Books like Stan Lee presents The Amazing Spider-Man #2

I picked this up for a half a buck at a local yard sale. It covers Amazing Spider-Man #7 - #13. What differentiates this volume with the hundreds of other times Marvel has gone to the well to make a buck on their Silver Age comic books?It’s a “pocket” sized edition, which means Marvel made the original panels much smaller, so they can squeeze them into a paperback book format. This makes me think of that old saying about reading porno making you go blind. Not true, its pocket-sized re-issues of comic books.So I had to go all Mr. Magoo to read this thing. At least it’s not a black and white comic book. Heh.These issues were at the beginning of the Spider-Man run and have all the dated hallmarks of that time period - corn ball dialogue, formulaic plotting and due to the established style of let’s-go-heavy-on-the-exposition-rather-than-show-what’s-going-on-with-a-character there’s a heck of a lot more reading. See, a whole bunch of reading! Shut up already and go kick some ass, puny Parker.Here’s basically the way these issues worked:Spider-Man fights villain for the first time and gets pummeled.Spider-Man adjusts his style and pummels villain.Then there’s the ongoing soap-opera-ish sub-plots that straddle multiple issues:- Peter Parker has to pay the mortgage/pay for Aunt May’s operation/pay for ingredients to Aunt May’s wheat cake recipe by taking pictures for his a$$hole boss and Spider-Man’s biggest hater, the Daily Bugle publisher, J. Jonah Jameson. - Peter Parker has to figure out what the hell’s going on with his secretive girlfriend, Betty Brandt. - Peter Parker has to deal with the bullying and taunts of Flash Thompson and his crew. (To be fair to Flash, Parker goes to school wearing a suit and tie or, in an effort to change his wardrobe up, a tie and sweater vest that Aunt May crocheted from Uncle Ben’s chest hair and tears.)- Peter Parker has to deal with his over-protective, aged, wheat-cake pushing, galoshes-obsessive, sickly Aunt May. (Modern readers know that marriage and therefore gettin’ some regular lovin’ did wonders for Aunt May’s frequent “spells”.)This is early on in the Spider-run (#7 - #13) but Lee was already regurgitating villains from previous books – the Vulture (#7) and Dr. Octopus (#11 & #12), which means when you do the comic book crime you do the comic book time, which, is roughly about five issues of content. The Vulture pulled a now familiar switcheroo on Spidey and negated his previous science gizmo and drop kicked him onto a Manhattan rooftop. Issue #8 saw Spider-Man go up against the Living Brain – a robot. Ignoring Captain Kirk’s First Law of Battling Computers (Out-logic it cause we’re better than any ‘puter.), Spider-Man spent a dozen pages of getting out-thought and out-maneuvered by the machine until he finally finds the “off” switch. Yes, turn the robot off. Eventually.This issue was also a Special “Tribute to Teen-agers” issue, so it was packed with ads for acne removal devices and X-Ray glasses and features an extra bonus battle between two of Marvel’s teen-aged super-heroes – Spider-Man and the Human Torch because you can’t really write a movie length comic book about Spider-Man getting outwitted by a robot.Spider-Man pulls a dick move and tries to crash Johnny Storm’s party, until the killjoy Fantastic Four show up to break up the feudin’ kids. Jack Kirby did the art work on this story.The next movie-length (or book-length, depending upon whatever huckster-ish adjective Lee can contrive) story features the origin of Electro and its downright electrifying.Rinse and repeat on the Spidey loses round one… … but figures stuff out in round two. I think Aunt May had an operation on her spleen or uvula in this one.For issue #10 we have the Big Man and his enforcer thugs, known as the uh, Enforcers – one knows judo, one does cowboy rope tricks and the third, is big, strong and stupid. There’s some cool mysterious stuff afoot and The Big Man, in future continuity will be revealed to be the Chameleon. Doc Ock is back for issues #11 and #12 and as per usual, he has a tentacle up his rear-end… …but he pulls an unmasking… Try to figure out how Parker gets out of this one. If you said “clone” or “alternate universe Spider-Man” you’re wrong.Issue #13 is proof that monologuing your secrets to the hero you’re about beat the crap out of never, ever works. A Mysterio megalomania walloping for the win.Spider-Man slowly accumulates an arsenal of gizmos like the Spider-Signal and the Spider-tracer. He’s also relatively new at being a super hero, so there’s some growing pains along the way. In these books, Parker only seems to be nominally a teen-ager. “Teen-aged superhero” was the unique selling point at the time, but Lee/Ditko have a hard time pulling it off. If you truly want a more authentic high school experience check out Brian Michael Bendis’ work in his Ultimate Spider-Man run.Bottom line: Again this volume is early on in the Spidey-stuff. It would be a few more years before Lee and Ditko and then, Lee and John Romita Sr. would hit a creative peak with this character, but to Lee and Ditko’s credit the writing and art improve over the course of the book. This book is fun, but it’s like bringing modern TV watching sensibilities to old time TV shows like Mr. Ed or My Favorite Martian and expecting the same type of laughs and entertainment. Ancient Spider-Man is a lot less quippy than his modern counterpart and if you enjoy a smorgasbord of monologues, then True Believer check these stories out, if you go with the “pocket-sized” edition, just make sure you have your local optician check your vision first, otherwise volumes bound in baby seal skin and inked with the blood of Marvel interns are available.For those of you adore Spider-Man. Docked a star because of the publishing format. Why J. Jonah Jamison hates Spider-Man revealed.