So, you want to read the "whole story"?

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 (or “ASM” for short) is a fan favourite title to collect. It’s the longest running Spider-Man title (it hit issue number 800 recently) and has a ton of classic issues, classic stories, and all around classic Spider-Man bullshit that I can't get enough of. Lots of people want to put together “an ASM run” (including yours truly).

But you know, when something is as popular as Spider-Man, you can’t just release one book a month. That would fly in the face of glorious capitalism. When I started collecting comics in the 90’s, Spider-Man had just turned the big 3-0, and Marvel was spamming the shit out of me with 5 ongoing Spider-Man titles, countless Spider-Man mini-series and one offs, New Warriors tie-ins, annuals, and Venom mini-series. I delivered papers three times a week after school solely to buy comics and I still couldn’t afford the whole story.

“The whole story”. That’s where we get back to answering the initial question. My comic collection started because my Uncle, out of sheer laziness, bought me a subscription for Christmas in 1992. I think he forgot that we were coming, so he bought me the ultimate gas station gift—comic books (and yes, at the time, gas stations sold them with a subscription card inside. In a laziness double whammy, my mom explained to me that he picked "Amazing Spider-Man" because it was the first choice on the card.)

The first comic I got was Amazing Spider-Man 376. Loved it. Loved ASM 377. The month-to-month wait was never-ending.

But lo and fucking behold, the third comic book I get in the mail is “MAXIMUM CARNAGE! Part 3 of 14”. I honestly thought it was a mistake. Then the next month, the mindfuck continued with “MAXIMUM CARNAGE! Part 7 of 14”. Then part 11, then it was over. It made no sense. But goddamnit, I was hooked on Spider-Man anyhow.

Admittedly, it is fun to confuse children.

So it turns out that I needed to buy Spider-Man Unlimited two weeks prior (which was a quarterly book with glossy pages, so it cost way more.) Then I needed to buy Web of Spider-Man. Then Amazing Spider-Man. Then the adjectiveless “Spider-Man”. Then the Spectacular Spider-Man. That’s how you get the whole story. 

In my formative collecting years, you had to buy all the comics, or the fucking story didn’t even make sense. So fine. I WILL BUY THEM ALL, ass holes.

So why stop in 1998? Well, there’s an even more amazing, more spectacular, more Web of reason. Around that time, Marvel was going bankrupt. In an effort to boost sales, they “rebooted” Spider-Man to start over at number 1 (that’s right, it’s not just the movies that get rebooted every other year.) To do this, they made all of the titles end at the same time, in one final story. The great synchronicity. A perfect bookend for my collection. It’s called “Volume 1.”

Eventually, they did bring back the “legacy numbering”, so they kind of un-rebooted it. So why not continue to collect past the great synchronized death of the Spider-titles? For one very, very important reason. 

There is something called a “variant”. If you thought that pumping 5 Spider-Man comic books down our throats a month was bullshit, then buckle up. A variant is when the publisher (Marvel) publishes the same book but with different covers. So, if you want the complete set (which is what comic book collectors want), then you have to buy the same book several times. And at fabulously inflated prices! An insidiously clever ploy to capitalize on the obsessive-compulsive tendencies of the loyal fan base. Instead of rushing to produce multiple Spidey titles per month, why not just sit back, slap a bunch of different covers on the same goddamn book, and watch the nerds borrow against their lines of credit? Genius!

Just in case you couldn’t get enough of Aunt May croaking (spoiler alert), go ahead and buy all three versions!

Fuck that noise. Luckily for me, the variant trend didn’t really take off until Spider-Man volume 2. Volume 1 is largely unsullied by that shit, but there are some exceptions (that have been tough to track down.)

So there it is. I want to read the whole story. I love Spider-Man. And I want a complete collection—which is impossible after Dec 1998 (and in 2020, there are so many variants each month that anyone who wants a full set is completely alienated by the hobby.) So despite their best efforts, Marvel created the exact perfect goal for me--the complete Spider-Man Volume 1.