THE UNBOXING - SEPTEMBER 2016

As noted last month, my purchasing has dwindled quite a bit recently -- and while I don't necessarily mind, it makes for a mild annoyance when I don't have an Unboxing ready for a given month. I already skipped May of this year, and September was also going to turn up empty, which would've been a record around these parts.

So, even though I didn't get any newly released items from Marvel, DC, or the rest, I decided I would "unbox" a few things I already had. See, while I post all my monthly pre-ordered arrivals here, I do acquire other books throughout the year via gift cards, sales, etc. So today we'll take a look at a couple of items I've actually had for several months, thanks to some Christmastime Amazon gift cards: SPIDER-MAN: THE ULTIMATE NEWSPAPER COMICS COLLECTION volumes 1 and 2.

Released by IDW's imprint The Library of American Comics, these volumes collect all of the original syndicated Spidey strips by Stan Lee and John Romita, as published between 1977 and 1981. Marvel previously released this material themselves some years back in both hardcover and paperback format, but as I understand it, both versions had issues so I opted to skip them. But IDW has impressed me with their Library of American Comics offerings (more on that at some point in the future), so I decided to finally take the plunge.

There's a recently released third volume out there as well, collecting stripes beyond '81 by Lee with artistic contributions from Larry Leiber and Fred Kida. I plan to pick that up when the opportunity presents itself.

The Spider-Man strip has, in recent years (and for some time as my teenage recollections seem to recall) been... not great. But I really look forward to reading these "new to me" Lee/Romita Spidey stories, and you'd better believe that when I get to them -- most likely sooner rather than later -- I'll talk about them right here!

Available on Amazon: Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3