Spider-Man Volume 1 - The Complete Story

As I noted in my last post , the Pursuit storyline is all about Spider-Man being out for revenge. He’s officially endured enough bullshit and has totally snapped. Even the villains he fights during the Pursuit storyline are taken aback at Spider-Man’s lack of wisecracks and the radical shift from his overall nimblybimbly dogoodery fighting style. Now that Spider-Man is totally pissed off, he is hunting down his enemies while screaming death threats at them.  Sweet Jesus! This never would have happened in the Golden Age. I think it’s a Spider-Man that we’ve always wanted to see, probably out of morbid curiosity if nothing else. Spider-Man is so dark and violent, he's just a couple extra pouches on his costume away from being in Image comics (cheap shot!). Things are full throttle as we watch Spider-Man smash straight through all of the Chameleon’s tricks and traps rather than have to struggle through and think his way out of each sticky situation. No solving puzzles or...

You may have heard the term “Golden Age”... as in, the Golden Age  of America or the Golden Age of Television or the Golden Age of Backalley cockfighting. In comic books, the Golden Age generally refers to comics published in the 40’s and 50’s (although, it would need to start in 1938 to encompass Action 1, the first Superman book, which kicked off the age of superheroes.) The Silver Age refers to a period in the 60’s and the Bronze Age is referring to the 70’s and early 80’s. You may hear references to the “Copper Age”, though I’m 90% sure it’s just some shit eBay sellers invented so they could sell crap from the late 80’s too. And the 90’s? While typically falling within the “modern” nomenclature, there’s another, funnier name. It’s the “Chromium Age.” You can guess why. Foil covers all up in yo business. Holograms and poly bags and shiny trading card inserts out the ass.  Every possible excuse for an issue to be an “anniversary” issue resulted in a foil co...

From the pages of Venom--the Jury! Dang, I guess I should add those Venom books to my pull list. Also, if you were a Maximum Carnage fan, don’t miss these issues! You have all 14 issues, right? It was kind of a big deal. No collection is complete without them (in fact, maybe you should just pick up a copy of every Spider-Man comic ever printed, for that matter, just so you can sleep soundly at night.) Sound a bit neurotic? Welcome to comic book collecting. The Jury is a team of super guards, each with their own badass, customized, Iron Man-trademark-infringing costume and codename, like Ramshot or Sentry. Mark Bagley has a gift for designing absolutely sick looking anti-hero teams in power suits. The leader was covered in fucking spikes and had green and (copper?) armor, so you know he didn't take prisoners, unlike that pussy, Ramshot. Looking back, now I see where Halo: Reach got all of their helmet designs. The endless call backs and mini-explanatio...

MAXIMUM CARNAGE. MAXIMUM EXCITEMENT. MAXIMUM SPIDER-MAN. Don't forget "Maximum Venom" and "Maximum Doppleganger" and "Maximum FOMO" As with most collectors at the beginning of the hobby, there is an absolutely mad scramble to figure out what the fuck is going on, who the fuck all these characters are and where the fuck I’m going to get the money to buy all the issues I need to read the story. And in the 90’s, long gone were the self-contained stories, or the occasional two-parters or (epic!) three-parters. No, we need a wallet-molesting FOURTEEN-parter that pushes your allowance and your sanity to the absolute limit. Amazing Spider-Man 378 was my third comic book ever, so I was still completely lost when it arrived in the mail. I had no idea that there even WERE other Spider-Man books out there. Obviously, the “Part 3 of 14” caught me off guard. But, understanding that reading comic books involves a shitload of “just going with it”, I...

The first Spider-Man comic in my collection was Amazing Spider-Man 376. I took spectacularly good care of that sonofabitch (as well as its future brothers and sisters)—well, at least, to the greatest extent my meagre means would allow.  I couldn’t afford the actual “official” plastic baggies and boards they sold at ye olde comic book shoppe. But being the meticulous child I was, I found a cheaper preservation option: I stored them in ziploc baggies instead. My comics were as safe as leftover chilli. Zips were cheap at the grocery store. A weird side effect of this is that, to this day, I get a rush of nostalgia whenever I smell a ziploc bag. Yet another way my childhood weirdness has damned me to a freakish adult life. I can’t say my brother took the same level of care of his comic books. He wasn’t as obsessed as I was—though, to his credit, he always took care of my comics when he read them. I can honestly say, looking back, that he was careful with them and diligent ab...

Amazing Spider-Man 376 was the first Spider-Man comic I got in the mail. It’s the humble beginning of an epic quest. It’s a gift and a curse. Behold. Admittedly, when I was 8 years old and saw it for the first time, it blew my mind. All the characters are facing the same way, so it kind of looks like they’re a wicked team or something. I just assumed these guys were all working together. This was the first (but certainly not the last) instance of me being manipulated by the age old “what is depicted on the cover never actually happens in the book” trick. It’s objectively insane how often the comic book companies straight up lied on the covers, but it’s just some more classic comic book bullshit that readers have normalized over the years (and is actually one of those little random things that you eventually start to expect and maybe even love.) In fact, there’s a whole series of Spider-Man covers depicting Spider-Man unmasking the Hobgoblin (his identity was a huge mystery). O...

How does a completely normal dude wind up on an obsessive quest to collect every single Spider-Man comic book from August 1962 to December 1998? It requires a bit of explaining.  The first ever Spider-Man comic book was published in August, 1962. That issue is the famous Amazing Fantasy 15, one of the holy grails of comic books. There is some debate as to whether it actually hit the newsstands before September, but the cover, at least, says “AUG”. So fuck it, I’ll assume the fabled month was August. It can't possibly actually matter, but obviously everyone still needs to fight over it. You're not a "true believer" unless you take out a second mortgage on your home. Following Spider-Man’s first appearance in that dope-ass book, the title was discontinued (at least, until the 90’s, when it was “revived”.) But Spider-Man was so gosh darn popular that he was back in March of 1963 in his own ongoing series: the Amazing Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man ...