06.15.16
Favorite comic image
Below, my favorite Spider-Man cover ever.
Steve Ditko’s Spidey, the best, hands down. I’d get a 25 cents allowance. It would cover two comics a week at Berk’s, a general store in Pine Grove within walking distance.
After Ditko quit and John Romita took over, Spider-Man was never the same. While the Sixties were the great run and some of the Romita/Lee plot lines became part of the legend (mostly, the death of Gwen Stacy) it never surpassed Ditko.
Ditko’s biography, Strange and Stranger, is a fascinating look at his very unusual life and views. Briefly stated, he was deeply into the philosophy of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. And for want of better description, it poisoned his prospects after Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, his other seminal Marvel character. Indeed, you can see a bit of Ditko’s libertarianism creeping into the end of his run with Spider-Man, most notably when he had Peter Parker go off on some of his teenage peers trying to get him to attend a 60s protest. (Follow the link and you’ll see one of Ditko’s objectivist characters, the very obscure Mr. A. Mr. A, sort of an inspiration for Watchmen’s Rohrschach.)
I can take or leave the Spider-Man movies, they’ve never been old school. Modern Spider-Man, just can’t get into it.
I’m 60. Marvel writes Peter Parker like he’s 35. And the Spidey wise-cracks aren’t great. Nothing lile references to “the Purple Pantywaist” or “Irving Forbush” anymore, no way.
The screen shot is taken from The Amazing Spider-Man: The Complete Collection, a DVD containing “every issue through June 2006.” I got it on the cheap in Pasadena many years ago. Now, Amazon says it’s worth one hundred used, 350 new.
