Thanks to the box office numbers of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, we've been getting a raft of good reprint collections devoted to the character: none so great as the recent "Marvel Masterworks" re-issue of Amazing Spider-Man, Volume Two. Spent the weekend re-reading the stories in this book for the first time in decades. I was delighted to see that they almost worked as well for a geezerly adult as they did the nerdy adolescent reading 'em for the first time.
A hardbound collection of the second ten issues of Amazing Spider-Man (circa 1963-4), the book shows the character's original creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko as they really start to hit their stride. Having already exhaustively ballyhooed Spidey as a Different Kind of Superhero, Lee & Ditko were now in the position of actually having to prove how different he was. This they did: by upping the soap opera elements with their now-established cast (frail Aunt May, blustery editor J. Jonah Jameson, perpetually forlorn secretary Betty Brant and the chorus of high schoolers led by Flash Thompson) and by bringing in two of the series' best long-running antagonists (Green Goblin and Kraven the Hunter).
The Spider template had already been established in the first ten issues: nerdy science guy who blossoms into a smart-ass once he puts a mask over his face (you always had the sense that his wisecracks had festered in the back of his brainy mind for years - and that the supervillains he battled were surrogates for the bullies he'd known all his life); guilt-ridden kid whose best intentions were regularly misunderstood by a fickle outside world. All that was left was to put poor Peter Parker through his paces.
Spider-Man artist Ditko was the not-so-secret factor in the series' success. No one then or since has shown the same straight-faced ability to depict adolescent doubt and self-pity as this uniquely clunky great. One of Ditko's standard images - it crops up repeatedly in these stories - was of hero Peter hunched over, solitary, oppressed by the shadow of his spider role. As Ditko drew it, it works every time. Even when our hero is victorious, he remains a friendless figure: swinging in the distance over the NYC skyline, watching a ship steam off and fantasizing about escaping on it. If great power brings responsibility, it also brings loneliness. Particularly for a bookish boy in Forrest Hills in the 60's.
These days, with computer art and color embellishing today's comics, Ditko's plain and sometimes unpretty linework can be distancing for modern readers. Like watching an urban drama from the early talkie era, the technological simplicity can initially be off-putting. But read two or three of these full-color reprints in a row, and you're sucked in. Like the great early sound directors (Fritz Lang, for instance, whose influence can be seen in Ditko's art - particularly in the mob scenes), the artist has a purity of focus that pulls you through even the hokiest moments.
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