In a completely selfish hope that Marvel Comics' new high end collectible Wolverine Adamantium Edition may be followed by a Spider-man Web Slinging Edition I’m taking the opportunity to highlight the stories that I think are representative of what makes Peter Parker “Amazing”. I’m sticking exclusively with the mainstream Spider-man most people know of and worked hard to keep the page count as close to 720 as possible. I’m also working in publication order so that we can see the character growth and development as it happened. Last week we saw the end of Kraven in “Fearful Symmetry: Kraven’s Last Hunt” from Amazing Spider-man #293 and 294, Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-man #131 and 132, and Web of Spider-man #31 and 32.
Jumping way ahead again to February of 2002 I’m now looking at the newly relaunched and renumbered Amazing Spider-man #38 (#479) written by J. Michael Straczynski and illustrated by John Romita, Jr. and Scott Hanna. “The Conversation” is really a simple story. A few issues prior to this, Aunt May had let herself into Peter’s apartment and found him completely passed out from exhaustion, beaten and bloodied with his torn costume on the floor beside the bed.
In this issue it all catches up to them in the form of a conversation between Peter and his aunt. The revealing of secrets and the forgiveness for slights real and imagined, this story was beautifully written by Straczynski and Romita Jr. and Hanna excelled at the artwork as it was a really not a typical (Marvel) comic book but mostly just a whole bunch of pages of two people sitting around talking.
The conversation touched on a whole lot of points from the death of his Uncle Ben to why he didn’t ever tell May to more that was glossed over for “Two hours, thirty seven minutes later”. This was a great issue in the history of Spider-man redefining the Peter Parker character and including his aunt while strengthening the need to be Spider-man.
Michael R. Murray has been buying and collecting comics for over 35 years. At one point his collection included two copies of Amazing Spider-man #1, and one copy each of Amazing Fantasy #15, Fantastic Four #2, Avengers #4, Showcase #22, and dozens more high grade and key issues. The collection has grown to include original art pages, as well as statues and busts, with the current emphasis on collecting original drawings from appropriate artists on the inside of his hard covers. His personal collection of graphic novels consists of over 2,000 hard covers and trade paperbacks. He has attended all of the Boston and New York Comic Cons and experienced Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Diego. He has championed comic books in the local schools and was very proud that both of his children read at least three years above their grade levels, due nearly exclusively to comics. He’s quick to point out that none of this makes him an expert, but that his love of comics is most enjoyable when he can share it. Follow on Twitter at mycomicstore001 or like his Facebook page.