I wAS four when Mom bought me my first comic book, when they were Still Only Thirty-Five Cents. Spider-Man? Doctor Octopus? Oh, yes, make it happen, please! So on that walk one summer day, up Spring Circle, she made it mine. Years later, I found out where the story originated, and then realized what must've been on sale up on Old Lindale Road. Marvel Tales, I discovered. I didn't get anymore for quite some time. But wow. Big scary explosion at the end, suspense in the snow, helicopters, and some strange business between some pretty friends at a party Peter's missing. "My Uncle...My Enemy?" is sheer ridiculous fun. Aunt May inherits a nuclear reactor? She thinks Doc Ock really wants to be her loving companion? It made her seem such a doddering ol' dupe! But I was four, so it worked just fine. I didn't know then, but one day I'd find out Gerry Conway was a big fan of the same cartoon I loved back then, too: SPIDER-MAN! Reruns of the ABC ...

Flash Fiction: What IF? Flash Thompson Became Spider-Man One-Shot The opening narration’s the first feint. Longtime-fans familiar with military vet Flash Thompson will think they’re reading captions describing how his time in the service taught him the difference between heroes and “a thug with a gun.” But the chaos unleashed towards our perspective by Diego Olortegui’s art stems from ‘the good guy.’ For this is not the mature Flash cultivated by this very writer on his original groundbreaking Spider-Man run. This is no friend of Peter Parker, who walks up to our intrepid shutterbug spitting menace. The narrator? Our new version of Colonel Nick Fury, standing in for The Watcher after the events of Secret Sins as The Unseen, with a very different formula for seeing Infinity. His words are the weigh station to a parallel Earth, and the times have picked up in the heart of Spidey’s roots, where our writer discovered Spider-Man, himself. It’s Midtown High’s football hero, with...

OK, Best Spider-Man Team-Ups of the Years brings you a quartet of comics this time out, so Face Front! First, the two-parter that won the spotlight: 1978’s Best, with the grand prize, Spider-Man with Mighty Thor versus The Living Monolith in Marvel Team Up #70! What epic spectacle, the great in power shaking the city while our point-of-view character, Spidey, at one point hitches a ride on Thor’s hammer, Mjonir! That scene’s homaged on the very cover of Marvel Team-Up #148, where I first caught that tactic with my young eyes. So, Marvel Team Up #68 set up the return of Havok, the X-Man whose origins share the source of power with the villain of our piece, the archeologist who also shares mutant solar-absorbing abilities. But should Havok fall…! Let’s say, Thor is just about the only cavalry who’d have a chance. The 1972 first pairing of the god and the graduate, Marvel Team-Up #7, was my choice of winner in that year! Here, it’s my 2nd favorite Spider-Man/ Thor story. ...

I was so excited, the day in 1986 I found a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #123 in the back issue bin at Amazing World of Fantasy, For the first of only three times, I attempt to barter with Gordon, the owner. I’d read advice recently then about asking if a shop owner wants to negotiate on back issues you want to collect, especially on older, slower-moving back issues. “That’s part of the Death of Gwen Stacy storyline!’ protested Gordon, with a whip of his long brown hair. I couldn’t argue with that. I’d have to settle for paying the most I ever had for a comic book: $3.50, as I recall. Maybe $4.50. New issues are holding the line at seventy five cents, so this was a big move in my little hobby world. I didn’t regret it, though. I now had the oldest copy of Amazing Spider-Man, yet- from before I was even born! Better, the art benefits from John Romita, I believe finishing Gil Kane’s pencils. Gerry Conway was settling fandom on its ear with that trilogy: the kidnapping and acci...

“The Delusion Conspiracy!” is a funny title for a story I remembered because President Trump’s going to France- like Spider-Man, Robbie Robertson, and J. Jonah Jameson do in The Amazing Spider-Man #144. Rich guy leaves America to go to France in the middle of, in hopes to deflect from, speculation of his collusion with a known menace: that’s the premise. Writer Gerry Conway’s about to dangle this entire distraction before the reader’s eyes before lowering the boom with the bizarre sequel to his most famous story. “Delusion” also appeared in Marvel Tales #121, printed the summer of 1980. On this very rare occasion, my Mom relented and purchased my sister and I both comic books from Rudy’s, the country town grocery store in the neighborhood where we’d one day attend Model Elementary, in the same building where she and her sister attended high school. Though the storytelling’s recognizably from an earlier time period, you also get a five-page back-up which introduced me to the 1950s...