31 Days of Spider-Man #20: The 30th Anniversary Issues
Amazing Spider-Man #365, Spectacular Spider-Man #189, Web of Spider-Man #90, and Spider-Man #26. If one goes by numbers alone, this set of four issues seems like a pretty mundane set. No milestones in the numbers, but these issues of the four Spider-Man comic books running in 1992 were something special. They were the issues marking the 30th anniversary of Spider-Man, and boy did their covers want readers to know it.
I actually bought three of these four books the summer they were released (Web #90 wouldn’t be added for several years later) and even as a kid, appreciated that these were something special, not simply because they had a hologram on each cover. (Though that certainly didn’t hurt)
The stories are pretty strong, including a (forgive the pun) Lizard tale that looks at what life is like for Billy Connors, and “The Osborn Legacy” which I’ve previously mentioned as one of my favorite endings to a Green Goblin story.
Out of all the Spider-Man comic books I own, these are the ones I’m most tempted to get professionally assessed and graded, even more than my copy of the Secret Wars #2..
The only things that stop me are the temptation to one day remove the books from the cases and re-read them, and knowing that any rating given will be less than how much I treasure them.
