Spiderman – An Overview And Celebration

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1962 After five movies, numerous cartoons, a catchy theme tune to which most kids add very rude lyrics, and a dreadful live action TV series from the 1970’s that the World ought to forget existed, it’s hard to imagine that Spiderman is now fifty-three years old. Though still the same lovesick teenager in most comics, he first crawled a wall in the year of my own birth, 1962, in what proved to be the last of fifteen issues of Amazing Fantasy Comics. Spiderman became the best known of all Marvels’ heroes, and Stan Lee’s greatest creation. His debut deals simply with his origin, from the spider bite to his teenage angst and the death of his uncle Ben. Spiderman had teenage angst and issues that DC's heroes never had. He had emotional reactions and depth. He was also more vulnerable than Superman, who seemed so invincible. There are no super villains here, or his memorable angry newspaper boss, J Jonah Jameson, but they would soon follow. What we have is a moody teenage genius. He creates his own web fluids for example, from a household chemistry set, and sews himself up his Spiderman costume in just one night. These are skills he just has, not actual Spiderman powers. He seems to have qualities that lift him way above the ordinary even before the radioactive spider bites him, but his career has been truly illustrious. It is interesting to look back at the first issue again (in facsimile copies sadly – I don’t have the valuable first print copy that would now make me so rich). The movies tend to rehash his origin story over and over again. The first villain he fought was The Vulture, a cranky old man using his bird-wings to rob banks. The first to tear Spiderman’s webbing to shreds was Doctor Octopus. My favourite villain however was Mysterio, who could blur the boundaries between reality and illusion. Arthur Chappell