Ah Ok, the student protest in ASM #68 is likely what I was thinking of. My mistake.

As I say though, the very fact that Flash goes off to serve in Vietnam is an example of the war intruding into the pages of Spider-Man. But nonetheless, issue #68 is still an example of Stan trying to appeal to the college crowd, though it's likely that he used a somewhat watered-down student grievance like rents instead of a more controversial topic like the war. And, as I noted before, he seems afraid to have Peter support one side or the other in case it alienates a portion of the readership.




Where did you get that information? The GCD doesn't say that, and I just looked that issue up in the Comics Creators on Spider-Man book and issue #108 is not one of the ones where Romita's credited with co-plotting. Of course, I'm sure Romita was a co-creator of the story insofar as he would've been involved in one of the story conference meetings with Stan that he has often talked about in interviews, but it doesn't seem like he plotted that issue in the same way that he did with issue #81, for instance.





Yeah, but that was in California where you had student hotbeds of anti-war activism like San Francisco, Berkley and, to a slightly lesser extent, Los Angeles. It's also not just about the number of anti-war protests, but the numbers of people attending those protests, which absolutely ballooned in 1968 and 1969.

Don't misunderstand me, I absolutely agree that there were definitely a rising number of anti-war protests in 1966, and Muhammad Ali's refusal to go to Vietnam did an awful lot to popularise the anti-war movement that year too, but the majority of the American public, including young people, still weren't yet against the war in the same way as they were in '68 or '69, for example.




And yet, by 1966, Stan himself was drawing huge crowds at college campuses. He must've been doing something right.

I think the comics I've been looking for longest and want the most are the four issues of the short-lived '60s Angel and the Ape series I need to complete the run (copies seem to be as rare as hen's teeth over here in the UK), and Amazing Spider-Man #194 (first appearance of the Black Cat).

Issues of the former series are usually afordable, but hardly ever come up for sale on UK comic seller's websites of on eBay. ASM #194, on the other hand, is just a comic I've never been able to find for a price I was willing to pay and in a condition that I could stand.

That's a great, dynamic cover…though, as tarkintino pointed out, it is somewhat let down by the '80s recolouring on the Marvel Tales reprint.





I feel like we've discussed this in this thread before, but I agree.

It was in the graphic novel Spider-Man: Parallel Lives from 1989 that it was shown that Mary Jane had been staying with her Aunt Anna on the night Uncle Ben was murdered and 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, though she kept it to herself. I'm not a fan of retcons, generally speaking, but I think that one makes a whole lot of sense and goes a long way towards explaining why a stunningly beautiful girl like MJ would be so keen to hang out with bookish Peter Parker right from their first meeting.

As you say, it's interesting, in retrospect, how well the scene where MJ suggest she and Peter go and watch the Rhino's rampage downtown fits in with all this. She knows that Peter will want to confront the Rhino as Spider-Man, so she makes it easy for him by suggesting a situation where he can easily slip away and battle the villain. Peter even thinks to himself that MJ is exactly the kind of girl a superhero needs precisely because of her suggestion.





Yeah, it's kind of a lame origin story. Also, I always find it unintentionally hilarious how rude the two spies/scientists are to the Rhino about his lack of intelligence before they experiment on him and turn him into his new, super-powered self.





That's a great battle sequence. John Romita is simply on fire here!





Mary Jane's carefree, "party girl" personality is such a breath of fresh air in these comics. I also love all her hip, swinger dialogue – not that it's entirely authentic, you understand (it is, after all, a middle-aged Stan Lee trying to write like a youngster), but it's close enough and does sound very Sixties. There's a real Beatnik flavour to a lot of the lingo MJ uses too, which, as a big fan of the Beat Generation poets and authors myself, I quite enjoy.




I'm afraid I don't quite agree with that. I like the Rhino for sure, but he's very much a B-list adversary for Spider-Man when compared to the likes of Doctor Octopus, the Vulture, the Sandman, the Green Goblin, the Lizard, or even the Scorpion. Steve Ditko's creativity and world-building was unparalleled. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, there were more classic villains introduced in the first 20 issues of Amazing Spider-Man than there were in the next two decades of the title.





Yeah, having Flash Thompson getting drafted is definitely an example of Stan writing to the college-age readership. It's also the start of the realities of the Vietnam War intruding into the book, though the harshness of that conflict will be fairly watered down, but still, it's an interesting and wholly plausible development for Flash.


Overall, I think this is a much better issue than #42 or Annual #3. There's plenty of great action, Romita's artwork is fantastic, and Stan's dialogue is really great. But it's the soap opera moments where this issue really excels for me. The first full introduction of carefree, beatnik Mary Jane Watson is so much fun, news of Flash's being drafted to Vietnam is a shocking, but highly topical surprise, and Peter's old flame Betty Brant gets engaged to Ned Leeds. It's all fabulous Silver Age drama.

Doghouse Reilly beat me to J. Jonah Jameson by about 90 seconds, so I'm gonna go with...

Doctor Strange...

Myself, I tend to reserve the "like" feature for those posts that I especially enjoyed or where I really agree with the sentiments being expressed.

I mean, I enjoy most of the posts I read in this forum, but if somebody has put a lot of effort into a post that I've enjoyed (like in a review thread for example), or if they've just scored some old comics from a series that I'm particularly a fan of, or if they make a comment about music, film, comics or even real life that I really agree with, then they will get a "like" from me. But I don't just "like" everything as a matter of course, otherwise it becomes kinda meaningless.

Also, if you're ever worrying about why a post of yours hasn't gotten any "likes", don't forget that sometimes folks just forget to "like" posts -- even if they really enjoyed reading them. I know I've forgotten to like posts on occasion, even though I meant to. Likewise, some of my best ever posts have gotten no reaction at all. It's just one of those things.

That's a really uninspiring cover from John Romita. Unusually so.





It's clever how Stan Lee and John Romita subvert the reader's expectations here. When you see that splash-page, you naturally assume that this is an imposter dressed up as Spider-Man robbing the bank, because we've seen similar things happen before at least twice is the series. But Lee's narration box makes it plain that, no, "you're not looking at someone disguised as Spidey." That really leaves you scratching your head in puzzlement.





I agree, Romita's art in this issue looks fantastic. But this is still during his "Ditko" era, in which he was deliberately trying to smooth the transition from Ditko's style to his own by utilizing a thin pen line to mimic his predecessor's inking style. To my eyes, this deliberate "Ditkofication" comes and goes: in some places this comic just looks like Romita's style, with no reference to Ditko at all, while in others it does look rather Ditko-esque. The scenes where Peter meets up with his ESU friends look very Ditko-like in places, I think…







Yes, this issue presents us with a transitional Gwen, which is sort of half Ditko-influenced and half Romita's redesign. This is the first appearance of Gwen's signature Alice band in her hair too.





I love the Silver Spoon, and, later, the slightly hipper Coffee Bean bar too. They both look like really fun places to hang out with Peter and his friends.





Further evidence, as if any were needed, that J. Jonah Jameson is a total hypocrite, if nothing else!




An iconic panel, for sure (at least in the world of Spider-Man comics).

Not sure if you know this or not jtrw2024 , but Romita's model for Mary Jane Watson was the actress Ann-Margret in the film Bye Bye, Birdie. He took her colouring, the shape of her face, her red hair etc, and applied it to MJ – though he exaggerated her dimples and the cleft in her chin. This fitted in nicely with the "Go-Go Girl" look that Stan envisaged for the character…





All in all, I've always found this issue a bit "nothingy". The cover is boring and Spidey's tussles with John Jameson aren't terribly exciting either. Some of the soap opera moments are quite nice and Spidey needling Jonah is always fun. But, if truth be told, it's that last panel that saves this comic. The rest of the issue is rather "meh", but seeing Peter come face-to-face with Mary Jane for the first time makes this a landmark issue.

A favourite, but very underrated, run for me was the Bill Mantlo era of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man from the early '80s, with the Ed Hannigan/Al Milgrom/Jim Mooney team on art chores.

I really love that era of that title. There was the Cloak & Dagger/Silvermane saga happening, Spidey and Black Cat's romance was in full bloom, Felicia got bad luck superpowers from the Kingpin behind Spidey's back, plus the whole Jean DeWolff and Debrah Whitman things were in the background.

To be honest, I feel as if PP:TSSM was often a better and more consistent read than Amazing Spider-Man during this period -- not that ASM was really any slouch either, since the original Hobgoblin saga was raging across its pages at that time. But yeah, PP:TSSM was really, really good during this period and often got first dibs on my pocket money.