Product Description

He was a teenage web-slinger, and he carved a career few heroes have equaled since! Witness the origins of Doctor Octopus, the Sandman, the Lizard, Electro and more of Spider-Man's original rogues gallery - most of whom remain in the spotlight forty years later! Plus: Spider-Man's identity is exposed for the first time! His first fights with the Green Goblin, the villain who would defeat him more disastrously than any other! Spidey's first effort to join a super-team, and his first effort to fight a super-team - all before his high-school graduation (and we've got that, too)! Guest-starring Doctor Strange, Daredevil, the Human Torch, the Hulk and more! Collects Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spider-Man #1-38 and Annual #1-2 - plus the Spider-Man stories from Fantastic Four Annual #1 & Strange Tales Annual #2, and the covers to Marvel Tales #3-28 & Annual #1-2.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #165762 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1088 pages

Customer Reviews

For Fans and the Curious
Spiderman is a well known character, the villans and the cast of players are well known to the casual reader and the avid watcher of the cartoons and films. So going over the stories I will not do for my capsual review. What I can talk about, is what a beautiful book this is to own. The binding and printing is second to none. The artwork has all been cleaned and really stand out from the page. For the real fan you get insights to many aspects of the character and his history, and some lovely unpublished art. To Sum up, the Fan gets the definitive edition to stories we have read thousands of times. And for the curious, you get a beautiful book with all the wondeful stories written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditco in one collective volume. I feel this is a must have for just about anyone wanting to know more about Spidey. Roll on the John Romita Era :-)

Ditko Sets the Spidey Style
Be warned: you'll need both hands to lift this mighty tome. Here we have the first ever appearance of everyone's favourite wall-crawler in Amazing Fantasy # 15, as well as the first 38 issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, plus the first two AS-M Annuals and, as a bonus, the meeting between Spidey and the Human Torch from Strange Tales Annual # 1.
Artist, Steve Ditko, and scripter, Stan Lee, created Spider-Man in 1962. From the first issue it was clear that we were in for something different. Peter Parker, a.k.a. the Amazing Spider-Man, was not your average super-hero. He was a weedy kid with glasses, a socially inept science geek who lived with his aged aunt. He spent as much time worrying about school bullies as about super-villains. Heck, we even see him sewing his own Spidey costume. He was, as Stan Lee described him to his readers, "The super-hero who could be you." Ditko, with his moody, film noire lighting, strange, jarring perspectives and emotionally expressive figures, was the perfect choice to bring this off-the-wall character to life. And the rest, as they say, is history.
These stories set the tone for Spider-Man in ways that are still obvious across the Marvel Universe to this day. In them, Ditko created a gallery of rogues who remain staples of the MU: The Lizard, The Scorpion, Kraven the Hunter and, of course, the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus.
Many of these tales stand the test of time remarkably well, combining great characterisation and snappy dialogue with Ditko's unique, highly stylised art and brilliant gift for visual storytelling. All these elements come together in the story arc that runs from issue 31 to 33. This remains one of the high points of graphic storytelling, including the legendary sequence in which Spidey is pinned under a ton of machinery for 7 straight pages. I doubt that any other artist would even have thought of trapping his hero, immobile, for 7 pages, let alone turn it into one of the greatest tours-de-force in the history of the comics' medium. And then he caps it off with an 8th page which rates as one of the most awesome splash pages ever. Ditko in 1965 was at the top of his game, and what a game it was.
Wonderful stuff then, with the usual caveats about the shiny paper, over-bright inks and artwork that is copied from Ditko rather than original. That said, it's still a collection of must-have tales that you'd need a serious bank loan to buy in their original format. A copy of Amazing Fantasy 15, published at 10 cents, sold in 2007 for $227,000 dollars!!!

The Good Old Early Days when they knew how to write Spidey...
In the wake of events which have probably ruined the character of Spider-Man like One More Day (Spidey doesn't make deals with the devil, people! He isn't Ghost Rider!) and its follow-up in Brand New Day, its refreshing to be able to read and buy such a fantastic collection of Spidey comics. Whilst certainly bunky and liable to take up a lot of your bookshelf, the Marvel Omnibuses like this one feature fun, if perhaps slightly dated, tales of Spider-Man's early days. This booklet features no less than...

- The Origin of Spider-Man!
- The Origin of some of his deadliest enemies, including Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, Sandman, Lizard, Electro, Kraven the Hunter and more!
- Both of Peter's main girlfriends before a certain redhead made her first appearance, Betty Brant and Gwen Stacy, plus beloved supporting characters like Aunt May, Flash Thompson and the ever enraged J Jonah Jameson!

In short, if you're enraged at how badly Peter's been writen lately in the comics, pick this up. If nothing else, the characters were all original and yet to be riped off a thousand times over in the years to come. If you pick any two Omnibuses for your Marvel collection, get this one and the Fantastic Four one, another great read.