Amazing Spider-Man #1/1

Spider-Man

By Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

Villains: none

Guest Appearances: John Jameson

So, What Happens?

Peter is overcome by guilt about Uncle Ben’s death and May is struggling to pay the bills. He decides to put on a show as Spider-Man and raise the money May needs. The show is a huge hit but he soon finds that a cheque in the name of Spider-Man isn’t much use to solve his money worries.

To make matters worse further shows are impossible as the Daily Bugle, and editor J Jonah Jameson’s TV appearances are all campaigning against Spider-Man as a bad influence on children. It seems that Spider-Man taking the limelight from Jameson’s astronaut son John is half the problem.

Without the Spider-Man money Aunt May is reduced to pawning her jewellery and Peter rages at the injustice of it all.

Peter goes to watch John Jameson’s rocket launch only for it to fail to launch properly, leaving Jameson’s capsule dangerously orbiting the earth with a vital component damaged. Peter changes into Spider-Man.

He crashes into the control room to grab the vital component and then forces his way onto a nearby air-field and commandeers a jet. Waiting on top of the jet for the capsule to fly past again he webs onto it and climbs aboard the speeding space craft. He quickly fits the component and allows the capsule to land safely.

Everyone involved in the space launch is pleased with him but Jonah Jameson still runs headlines about spider-man sabotaging the launch leaving Peter in the same dire straits as before.

So is it any good?:

Taking the plot at face value, no it’s not. The plot is full of holes from the start and largely seems to be set up to show the world being as unfair as possible to Peter

On the other hand if you ignore the fact that almost none of it makes sense it is gorgeously drawn in a way that delivers a totally different kind of story than Kirby was doing in Marvel’s other titles. As melodramatic (and nonsensical) as a lot of it is you do really feel for Peter and Ditko also makes the physical super heroics far more dynamic than Kirby was doing at that point.

In J Jonah Jameson you immediately have an adversary with more personality than any of the ones featured in Marvel comics to this point. I guess technically he is a supporting character (and as such is again far more interesting than any others featured so far, which is essentially just Alicia Masters, Jane Foster and some ants) but here he is the figure who embodies the world’s displeasure and unwillingness to give Peter Parker an even break.

Ditko runs the full range of (negative) moods in his visual depictions of him but it’s not all ditko’s show, you can feel stan having a lot more fun with this title than he ever had on Ant-Man or the Human Torch and immediately it feels like it belongs with the Fantastic Four at the top table of Marvel’s books.

Are there any goofy moments?

The whole space ship section is very dramatic and works within the story while making absolutely no sense. It is launched from New York and then keeps flying past the one place on the globe where Spider-Man is waiting to jump from a moving jet onto its nose before he can fix its technical difficulties whilst holding onto it. Probably best to just draw a line under it all and move on really.

The cheque in the name of spider-Man is also fairly silly. I can see the dramatic point but the guy writing the cheque actually points out that it will be uncashable and asks Pete if he wants the money some other way. Surely until the cheque is cashed Peter would be within his rights to go back and ask for his payment in cash.

Trivia:

John Jameson has appeared in a variety of roles over the years and as a supporting character in titles as varied as She Hulk and Captain America. Kurt Busiek retroactively gave him a few early outings in the pages of Untold Tales of Spider-Man but he actually next appeared soon after Ditko left in a storyline starting in issue 41.

I’m fairly sure that Aunt May was later shown to own their Forest Hills home. Here she is renting it and has a hard time raising the rent money.

Is it a landmark?:

Yes, as the first issue of Spider-Man and introduction of Jonah Jameson..