THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Annual 1 (reprinted in Marvel Tales 150)
“The Sinister Six!”
Credits (as they appear in the comic):
Written by Stan Lee
Drawn by Steve Ditko
Lettered by S. Rosen
Colored by A. Yanchus
Plot Synopsis:
It's Spider-man's biggest adventure yet as he has to face not one, not two, but SIX of his most SINISTER foes!!!
Comments:
This was Spider-man's first Annual, back when this was a really big deal. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko go all-out on this one to make it as memorable as possible, taking full advantage of the extra pages, giving the readers a really great special issue!
This issue's plot is structured a bit different than what we're used to seeing in the regular series, and really it's just an excuse to show off as much of Spidey and the supporting cast of characters and villains as they can, but I mean that in a good way, and it’s so much fun!
In case you can’t tell from the cover, the members of the Sinister Six are:
-Dr.Octopus,
-Mysterio,
-Kraven,
-Electro,
-Vulture
-Sandman.
How great is it that Spider-man has so many interesting villains so early in the title's history, that you can put six of these foes in a group, and still have two or three other ones left over?
If the usual cast of characters isn’t enough for you, and on top of all the villains, the story is also jam-packed with cameos from other Marvel characters.
Here they are in order of appearance
-Thor
-Dr. Strange
-The Fantastic Four
-Giant-man and the Wasp
-The Fantastic Four, again
-Captain America
-Prof. X and his X-men
-Iron Man
-The Invisible Girl and the Thing (without the other 2 members of the FF)
-The Human Torch, by himself
-Not the actual X-men, but since they’re so cool, Mysterio has got his own robot versions of Cyclops, Angel and Beast
-and, once more before the end, the Human Torch!
At the start of the story Doctor Octopus is still in jail. His mechanical arms can now be removed, but the strange accident which originally bonded them to his body, allows him to telepathically control them from short distances. This is how he escapes from prison, and he doesn't waste any time gathering together the other five villains who will make up the Sinister Six. Kraven’s return follows pretty well from his brief appearance in Iron Man’s mag, but I’m not too sure how the rest of the villains are out of jail. I know Sandman fought the Human Torch in Strange Tales, but he was arrested at the end of the story. Electro appeared in an early issue of Daredevil shortly before this, but he should be in jail too. Same goes for Mysterio and Vulture.
When the villains are gathered together, Doc Ock is smoking. Marvel put a ban on smoking in their comics in the early 2000s, so a scene like this probably wouldn’t pass today. Then again Ock is evil, and wouldn’t care about the rules anyway
A special issue like this was sure to attract new fans, so it's really reader friendly, showing off as much of Spidey's cast, and villains as possible. There's a brief recap showing parts of the origin story, particularly Uncle Ben's death, and the role Spider-man played in it. It's Spidey's guilt over his failure to stop the Burglar when he had the chance that causes him to doubt himself. Once again Spidey’s powers disappear. A few issues back it was a virus that caused his powers to fail, but now it’s simple self-doubt. This plot point would be picked up and used to good effect in the 2nd Spider-man movie from 2004. A similar story involving a slightly different group of villains, using the slightly less-sinister name, the “Insidious Six” would also be used in the 90s Spider-man the Animated Series, which even managed to incorporate the unmasking scene from ASM 12
Of course, Peter is too wrapped up in his own problems as usual that he's oblivious to what's going on around him, both at school and at home. Aunt May is so worried about Peter that she heads all the way to the city to talk to Betty about it. Betty and Aunt May were shown to have met in an earlier issue when Aunt May was in the hospital, so it's interesting that when Aunt May first meets up with Betty outside the Daily Bugle building, she refers to her as "Miss Brant", though quickly corrects herself.
Doc Ock remembers that Betty Brant proved to be a useful hostage a couple times before, so he kidnaps her again and this time Aunt May goes along for the ride.
Even though Betty keeps telling Aunt May Dr. Octopus is evil, Aunt May is impressed by his good manners. She’ll continue to fall for Otto's charm on several more occasions, in later issues, which we’ll eventually get to.
Fortunately for Spidey, (and all his fans), his predicament is only temporary and his spider-powers are back, just at the right time when he has to fight each member of the Sinister Six one-on-one, to rescue Aunt May and Betty Brant. Ock’s plan involves the six villains fighting Spidey one at a time, and they draw cards to determine which order they should fight him. Ock’s tentacle is holding the box from which the cards were drawn so it was probably always his plan to fight Spidey last (in a giant fishbowl of course, because that’s how a real octopus would do it). Each card also provides the respective villain with the location they’re supposed to fight Spidey and it’s perfectly suited for their individual powers. Not sure how that’s supposed to work since the cards were picked at random. After each battle, Spidey receives a card which tells him where to go next. Are these the same cards that the villains picked earlier, or does Ock just have a card for every occasion?
Obviously it would make more sense to have the whole group attack Spider-man all at once, but then we wouldn't get to see all these cool fight scenes at all these different locations, not to mention those big splash pages!
By the end of the issue the bad guys are all in jail, together in the same cell, but they vow never to work together again. Doc Ock’s tentacles have been removed again, Vulture’s missing his wings and Electro and Mysterio are unmasked. Electro might not be fully charged, but I’m not sure what would prevent Sandman from turning into sand and escaping. Come to think about it, why are Kraven and Mysterio even there at all, since they were still on the loose the last time we saw them? Maybe the other heroes rounded them up between panels. Jameson did go to a lot of trouble running around the office and contacting the other Marvel heroes while all the action was going down, so maybe his hard work paid off. I'm sure that's how the morning edition of the Bugle probably reported it!
This is the first time Aunt May gets directly involved in a Spider-man adventure. She's made comments about Spidey before and seeing him in person hasn't really changed her opinion of him much.
In the end though, everything works out for our hero. Well, at least as well as it ever does.
Notable differences in the reprint:
As I mentioned in an earlier review, the most obvious problem with Marvel Tales reprinting the Annual in their 150th issue, is that it's in the wrong place. Two of the main villains haven’t appeared yet which would create a real continuity problem if you were a new reader following this series as it came out back in 1983. Since I'm reading these as back issues, it's no problem for me to just shuffle them around to their correct reading order. I've seen some sources place the Annual after issue 16, but the collected editions I've got place it after issue 15 which is where I think it works best. There's no Daredevil cameo in the main story, and he isn't part of the guest-star pin-up, nor does the Ringmaster or the Circus of Crime get included among the other villain pin-ups.
On the cover, a small caption is removed to make way for the UPC box. There's also some changes to the wording on the remaining caption, which I assume is to remove what the editors believed to be outdated slang. "Most Gol-darned Guest-stars" becomes "More Exciting Guest-stars".
On the splash page, there's some adjustment in the credits. Where Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were originally the "most talked about team in comics today", here they are the "most talked about team in comics history"!
The reprint also removes the footnote captions telling you where you can find the various heroes who make cameo appearances, probably since some of the original series were no longer relevant by the time this issue came out.
In addition, there are some changes that alter original plot points.
To defeat Electro Spidey wraps a cable around his leg to ground himself. Apparently this isn’t the correct way to fight an electrically powered super-villain without killing yourself, so Marvel Tales makes changes to the text and the art removing the cable and stating that Spidey is not grounded. I nearly electrocute myself every time I try to fix a light switch in my basement, and don't really know enough about electricity to tell you which is the correct method! Would someone care to clarify what is the proper way to handle an electrically powered bad guy, (just in case I ever find myself in a similar situation as Spidey)?
During the Mysterio sequence when the card which will lead Spidey to the next location catches fire, Spidey webs it up to stop the flame then uses his spider-sense to detect the message before it burns away. Obviously this isn’t how his spider-sense works, so the text is changed here so that he just concentrates as best he can to read the message
The giant fish-bowl scene is left intact, so I'm going to assume that's exactly how a real octopus would kill a spider!
As we've seen before, there's a change to the dialogue to make this story seem more current. Aunt May gets home too late to catch The Dukes of Hazzard (misspelled as "Hazard") on TV, changed from The Beverly Hillbillies in the original. A letter in an upcoming letter column will point out that this doesn’t make sense, since even taking into account the sliding time-scale, these stories should still be set a few years earlier than the current Spidey from 1983, which would place it before The Dukes of Hazzard was on the air.
The final panel removes the closing caption, and also an announcement for the upcoming Marvel Tales Annual (aka Marvel Tales #1)
Even though this is an extra sized issue of Marvel Tales, it’s still got less pages than the original Annual, so only the main story is reprinted. Some of the Annual’s back-up features get included in other issues later. I’ll note those when they pop up.
For the record, here are the other features included in the original Annual
-Pinup pages for all the villains from Amazing Fantasy 15, and Amazing Spider-man 1-15
-“The Secrets of Spider-man”, 9 pages covering everything you’d want to know about Spidey’s powers, web-shooters, webbing, mask, etc and even part of his origin (the part that wasn’t covered in the main story)
-“Peter’s favorite Heel and Heart-throb” A pin-up of Jameson and Betty at the Bugle office.
-A pinup of Spidey (note: this was already reprinted in MT 137)
-A pin-up of Peter’s classmates and teachers at school
-A pin-up showing the layout of Peter’s house where he lives with Aunt May
-A pin-up showing Spidey with the other Marvel heroes who guest-starred in his early stories: the Fantastic Four and the Hulk
-“How Stan Lee & Steve Ditko create Spider-man”, a 3 page humorous story which I’m sure is exactly how these two creators got along
!
Personal anecdotes:
I got this as a back issue probably around 1988. I’d heard about the Sinister Six story, but didn’t actually know which villains were involved. An upcoming issue, which I will review soon, was one of my earlier Marvel Tales, and had a flashback to Spidey’s fights with four of the villains, and mentions the names of the other two but I don’t think I realized until I read the actual story that this was where those scenes were from.
I’d also seen some of the backup features in various places, but since the Marvel Tales reprint omitted these I didn’t realize they were actually from the Annual.
A couple of the pinups I wasn’t even aware of until I read this on my DVD-rom collection
