they existed, whether or not they had any ongoing sub-plot of note.

This is probably due to the nature of a newspaper strip versus a monthly comic — in a daily strip, there’s not a lot of time to toss in cameo appearances that don’t further the plot, while a 22(ish)-page comic book does have that luxury.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 9

DECEMBER 24th, 1979 – FEBRUARY 24th, 1980
FEBRUARY 25th, 1980 – MAY 24th, 1980
By Stan Lee & John Romita

Christmas of 1979 finds Peter Parker, as usual, with barely two nickels to rub together in a story arc the BEST OF SPIDER-MAN book called “Requiem for a Super Hero”. Embarrassed that all he can afford for Aunt May and Mary Jane are handkerchiefs, and sobered by Aunt May’s accumulating bills, Peter decides to cast off his costume, retire Spider-Man, and become Peter Parker full time.

But as usual, things don’t work out as planned for our hero. He goes looking for a job, but runs into the age old “experience required” trap. Peter discovers what I learned when I finished college many years ago: you can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job. He also tries out for the ESU football team, but gets the boot. However, at the very least, Peter’s relationship with Mary Jane is looking up, as the specter of Spider-Man no longer pulls him away from her every night — but soon, as Spidey’s enthusiasm dies down and stops bleeding into Peter’s personal life, our hero becomes brooding and dull, pushing MJ away.

Further, Peter bumps into a few situations where he has no choice but to act heroically even without his costume. In the first, he saves a young child on the verge of falling from an under-construction building, then later, after Aunt May is kidnapped by a group of bank robbers, Peter pursues them and secretly uses his powers to save her.

But in the end, it’s learning that a child saved another child from drowning because he knew Spider-Man would have done the same thing that convinces Peter to don the webs once more.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 8

JULY 16th, 1979 – OCTOBER 7th, 1979
OCTOBER 8th, 1979 – DECEMBER 23rd, 1979
By Stan Lee & John Romita

Kraven’s back! And for all the praise I heaped on the prior “Cult of Loomis” installment for its sophistication relative to the strip’s standard fare, this storyline goes in the opposite direction. But, while the plot is a little simplistic and silly, the arc is no less entertaining than the web-slinger’s exploits against the cult.

The basic story is that Kraven decides it’s time to hunt Spider-Man again, so he returns to New York (accompanied by his assistant and apparent lover, Mary Jane*), and gets Jonah Jameson to spread the word that Spider-Man is a space alien who Kraven will expose. The public quickly turns on our hero and he eventually agrees to have his blood tested on live television to prove his humanity. He succeeds and is declared an Earthling, but Kraven never truly thought him an extraterrestrial in the first place. The entire scam was a ruse to get hold of the wall-crawler’s blood and create a “jungle potion” which will sap our hero’s strength.

But Spider-Man gets the better of Kraven in the end, and the hunter’s honor demands once more that he call off the hunt and go home. Mary Jane elects to remain in New York with Peter, and despite his lovesickness over the missing Carole, our young hero is in excellent spirits as his adventure ends.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 7

JANUARY 29th, 1979 – MARCH 31st, 1979
APRIL 1st, 1979 – JULY 15th, 1979
By Stan Lee & John Romita

In a first for the Spider-Man strip, the next story arc continues directly from the prior one — not in terms of a simple teaser set up as the prior storyline ended, which we’ve seen before, but in that the Kingpin, who was pulling strings behind the scenes for the entirety of the last arc, now moves into position as the main villain of this one (sort of).

Still behind bars, the Kingpin orchestrates a prison break — but while most of his fellow inmates flee one direction as unwitting decoys, the Kingpin gets one man, an ex acrobat named Nino, out separately. Kingpin himself remains behind to serve his sentence while instructing Nino in his latest plot: the young acrobat dresses up in a Spider-Man costume and begins committing crimes to ruin our hero’s good reputation. When Nino eventually threatens to walk out on the Kingpin’s scheme, the ganglord reveals that he’s holding Nino’s girlfriend, Marie, hostage against the acrobat’s good behavior.

Meanwhile, the Kingpin’s plot has an unexpected effect on Peter Parker, who suddenly wonders if he’s losing his mind and sleepwalking to commit Nino’s crimes. It’s a stretch, but Lee and Romita have already established that this version of Peter has a tenuous grasp on his sanity as he imagined he was going insane in the second Doctor Doom arc not long ago.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 6

SEPTEMBER 11th, 1978 – NOVEMBER 19th, 1978
NOVEMBER 20th, 1978 – JANUARY 28th, 1979
By Stan Lee & John Romita

Spider-Man’s latest newspaper adventure finds his greatest fear realized, as a mysterious young woman discovers his street clothes — with ID inside, thus revealing his secret identity to her — in an alleyway while he’s busy stopping a robbery across the street. The entire story hinges on a silly premise, though: Peter, wired late at night after finishing his thesis, decides to go outside and clear his head. Literally every other time he’s done this in the history of creation, it’s meant some web-slinging across the city. But tonight, for some bizarre reason, he decides to go for a jog instead, which leads to his needing to change into Spider-Man when he spots the robbery in progress.

But, false premise aside, this is a pretty fun story as the woman, an ex-model named Vera Arlen, blackmails our hero with her knowledge of his true identity into harassing her former employer, beauty magnate Raymond Dexter, who replaced her as his company’s top model with a younger woman when the public demanded a new face for his products. Vera, leaving Dexter’s office in a huff, was disfigured by some chemicals and holds him responsible.

Thanks to the circles in which Dexter travels, there are some fun seventies styles on display in this arc. Big, wavy hair on all the men and women, open shirts for everyone (again, men and women alike, so cleavage connoisseur Stan* was probably pleased with this one), etc. In fact, this is probably the most seventies-looking of all the story arcs so far — and to me, as a lover of that decade’s distinctive, if often tacky, visuals, that’s never a bad thing.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 5

APRIL 10th, 1978 – JULY 2nd, 1978
JULY 3rd, 1978 – SEPTEMBER 10th, 1978
By Stan Lee & John Romita

Before we get started this week, let’s have a few observations about comic strip Peter Parker and how he differs from his comic book counterpart.

Back around the point where Mary Jane left the strip and the direction began to shift more onto Peter’s social/love life, John Romita slightly tweaked his iconic character design for our hero. Peter’s hair became a bit shaggier to fit the style of the times, and he began to dress in more contemporary fashions, including trendy open collared shirts. This is no longer the shy bookworm of the Ditko era, or even the reserved, if slightly more outgoing, young man from Romita’s time drawing AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. This appears to be a Peter Parker comfortable in his own skin, up on the latest trends, and a bit more dashing than usual.

And along with Romita’s visual redesign, Stan Lee’s scripts reflect a new Peter, as well. He’s still kind of mopey and angst-ridden in private, but he’s also far more outgoing than I can recall seeing him in prior Lee stories. Certainly, to reflect the strip’s interest in bringing a new love interest into practically every story arc, he’s become more comfortable with the ladies. When he met Tana in “Time of the Terrorist”, Peter immediately and without reservation invited her to sit at his table in the library, then told his classmate Carole in no uncertain terms that he wanted to meet the exotic stranger. In the final strip of the Mysterio arc, a Sunday page, Peter boarded his flight back to New York and found himself seated beside a beautiful woman with whom he immediately struck up a conversation by way of a good old-fashioned pick-up line.

This is a Peter Parker I’m not used to seeing, but as an alternate universe exercise, he’s fun to watch. This Peter has allowed Spider-Man’s cockiness to spill over into his personal life, turning him into a trendy, confident ladies’ man. I guess for a character headlining his own soap opera strip, that makes sense. And for however long this Peter lasts, I look forward to following him.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 4

DECEMBER 18th, 1977 – FEBRUARY 11th, 1978
FEBRUARY 12th, 1978 – APRIL 9th, 1978
By Stan Lee & John Romita

Per an ad reprinted in the IDW AMAZING SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIPS Volume 1 collection, Spider-Man’s next storyline is titled “The Time of the Terrorist” and it features a bit of a departure in style, ultimately heralding something of a new direction (at least temporarily), for the ongoing serial. We begin with a brief Christmas interlude as Peter does some shopping and reflects on his supporting cast, then wonders why Mary Jane hasn’t called since her return from Miami. This is followed by MJ announcing to Peter that she’s taken a new job as an assistant to Kraven, and will be leaving immediately to tour with him!

As noted last time, the comic strip’s version of Kraven is less a super-villain and more a showman who happens to enjoy hunting Spider-Men on the side, so while Peter is troubled by MJ’s choice, there’s not much he can do about it. Thus, Lee and Romita write Mary Jane – who had already been a minor player for the past few storylines – completely out of the ongoing strip for the foreseeable future.

This allows them to change up their formula, and the strip’s concept along with it. Suddenly that MARY WORTH/soap opera style that Lee had wanted from the start begins to take shape. While there are some costumed Spider-action scenes to be found throughout this arc, it focuses primarily on Peter Parker and his love life. It also takes place over a longer period of time than most of the other arcs to date, which typically seemed to cover only a day or a few days at most.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 3

OCTOBER 3rd, 1977 – OCTOBER 29th, 1977
OCTOBER 30th, 1977 – DECEMBER 17th, 1977
By Stan Lee & John Romita

As he mopes over his role in getting the Kingpin’s wife shot, Spider-Man recaps his origin. In this shorter-than-normal arc (known as “Along Came a Spider-Man” in the BEST OF SPIDER-MAN book from the eighties) Stan Lee and John Romita hit all the classic beats of the original Lee/Steve Ditko story from AMAZING FANTASY #15 – Peter is bitten by a radioactive spider and gains spider-powers, attempts to use his new abilities for profit, lets a crook run free, and later finds that the crook has murdered his uncle – but they also put their own 1977 twist on a lot of it.

It’s never outright stated here, but Peter seems to be in college, rather than high school, when he’s bitten. He and a lab partner are the ones running the experiment which irradiates the fateful spider, and he’s drawn by Romita to resemble his handsome, college-age self rather than the awkward bespectacled teenager originated by Ditko. The story also forgoes the idea that Peter is a wallflower or a loner. He’s clearly friends with his lab partner, and while we don’t see any of his other classmates in this flashback, he seems perfectly socially adept with everyone else he meets.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much business as expected in this retelling. It’s an interesting choice by Lee and Romita to wait nine months into their serial before explaining the hero’s origin, and one wonders if they had ever intended to cover it at all. But in any case, it’s done and, while essential, it’s not exactly remarkable.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 2

MAY 8th, 1977 – JULY 3rd, 1977
JULY 4th, 1977 – OCTOBER 2nd, 1977
By Stan Lee & John Romita

And now a few notable items I didn’t have time to get into last week: As we’ve seen, these strips take place in a separate continuity from the ongoing Spider-Man comics, but a continuity with a similar backstory. Notable tidbits include:

• Peter resides in an apartment in Chelsea, which was his status quo in the comics at this time (and would remain so for much of the eighties) -- in fact, the apartment is even illustrated by John Romita with the same layout and furnishings as in the comics.
• Aunt May lives in an apartment, rather than a house, in Forest Hills. This development dates back to the original Lee/Romita run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, where May and Anna Watson shared an apartment together after Peter moved out of May’s house to room with Harry Osborn. Interestingly, the first story arc had May and Anna living together, but the very next one saw May living alone.
• There’s no sign of Gwen Stacy in any of these strips; she had been killed off a few years earlier in the main continuity but it’s unclear whether she ever existed at all in this one. Mary Jane Watson is Peter’s primary love interest in these stories as in the comics of the era.
• And, as mentioned last time, Spider-Man seems to be New York’s only superhero at this early stage in the strip’s history.

Our third story arc introduces the strip’s first original villain, and features the newspaper debuts of two stalwart supporting cast members from the Lee/Romita comic book run. It’s also the most soap opera-ish of all the storylines so far, insomuch as it features more Peter Parker out of costume than we’ve yet seen.

SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 1

JANUARY 3rd, 1977 – FEBRUARY 27th, 1977
FEBRUARY 28th, 1977 – MAY 7th, 1977
By Stan Lee & John Romita

I read an interview some years ago with John Romita where he discussed the genesis of the SPIDER-MAN newspaper strip. It’s been a long time, but I seem to recall that Romita wanted the thing to be purely an adventure strip. He had grown up on the works of Milton Caniff and Hal Foster and imagined Spider-Man headlining a nonstop series of high adventure and cliffhangers. Stan Lee, on the other hand — at least per my recollection of Romita’s comments — wanted the series to read more like a soap opera strip in the vein of MARY WORTH.

Personally, I think either concept could fit Spider-Man. The character is, after all, the star of a monthly action-adventure comic book — but at the same time, the soap opera qualities of Peter Parker’s personal life were a major component of the series from the very beginning. And personally, at least as an adult, I’d be very happy with a Spider-Man comic strip that mostly revolved around Peter rather than his alter ego.

But in any case, the strip’s first story arc seems to go more in Romita’s direction over Lee’s. It’s more or less wall-to-wall action as our web-slinging wonder finds himself up against Doctor Doom. The idea to kick this strip off with Doom rather than an established Spider-foe is an interesting one, but it makes sense. More than, say, Doctor Octopus or the Green Goblin, Doom is (or at least was at this point) Marvel’s most recognizable villain.

SPIDER-MAN: THE NEWSPAPER STRIPS

I bet you thought that with FLASH GORDON coming to an end last month, we were done with newspaper strips around here, didn't you? Well think again, true believers! As noted last September, I have the first two volumes of IDW's "Library of American Comics" reprints of the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN newspaper strip, covering strips from 1977 - 1981 by the all-star team of Stan Lee and John Romita, and the time has come to crack them open.

(This is the point where I go into a quick sidebar to note that, as I've probably mentioned before, Lee & Romita are the definitive Spider-Man team as far as I'm concerned. Others have done great work on the web-slinger, and I technically consider Roger Stern's AMAZING SPIDER-MAN run to be more of a favorite than the Lee/Romita stuff due to nostalgia, but if we're talking the most iconic version of the character, his supporting cast, and his status quo, then it's Lee/Romita all the way for me.)

When I was a youngster -- say, maybe seven or eight years old -- I had a book called THE BEST OF SPIDER-MAN, which reprinted a handful of story arcs from the earlier years of the Spidey strip. I very nearly read the cover off that thing, to the point that it became one of the most battered, dog-eared books I owned. In a way, it was more formative of my understanding of Spider-Man than the monthly comics, since I had never really been a regular ongoing reader at that point. So while I've read some of the stuff we're about to embark upon, it's been over thirty years now -- and really, the material covered by that beloved old paperback is only a fraction of what appears in the IDW collection.

Note that while there are a total of four volumes available at the moment, I'm only covering the first two -- the Lee/Romita stuff -- for now. Someday I'll probably check out the post-Romita material as well, but for the time being, all I'm interested in are the first four years. Like most strips, this one is broken into story arcs, and my plan is to look at two arcs per week. Unfortunately, unlike FLASH GORDON, I can't find a nice list of arc titles for the Spidey stuff, so I'll just use the strip dates as identifiers instead.

So get ready, because I expect this will take us through the end of the year.

Available on Amazon: Volume 1 | Volume 2
Also available: Volume 3 | Volume 4

THE UNBOXING - JUNE 2017

Two books, both from Marvel, and both starring Spider-Man, comprise this month's Unboxing. You'd think the guy has a movie coming out in a couple weeks or something!

First is a trade paperback collecting SPIDER-MAN BY TODD DEZAGO AND MIKE WIERINGO. Some sources have labeled this as "volume 1" while others have not. It collects SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #7 - 24, which is the bulk of the two creators' work on the web-slinger. A second installment would be very significantly shorter, as their run concluded with SENSANTIONAL #31. It'll be interesting to see how Marvel collects those remaining issues.

(Though it should be noted that SENSATIONAL #25 - 28 were collected in the SPIDER-MAN: SPIDER-HUNT and SPIDER-MAN: IDENTITY CRISIS trade paperbacks from a few years back, along with issues of the other ongoing Spider-titles of the time.)

(And it should be doubly noted that the Wieringo-free SENSATIONAL 32 and 33 can be found in the SPIDER-MAN: THE GATHERING OF FIVE trade, while the earlier Dan Jurgens-created SENSATIONAL #1 - 6 are avaialable in the various trades and Omnibuses containing the "Clone Saga" -- meaning that the SENSATIONAL entire series is currently collected aside from issues 29 - 31!)

MY FIVE FAVORITE COMIC BOOK ARTISTS

It's been some time since I did a little list like this, but for whatever reason, not long ago I was thinking about which artists I consider to be my favorites of all time in the comic book field. It honestly didn't take much thought at all to come up with five; these guys all came to mind immediately with very little head-scratching or consideration over anyone else. So in alphabetical order, here they are:

• Mark Bagley: I first encountered Bagley as the regular artist on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN when I became a regular ongoing reader with issue 360 (which was a fill-in, but Bagley returned for the next installment). At the time I wasn't all that enamored with him; he seemed to draw people's heads too small for their bodies sometimes, and as his time on AMAZING went along, he drew Spider-Man's eyes larger and larger until they seemed to take up about 75 percent of his head. But over the years, on THUNDERBOLTS and his subsequent work for Marvel, I've come to love his expressive style. I really like the way he draws musculature; his characters are all sinew and strength, and I love the way he draws faces these days. Plus, in Tom DeFalco's COMICS CREATORS ON SPIDER-MAN book, he admitted that he loves drawing "big, strong buxom women", which is always a plus in my book. Bagley is one of only two artists who I will always check out on Marvel Unlimited even if I have no interest in reading the actual issue he drew (the other of those two is #3 below).

DITKO VS. ROMITA

A few weeks back, in my post on SPIDER-MAN: BLUE, I mentioned that I preferred John Romita's wall-crawler over Steve Ditko's. Here's why:

To most fans -- especially the historians among them -- there is no contest. Steve Ditko created or co-created Spider-Man, Aunt May, J. Jonah Jameson, Gwen Stacy, Flash Thompson, Dr. Octopus, the Green Goblin, Electro, the Lizard, the Vulture, Kraven, Mysterio, and so many more. Ditko gave us the "Master Planner" saga, and Spider-Man lifting the rubble off his shoulders. Without Steve Ditko, Spider-Man, his allies and his enemies would not exist.

But without John Romita, those same characters would not exist as we know them now. Romita's lasting contributions as far as original characters is much smaller than Ditko's, but he did give us Joe Robertson and the Kingpin, at the very least. Mostly, however, he re-used Ditko's villains on a regular basis.

But, all that said -- and taking Ditko's contributions for granted as the starting point -- I much prefer John Romita on Spider-Man. Romita's artwork is far more attractive to me. All Ditko's characters are very... quirky looking, to say the least. Ditko's Spider-Man lives in a dirty, mundane world. Romita's inhabits a glamorous universe where every man is dashing and handsome, and every woman is beautiful and sexy. It may not be as "realistic" as Ditko's interpretation, but it's a lot more pleasing to look at.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #247

"INTERRUPTIONS"
Writer: Roger Stern | Breakdowns: John Romita, Jr. | Finishes: John Romita, Sr.
Letterer: Joe Rosen | Colorist: Bob Sharen | Editors: Danny Fingeroth & Tom DeFalco
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

The Plot: Spider-Man visits "Nose" Norton to see if he can scare up some information on the Hobgoblin's whereabouts. Norton claims to know nothing, but the web-slinger plants a spider-tracer on his hat and, following dinner with Aunt May and Anna Watson as Peter Parker, our hero trails Norton to Brooklyn, where the stool pigeon sells a trombone case to a group of thugs taking orders from a man they call "Doc". Spider-Man is discovered watching the men and leaps into action against them. When Doc displays superhuman strength, the wall-crawler believes he has finally found the Hobgoblin. But the untimely arrival of Spider-Man's would-be sidekick, Frog-Man, allows the criminals to escape.

Later, Peter develops photos from his automatic camera and gets a look at a map Doc had been showing his men in preparation for an armored car heist. The next day, Spider-Man takes the Long Island Railroad to the heist location, but arrives moments too late. He attends to an ailing armored car guard, then followed the criminals' tire tracks to a nearby garage. There, Doc reveals the item he and his men have stolen is not, as he had claimed, gold, but a crowbar. When Spider-Man shows up, Doc sheds his lab coat, dons a mask, and produces a wrecking ball from a nearby crate, revealing himself to be Thunderball of the villainous Wrecking Crew.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #238

"SHADOW OF EVILS PAST!!"
Scripter: Roger Stern | Artists: John Romita, Jr. & John Romita, Sr.
Traffic Manager: Virginia Romita | Letterer: Joe Rosen | Colorist: Andy Yanchus
Editor: Tom DeFalco | Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

The Plot: As they leave a City office, Peter, Aunt May, and Nathan are nearly run down by a sedan full of bank robbers. Peter changes to Spider-Man and pursues, taking out all but one of the robbers, Georgie. When Georgie flees into the sewers, Spider-Man opts not to pursue, and heads home, little realizing that Georgie has stumbled onto a secret tunnel which leads him to one of the Green Goblin's old lairs. Later, Peter delivers photos of the morning's events to Joe Robertson at the Daily Bugle. Meanwhile, Georgie sells the Green Goblin's secrets to a mysterious figure.

As Robbie gives Peter a ride to Aunt May's house for dinner, word comes in that the Osborn Manufacturing warehouse where the car chase ended is on fire. Robbie and Peter head that way, and Peter discovers the recently looted Green Goblin lair beneath the building, which firefighters observe does not appear on the building's original blueprints.

That evening, the mysterious figure kills Georgie after all of the Green Goblin's gear has been unloaded from his van. He spends the night reading the Green Goblin's journals, and the next morning he tries out some of the deceased villain's gear and then dons a modified version of the Goblin's costume to become -- the Hobgoblin.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #16

"WHO'S THAT LADY?" | "CALL HER... CAPTAIN MARVEL!"
Plotted & Scripted by: Roger Stern | Drawn by: John Romita, Jr. & John Romita, Sr.
Lettered by: Jim Novak | Colored by: Stan Goldberg | Edited by: Tom DeFalco
Travel Reservations by: Jim Shooter | Proud Wife & Mom: Virginia Romita

The Plot: At the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Peter is waiting to pick up Harry and Liz Osborn when his spider-sense alerts him to potential danger from an attractive woman. He follows her outside and changes into Spider-Man. The woman is nearly mugged but takes out her assailants with a quick martial arts display. But when Spider-Man innocently approaches her, she shocks him with a burst of energy, then changes into a costume and flies away.

Atop the Empire State Building, she flashes back to her origin: her name is Monica Rambeau and she was a Harbor Patrol officer in New Orleans, known as a loose cannon. When an old friend of her grandfather came to her for help shutting down a renegade weapons development program off the coast, she agreed. But in the process she was electrocuted by the experimental weapon and endowed with radiation-based powers. Calling herself Captain Marvel, she quit the Harbor Patrol and traveled to New York to seek help controlling her powers before they could cause her to explode.

Spider-Man tails Captain Marvel from the a Empire State Building to the Fantastic Four's Baxter Building to Avengers Mansion, where the Avengers' butler, Jarvis, asks him to fight her after believing she has knocked out Iron Man maliciously. But it was only an accident and when Iron Man comes around, he breaks up the fight and works together with Spider-Man to contain Captain Marvel's powers.

As the Thing arrives to check on Cap, Spider-Man departs the mansion and returns to Port Authority to meet the Osborns.