Essential The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 4 by Stan Lee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects Amazing Spider-man issues 66-89 Annual #5.

Issues 66 and 67 feature a battle with Mysterio that's basically just a typical Mysterio story.

Amazing Spider-man Annual #5 begins in medias res with Spider-man battling bad guys in Algeria and then flashes back to Peter Parker discovering a newspaper article that indicated his parents were traitors. He tries to ignore it, but isn't able to and sets out to prove them innocent, and he travels to Algeria to do so with aid from Mr. Fantastic. However, to succeed, he'll have to go through the Red Skull.

The problem with this story is that even a double sized annual didn't have enough space to tell it right. The story begins strong with the initial fight scenes and the pathos of thinking his parents traitors and then is rushed towards the conclusion with some unbelievably convenient plot contrivances. This would have worked better as a three part story in the magazine.

The back up features for the annual are solidly enjoyable including an amusing story, "Here We Go-A-Plotting" which portrays Stan Lee and John Romita and Larry Lieber trying to brainstorm a Spidey plot.

Issues 68-74 are tied together loosely by the Tablet of Time beginning with the Kingpin's attempted theft of it. During this plot arc, Spidey thinks about keeping it once he's accused of stealing it, finally has enough of J Jonah Jameson and finally belts the editor, and ends up battling Shocker, Man-Mountain Marko, and finally the tablet in the hands of SIlver Mane. This story has its flaws, but its definitely a Spider-man classic.

The Tablet of Time story leads into Spidey encountering the Lizard for the third time. It's hard to differentiate a whole lot about this battle versus the prior two. The big difference though is that a crucial point, the Human Torch flies into save the day just when Spidey was about to neutralize the Liard, and now Spidey has to get the Torch to back off so he can handle the Lizard his way, which was kind of interesting for pointing out that sometimes interferring superheroically can actually be a bad thing.

Issues 78 and 79 focuses on Hobie Brown, a black youth who wants to be a superhero, decides to temporarily become a supervillain to get more cash and ends up fighting Spider-man. This series was cut short due to Marvel's very short-lived decision to stop multi-party stories.

Issue 80 followed with a nice one-shot story with the Chameleon. Issue 81 introduced the Kangaroo, and Issue 82 was a so-so story with Electro which built up to an easy victory for Spider-man, albeit a Pyrrhic one.

How short lived was Marvel policy on Muli-part stories. Issue 83-85 featured the Schemer, a villain determined to take down the Kingpin. The story ends in a bizarre melodramatic way.

Issue 86 is the weakest in the book as Black Widow fights Spider-man to see if she can beat him and force him to tell her the secret of powers. Really, the magazine is an advertisement for the Black Widow getting a solo strip in Marvel Tales.

Issue 87, the book picks up again as Peter reveals his secret identity to a room full of people believing he's dying.

Issue 88 has Doctor Octopus escaping prison and hijacking an airliner. In Issue 89, only Spidey is smart enough to figure out that Ock isn't dead and the issues ends on a cliffhanger with Spidey falling and the words, "Next Issue: And Death Does Come." And that's how the trade ends. Really Marvel? Really?

In the end, this book is enjoyable but it's not as great as the prior volumes. In earlier volumes, Stan Lee was coming up with epic stories, characters, and dilemmas for our heroes. Here he's settled into a comfortable pace. The stories are still good, just not great. The status quo essentially remained the same for nearly two years of this book.

My edition could have benefited by having Spectacular Spider-man #2 but even that couldn't have made this a five-star volume if for no other reason than the ending.

These are good Spider-man stories no doubt, but a bit of letdown after the greatness of the first sixty odd issues.



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