It's not where I first noticed it, but going back across Stern's run, this is the first place you see it, when the Black Cat targets purveyors of black market high art. ASM # 232 Mister Hyde stalks the Cobra Then you have Tarantula picking up where Cobra left off. Cobra chasing down Nose Norton was yet another instance: ASM #231. Ned Leeds and Marla Madison are caught in the middle of this one! Then, Ben Urich's caught up when Tarantula picks up the trail. So Norton is sort of the second hunted villain in a story line, in that someone besides the cops or Spidey is tracking a character who we'd agree is not deliberately on the side of angels. But the next storyline has even more villains chasing each other. Will O' the Wisp returns for revenge against Brand and ends up fighting their latest, fatal experiment. Tarantula's transformation scared the heck out of me! I just got to peep a few pages while I waited on Mom at the grocery store. I didn...

Ordeals! Lefty Donovan cruelly leaves the once-heavily-armed crew with whom he stole chemicals to die in burning creosote-soaked timbers. I’m reminded the Hobgoblin mystery’s tension comes from his devious schemes and ability to murder people for his goals! Realistically, he’s still hurt from the first battle with Spider-Man, seems, so using other pawns would be a way to move forward anyway-but he’s also setting up Donovan to BE the Hobgoblin AND to be his test subject for the Goblin serum. Enjoying that the Hobgoblin will be Out There for me these October, 2017 nights, so this can become a time ol’ Fright Face can make memorable, as when I was only ten! His hood and mask make him like a living totem of some horrid demon, beyond the grave and madness. The Goblin takes over the minds of men with this equipment’s power and ruthless destructive power. Something makes them fashion their lives and plans around a secret existence of villainy. The avatar, this time, moves fr...

Does the world really need me to make a book about 80’s Spider-Man, cartoons, video games- all of it? I’ll admit freely, if that was paying work, it sounds divine! But who knows. Just like, who knows who is this mystery Osborn Industries prowler, with the dangerous idea to utilize Norman Osborn’s instruments of mayhem- and possibly, the secret of Spider-Man, too? One point worth making: Stern’s underscored how he thinks of the Spider-Sense as Spidey’s unique, defining, most useful power. He’s provided his own set-up for Hobby robbing Spidey of that one secret, most crucial ability. If you’ve been reading all along, he’s set up the more assured, experienced Spider-Man to end his run with the most nuanced, multi-layered challenge yet! Three story lines mingle with the Hobgoblin mystery to provide texture, to build suspense and provide a passage of time the villain uses to grow as a threat. You have the Amy Powell scheme to mix Peter into her open relationship games with his...

Part One asks what has been special about choosing to become a comics creator, to the man who broke in as regular Spider-man artist with maybe fandom's most beloved short story! Ron had drawn KA-ZAR, STAR WARS, and some issues of MARVEL TEAM-UP when he was tapped to turn Roger Stern's dream into the eleven page "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man." Now we revisit its creation with Ron, who talks about stewardship of long-time characters, but also introduces us to his very latest co-creation (with TV comedy writer Darin Henry): The Blue Baron, from Sitcomics (click and see!) (And it's inked by Our Pal Sal Buscema, can you dig it?) (It's not the Swing Era Band Leader, lol, but it's pretty swingin'!) Darin wrote on Seinfeld as assistant and did in fact write a few episodes, too, to say nothing of his work of Futurama ('nuff said!). And Ron? Only the long-time artist on Thor, Spider-Girl, and so much more in a thirty-five year career, doncha kn...

From the start, The Avengers, the Marvel Comic, was created to bring together as many of the company’s big solo stars as possible. His appearance in Captain America: Civil War marked the untangling of difficulties with rights-holder Sony, to allow a Spider-Man to come flipping onto that Berlin battlefield and snatch the shield of no less than Cap himself! A complicated circumstance under which to join any form of Avengers, but a logical one: Stark took a chance on the mystery teen and masterminded his recruitment. His non-adventures afterwards are the set-up to Spider-Man: Homecoming. I love the personally-filmed documentary of Pete’s Berlin mission and even the selfies going into that fight- what better way to reflect how star-struck and still immature Parker still was? With daily texts back to liason Happy Hogan, Pete yearns to break the bonds of his successful but comparatively uneventful scholastic life at Midtown High school. His tendency towards barging in without consult...

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, seemed in 1976 to fill distinct market and story-telling needs. There was enough demand for Marvel’s mascot hero and enough room in his well-developed life for a second title devoted to telling it. Already, he headlined most months in Marvel Team-Up, a commercial vehicle widely used to pare him with lesser known and new characters, but these adventures were first and foremost action stories that rarely played upon developments in his life as student/photographer Peter Parker. Marvel Tales kept a steady supply of his five year-old adventures, already paid for, in print and selling better than a lot of new material of other characters- not to be confused with his adventures for five year-olds, the easy-readin’ Spidey Super-Stories. PPSSM filled another need for a while, too: a Spider-Man title for then-editor-in-chief Gerry Conway, without evicting Amazing Spider-Man scribe Len Wein. His campus-oriented stories carried over the supporting ...

The second issue of Amazing Spider-Man, cover dated May, 1963, featured the wall-crawler’s first super-powered enemy. A conflict of youth versus age, the Vulture was an inventor who used his then-rare advantage to become a daring thief. The second story in the issue introduces another villain featured in Spider-Man: Homecoming- The Tinkerer, another rogue inventor, played by Michael Chernus. Courtesy USA Today His post-retirement plans were quite a bit more exciting than a 401 K and a house in Florida. We’re still so early in the Marvel Age at this point, a foe whose power was, primarily, flight and strength, makes a formidable challenge- maybe not as imaginative as what is to follow, but a nice use of visual and a great combatant for the neophyte wall-crawler. As super-villains go, The Vulture was not a bad start. For one, he makes a terrific test of Spider-Man’s new combat skills, as dizzyingly depicted by co-creator Steve Ditko. His technology-based abilities provide an obs...

My well-documented love for the Marvel Comics Group of 1983 led me to collect all those issues I could find! I started collecting regularly at the end of that year, with Marvel Team-Up #138, then Marvel Tales #170, then Amazing Spider-Man #250 together opening my way into the Marvel Universe of that era! So: the Sandman goes straight, Roger Stern and John Romita, Jr. with Klaus Janson bring the Hobgoblin mystery to its fever pitch, and Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, from 1965, begin what some call their magnum opus on the title they created together, the Amazing Spider-Man #31---that month's Marvel Tales reprint. (for me: it had really come out in September and might have been the first of these comics I collected at Len's Kwik Shop, two blocks from home.) How cool! Marvel Tales reprinted all fifty of Spider-Man's first issues plus his origin and three annuals. No, the writing didn't feel modern, but I allowed for that: still was I young enough to enjoy the suspense...