May trying to introduce Peter to Watson when she knows he's involved with Betty was Lee taking cues from time-worn soap-opera tropes, which used the "threat" of a new romantic interest to either cause drama (e.g., suspicion) within the existing relationship, or plant the seeds for said existing relationship to eventually end. Obviously, Peter's relationship with Betty will end, but Watson--no matter how much she tries--will not be enough to stop or upend Peter falling in love with Gwen, which was Lee not going for the expected, meaning Watson failing to successfully become Peter's next girlfriend.

I honestly don’t see anything at all odd about Aunt May trying to fix Peter up with Mary Jane. Of course she’d like to see her nephew who she’s raising dating her very good friend’s niece. As to Betty, it’s been a very long time since I’ve read these issues, so I don’t remember if Aunt May knows Peter and Betty are an item. But it’s still not odd for her to prefer him to date her friend's niece over an older working girl. Also, I don’t think there had been any indication that Peter and Betty were supposed to be in an exclusive relationship at a pretty young age for him.

Yeah, as jtrw2024 says, Aunt May has met Betty a few times by this point and definitely knows that she is Peter's girlfriend. I admit that you have a point about Betty being an older working girl though; but I guess I just see it as a bit medling on May's part, though clearly she has the best intentions and Pete's best interests at heart.

Here's the original cover for Amazing Spider-Man #17 for comparison…







It's both really cool and slightly unusual that most of the action in this issue occurs in one room at Mr. Allan's club, and that almost the entire supporting cast is there too.





With the presence of his bat-glider, pumpkin bombs and his other Halloween-themed weapons, this really feels like the proper Green Goblin now. Thank God that awful looking electric broomstick has gone!





Yeah, I caught that too. Love how Stan Lee and Steve Ditko are teasing out little clues for the readership like this. It also totally rules out my earlier theory that, at this early stage, they were planning to reveal the Goblin as one of Spidey's existing supporting cast members. It also rules out J. Jonah Jameson and Frederick Foswell as suspects, which I believe Peter wonders about later on in the run.





I love all the teenage angst in this issue! The rivalry between Liz and Betty, with Peter caught in the middle, is so much fun to read. Also, you really feel Betty's torment when she sees Liz making a play for Pete while she's stood right there and then again later, when Betty sees Liz ruffling her hands through Peter's hair.

Also, note that Betty says she feels "a hundred years old" when Liz refers to her at "Miss Brant". I think that is further proof – as if any were needed at this point – of the age gap between Peter and Betty. The fact that Betty is a few years older than him is obviously playing on her mind, to the point where Liz's comment makes her especially conscious of the fact.





Of course, it was later retconned – in the 1989 graphic novel Spider-Man: Parallel Lives – that Mary Jane had actually been staying with her Aunt Anna the night that Uncle Ben was murdered, and she saw Spider-Man swinging away from the upstairs window of Aunt May's house. She quickly put two-and-two together and deduced that Peter Parker must be Spider-Man, but kept the secret to herself, of course. So, nowadays it's canon that, at this point in the story, Mary Jane already knows that Peter is Spider-Man, which makes May's comments about how much this Watson girl loves Spider-Man much more interesting.

Personally, although I'm not usually a fan of retcons, I must admit that one made a whole lot of sense to me and went a long way towards explaining why a stunningly beautiful girl like MJ would be so keen to hang out with dorky, bookish Peter right from their first meeting.





I love all the shenanigans with Spider-Man having to momentarily duck out of the fight with the Green Goblin to make an appearance is regular old Peter Parker in front of his friends, to avoid raising suspicion about his dual identity. Such fun to read!





It's fascinating that this is really the first time you see the Human Torch's true feelings about Spider-Man coming out, when he admits to his girlfriend Dorrie Evans that he secretly actually rather likes and respects Spider-Man. That adds a whole extra layer of interest to their teen rivalry for us readers.





There's some especially great Ditko art in the later part of this issue – not just in the fight sequences, mind you, but also in the character moments among the supporting cast at Mr. Allan's club.





The fact that Aunt May's condition in this issue is described as "another heart attack" proves that it was indeed a heart attack that she suffered back in issue #9, as I theorised. It was never explicitly stated what was wrong with May back then, but I have always assumed it was a problem with her heart, since that becomes a recurring thing for her.





Good catch! I didn't spot that.


Overall, Amazing Spider-Man #17 is a fantastic comic, and is much better and more exciting than the Green Goblin's first appearance in ASM #14. Stan and Steve are firing on all cylinders here and they just seem to be getting better and better. They manage to pack so much action and drama into this one issue.

Also, I love how downbeat the ending of this comic is. By the end, Peter is isolated, ostracised, upset, and lonely, as the public turns on him, his beloved Aunt May's life hangs by a thread, and his relationship with Betty is in tatters. The only person who's still in Spidey's corner is Flash Thompson, who is, of course, Peter's school bully. Ooh, the irony! Ooh, the drama! This is exactly how we like our Spider-Man comics, dammit!

This is demonstrably not true, despite what Stan Lee might've said in the letters pages. Read back through the thread.

Add me to the list of people who are fine with that retcon!

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 18 (reprinted in Marvel Tales 156)




“The End of Spider-Man!”

Credits (as they appear in the comic):

Written by Stan Lee Author of “The Fantastic Four”
Illustrated by Steve Ditko Illustrator of “Dr. Strange”
Letter by Sam Rosen Letterer of “The Invincible Iron Man”
Colored by Andy Yanchus Colorist of “Marvel Fun and Games”?!!


Plot Synopsis:

After running out on his fight with the Green Goblin last issue, Spider-man is branded a coward, and J. Jonah Jameson couldn’t be happier!





Comments:

“J. Jonah Jameson couldn’t be happier!” is right! He’s grinning right there on the first page, large as life, and I don’t think he stops at all the whole issue!


Aunt May is recovering after getting out of the hospital and Mrs. Watson is around to help Peter look after her. I believe this is the first time we’re given her first name, Anna. Obviously Mrs. Watson would be her married name, but this is the first time her husband is mentioned. He’s still alive at this time, but not seen. As far as I can recall he’s never seen or mentioned again. At some point soon after, he must pass away as Anna Watson is said to be living alone in later issues down the road.


Plenty of cameos from familiar characters reacting to Spidey’s cowardly turn at the end of last issue. From the villain side of things we get reactions from Doc Ock (still in prison), Kraven and Vulture (both are apparently on the loose again, though Vulture will be back in prison the next time he pops up). The Green Goblin is also shown gloating, probably back at his HQ, but still in costume! Even though we know the Goblin has a civilian identity, I like that he sometimes just hangs around in his costume, even if he's just sitting around reading the morning news.

Among Spidey’s fellow heroes, we see the Fantastic Four, the Avengers (Cap, Ironman, Wasp, Giant man and Thor) and DD (still in his yellow outfit, with a single “D” )





Other than Aunt May’s health concerns and the usual personal problems he has to deal with, there’s no major threat for Spidey to fight. Even a regular crime in progress is handled sensibly when Spidey just calls the police.

Once again, Spider-man falls back on his crime fighting commitments and needs to find ways to make a quick buck. First by offering to license his likeness to a trading card company, then by attempting to sell his webbing formula to a paste manufacturer. There’s a really weird scene at the trading card company office with Spidey jumping around, where it looks like he’s in a word balloon. I never could tell what that was supposed to be.




The fact that Spider-man's webbing dissolves after a short period of time makes it useless as a permanent adhesive, but it should still have some practical applications in its present form. I'm sure law-enforcement or the military would be interested in something that "catches thieves just like flies". Maybe if Spider-man shopped it around a little more he could find someone interested in paying for it, but he probably didn't have too much time to think things through, especially after what happens as soon as he leaves the paste manufacturer. The Sandman is out of prison already and has a brief run in with Spidey, but really it’s Spidey who does most of the running. A more typical fight with Sandman will occur next issue.


The Human Torch guest stars again, for the second issue in a row. There’s a reference to an earlier Spidey/Torch team-up from an old Strange Tales story which I haven’t included in this review, but probably will at some future date eventually, since it pops up as a backup reprint in a later issue. The Torch hopes Spidey will meet him at their last meeting place atop the Statue of Liberty. Obviously their actual last meeting occurred just last issue at the dinner club where the Spider-man Fan Club meeting was being held. I'm sure Peter probably knows the place the Torch means, but obviously it is his other, more important priorities which keep him away.




The best Spidey scene in the whole issue, of course, doesn’t even feature our hero. Instead, it has Spidey's biggest fan, Flash Thompson, in that same Spider-man costume that is so convincing, it once managed to fool Dr. Doom! This time around, Flash's motives for dressing up like Spider-man are a little more good intentioned than just trying to scare a classmate, but that doesn't mean things go any better. Interesting that every time Flash dresses up as Spidey, Liz comes running to Peter when she thinks Flash has gotten himself into trouble.


Peter’s relationship with Betty takes a new turn, as he spots her on a date with another guy who we will eventually learn is Daily Bugle reporter Ned Leeds.






In the end though, the idea of Peter giving up on being Spidey only lasts about 3 pages, and after some motivational words from Aunt May, he’s back in costume by the last panel, ready to go! Too bad we have to wait till next issue!


Notable differences in the reprint:

There are some minor changes to the splash page. The credits are moved to the top of the page, probably to accommodate the indicia.

There are flashbacks to the Sinister Six story, and the reprint updates the footnotes to refer to Marvel Tales 152, which isn’t even the right issue. They’re all over the place when it comes to mixing up the Annual’s chronology!

There’s a few instances of Mrs.Watson being called Mrs. Watkins, bit it’s corrected for the reprints. This type of change isn't that big a deal since it was obviously just an error the first time around, so fixing it doesn't impact the plot.




On the other hand, this issue also includes some updated real world figures to make the stories seem more current. "Khrushchev" is name dropped once again, updated to "Khomeini".




A change which occurs in this issue of Marvel Tales, probably wasn't really intentional, but is interesting nonetheless. It involves one of the police officers who show up when Flash is taking a beating. In the original Amazing Spider-man 18, the police officer appears to be a person of colour, but in the Marvel Tales reprint, he's caucasian. There's really nothing in the way he's drawn or in the dialogue to confirm what Ditko or Lee originally intended. This could just be the way original colorist Stan Goldberg chose to colour the character, either on his own, or by direction from Stan Lee or someone else. I've noted before, that Andy Yanchus, or the other colorists who worked on the Marvel Tales reprints, don't really seem to be referring to or sticking to the colours of the originals. Other than keeping the colours correct for the established characters, like Spidey and the villains, everything else just seems to be coloured based on the same aesthetic decisions they would likely use on any new comic they were working on. I'm going to give Andy Yanchus the benefit of the doubt, and assume that his decision to colour the police office white wasn't done with any particular ill intent, but it could certainly be interpreted that way. The opposite thing happens in the next issue where a white police officer is now black. Maybe someone on staff pointed this out after it was too late to fix for this issue, so this was their way of rectifying the mistake the following month.




Marvel Mails, is still here, with plenty of positive letters. There's been a change between issues, since now Danny Fingeroth is Editor and Bob DeNatale is Assistant Editor.

It’s interesting to read through these Marvel Mails pages and see a lot of letters from older fans who’ve been around a while and seem familiar with the originals. Of course these stories were barely 20 years old at the time, so it’s not too much of stretch. There were younger readers of course who were experiencing these for the first time in 1983, but they wouldn’t be writing letters.

Which brings us of course to…


Personal anecdotes:

This would probably be the first time I didn’t miss any issue of Marvel Tales (even though I didn’t really realize there were issues missing between the others I’d read). The continuing story must have kept me on my toes back then to make sure I didn’t miss out on anything. Either that or I was just lucky.

This was probably my first time seeing Sandman. I thought he was called Hammerhands at first, probably confusing him with Hammerhead, whose name I was familiar with. Obviously I figured it out at some point, especially with him being the villain two months in a row, here and next issue.

Around this time, I’d probably also see the Spider-man and his Amazing Friends episode with Sandman. I usually had other extracurricular activities on Saturday morning and wouldn’t always get to see my favorite shows, but I probably heard about the Sandman episode a couple of times from friends before I actually got to see it. Within the year, I got to see the Sandman episode from the 60s cartoon too.