Take a look overhead.
Amazing Spider-Man #600 comes out tomorrow.
My first Spider-Man comic, ever, was Amazing Spider-Man #400, cover-dated April 1995. I was eight years old. I'd taken an interest in Spider-Man thanks to the then-current Fox Kids Spider-Man cartoon (which I'm sure has not aged well), and my mother picked it up for me at the local newsstand, fondly recalling her own childhood comic-reading habit. It had spooky writing by JM DeMatteis, gorgeous art by Mark Bagley, and was full of crazy freaks like Shriek, Kaine, and the Jackal. I was hooked - for life.
That was fourteen years ago - it should have been a longer haul to #600, but Amazing went thrice-monthly a year and a half ago. #400, in which Aunt May dies of old age (she got better) continued the JM DeMatteis run, which was really good, and I'm looking forward to his story in the upcoming Web of Spider-Man relaunch. It didn't last long after #400, and soon we had the highly enjoyable Tom DeFalco run, which lasted until 1999. DeFalco's run included about a year in which Spider-clone Ben Reilly replaced Peter Parker, and DeFalco really had a good handle on the character. Ben died, and Peter came back for a few years, and then we got the Howard Mackie/John Byrne relaunch/renumbering, which was...really, really bad. It had some decent-ish ideas, but it got bogged down in bad characterization, questionable plot twists, and incomprehensible mystery-for-the-sake-of-mystery. But its numerous new villains, many of whom would never appear again, ignited my love of cataloguing obscure characters, which eventually got me posting profiles at the Marvel Universe Appendix, which eventually got me writing official Handbook profiles for Marvel. Also, it gave us the Squid, and I love the Squid. So it wasn't all bad.
In 2003, J. Michael Straczynski was brought in, and revitalized the title. He produced some really strong stories right off the bat, but over his long, eight-year run, the quality kinda deteriorated - the last Civil War and Back in Black-centric year-and-a-half of issues were really a chore to read. But even when the plotting was...somewhat suspect (Exhibit A: Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy's goblin-babies) the book was well-written. JMS' run also featured the re-renumbering of the book, just in time for #500, in which Spider-Man has to battle his deadliest foes through past, present, and future in a story that's a little too cosmic-y for Spider-Man, but who cares, because it had Mindless Ones, and the Mindless Ones are awesome.
Then came One More Day, which demonically erased Spider-Man's marriage. I didn't much care for the story itself, and really thought that was a terrible plot twist, but the (now-thrice-monthly) issues that followed it have consistently been very good, and often great. With a rotating creative team that features a bunch of my favorite writers, including Dan Slott, Mark Waid, and Fred Van Lente, I always save it to read last on Wednesdays. #600 looks like it's going to be a blast, with the return of one of my favorite villains, Dr. Octopus (who was dead when I started reading Spider-Man, only to be brought back to life years later via - no, really - ninja magic) and a crapload of all-new material - no reprints. Plus the Squid is totally in it.
To 200 more!
My first Spider-Man comic, ever, was Amazing Spider-Man #400, cover-dated April 1995. I was eight years old. I'd taken an interest in Spider-Man thanks to the then-current Fox Kids Spider-Man cartoon (which I'm sure has not aged well), and my mother picked it up for me at the local newsstand, fondly recalling her own childhood comic-reading habit. It had spooky writing by JM DeMatteis, gorgeous art by Mark Bagley, and was full of crazy freaks like Shriek, Kaine, and the Jackal. I was hooked - for life.
That was fourteen years ago - it should have been a longer haul to #600, but Amazing went thrice-monthly a year and a half ago. #400, in which Aunt May dies of old age (she got better) continued the JM DeMatteis run, which was really good, and I'm looking forward to his story in the upcoming Web of Spider-Man relaunch. It didn't last long after #400, and soon we had the highly enjoyable Tom DeFalco run, which lasted until 1999. DeFalco's run included about a year in which Spider-clone Ben Reilly replaced Peter Parker, and DeFalco really had a good handle on the character. Ben died, and Peter came back for a few years, and then we got the Howard Mackie/John Byrne relaunch/renumbering, which was...really, really bad. It had some decent-ish ideas, but it got bogged down in bad characterization, questionable plot twists, and incomprehensible mystery-for-the-sake-of-mystery. But its numerous new villains, many of whom would never appear again, ignited my love of cataloguing obscure characters, which eventually got me posting profiles at the Marvel Universe Appendix, which eventually got me writing official Handbook profiles for Marvel. Also, it gave us the Squid, and I love the Squid. So it wasn't all bad.
In 2003, J. Michael Straczynski was brought in, and revitalized the title. He produced some really strong stories right off the bat, but over his long, eight-year run, the quality kinda deteriorated - the last Civil War and Back in Black-centric year-and-a-half of issues were really a chore to read. But even when the plotting was...somewhat suspect (Exhibit A: Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy's goblin-babies) the book was well-written. JMS' run also featured the re-renumbering of the book, just in time for #500, in which Spider-Man has to battle his deadliest foes through past, present, and future in a story that's a little too cosmic-y for Spider-Man, but who cares, because it had Mindless Ones, and the Mindless Ones are awesome.
Then came One More Day, which demonically erased Spider-Man's marriage. I didn't much care for the story itself, and really thought that was a terrible plot twist, but the (now-thrice-monthly) issues that followed it have consistently been very good, and often great. With a rotating creative team that features a bunch of my favorite writers, including Dan Slott, Mark Waid, and Fred Van Lente, I always save it to read last on Wednesdays. #600 looks like it's going to be a blast, with the return of one of my favorite villains, Dr. Octopus (who was dead when I started reading Spider-Man, only to be brought back to life years later via - no, really - ninja magic) and a crapload of all-new material - no reprints. Plus the Squid is totally in it.
To 200 more!