Amazing Spiderman #46-47

ASM #46 starts rather abruptly. Spidey, his arm still in a sling from his battle with the Lizard in #44, encounters the Shocker, a guy with special vibrating gloves which give him extraordinary power. He kayos Peter and gets away.

The next big event in Peter's life comes later. Harry Osborn's dad has rented an apartment for him close to Empire State U. He invites Peter to take the second bedroom. Of course, our hero is thrilled at the prospect, but has to figure out whether it would be an inconvenience to Aunt May. Fortunately, she has already decided to move in with Anna Watson, so for once things seem to be breaking Peter's way. At this point he appears to be casually dating Mary Jane, but Gwen is starting to interest him more.

Spidey handles the Shocker in their second battle by not allowing the crook to use his thumbs on the vibrating gloves. Some modest pop culture and political references; Spidey mentions Hubert Humphrey and The Man from UNCLE. Still, we get some inevitable teenage angst here:



Kraven returns in #47, as well as (briefly, in flashback) the Green Goblin. We learn that Gobby had hired Kraven to attack Spiderman in ASM #34, something that was not disclosed at that time. In addition, Norman Osborn himself (aka the Green Goblin) had acted as a go-between, exposing himself as a crook to Kraven.

Kraven has developed a new ray that will eliminate Spidey's super-speed, and is confident once that is gone he will be able to subdue Webhead. We get a long dose of the Archie stuff:



But eventually the battle starts. Kraven decides to kidnap Harry, who's with Peter at a going-away party for Flash Thompson, who's been drafted into the army as discussed in earlier issues. Peter sneaks away and reappears as Spiderman. He taunts Kraven into dropping Harry and they fight. This time Kraven defeats him with his ray, but stops short of killing him when Norman Osborn shows up. However Kraven is baffled when his jungle senses tell him that Osborn doesn't remember him at all. Of course, he had no way of knowing that Osborn has amnesia about his Green Goblin years. Kraven decides that his victory over Spiderman is enough and dashes off.

Lo, There Shall Come a Geek

Of all the weird heroes to arise at the end of the Silver Age, and there were a lot of them, perhaps none was weirder than Brother Power, the Geek. A creation of Joe Simon, the less famous half of the Simon & Kirby team, Brother Power came to life via spontaneous generation. He was originally a tailor's dummy, but combined with the heat from a radiator, a little machine oil, and a spark from a bolt of lightning, he came to life.

He was initially a friend of hippies, but aspired to more than their lifestyle. He had incredible strength, which came in handy for beating up a bunch of motorcycle goons:



In the first issue he's kidnapped to be a featured attraction at a carnival freak show, but his hippie buddies rescue him. He decides he wants to become a politician, but the carnival operators convince the cops to arrest him for breaking up their tents. At the end of the first issue he drives off the Golden Gate Bridge.

In the second issue, after being pulled from the deep by another group of losers, and almost kidnapped by a bizarre Baron with a Fokker biplane (sic), Brother Power goes into the world of business. He rapidly moves up the ladder, with smart thinking and hard work. Eventually he runs a major missile plant, beating out a villain named Lord Sliderule. But Sliderule gets revenge by sabotaging a missile launch. BP is once again wanted by the police. He sneaks into the missile in an attempt to escape but Lord Sliderule blasts it into space. The hippies manage to convince the cops that LS is to blame for the problem with the missile launch, but in the meantime, what will happen to Brother Power?



Despite the promise of a next issue, none appeared and Brother Power, The Geek was sidelined for several decades, although he did pop up in a couple comics in the 1990s.

In retrospect, it seems like DC had decided to try to go after the burgeoning hippie market. In some ways this seems inspired, but of course as with much that DC did back then, it was half-hearted. It poked fun at the hippies for their laid-back lifestyle and while this was certainly a fair criticism, it did undercut the marketing to many teens who saw the hippies as role models (mostly because they were their older brothers).

This Wikipedia entry certainly indicates that BPtG was controversial in DC's halls.

While sales of the title were modest, Brother Power was not popular among the staff. DC Comics artist Carmine Infantino claimed in an interview that Superman editor Mort Weisinger disliked the character very strongly, and petitioned DC publisher Jack Liebowitz to shut down the title. Weisinger hated hippies and felt that Simon portrayed them too sympathetically.

The Spiderman TV Cartoon

I don't remember the original 1960s run of these cartoons, but recall them more from the early 1970s in the afternoon. As you can see, the quality is pretty mediocre, and it would get worse before the end of the run (this was the tenth episode). Most adaptations of comics were pretty cheesy back then; it wasn't until the Superman movie in about 1978 that anybody approached the subject of superheroes with real respect.

Obviously the biggest impact of the Spiderman cartoon series was the theme song, (snipped from this cartoon) which has been incredibly durable. Here it is:



I always liked the part about "In the chill of night at the scene of a crime...."

DC, The Home of WeirDCrooks

In the Golden Age, it was seldom necessary to give criminals a motivation. They were just crooks, simple as that. Some of them (Luthor notably) also were mad scientists, a bogeyman familiar to youngsters from the TV and radio serials.

But as the Silver Age wore on, establishing a motive for the criminal behavior became more important. Two of the oddest motivations came from Captain Cold and Sonar.

Captain Cold was one of the Silver Age Flash's first villains, appearing in Showcase #8, the second comic to feature the Scarlet Speedster. His weapon was a gun that could freeze things instantly; a rather pedestrian power. But he was an interesting character nonetheless because his reason for pursuing a life of crime was to impress women.

Initially he had a crush on Iris West, Barry Allen's girlfriend, but would later transfer his affections to other women. Along the way, he picked up a supervillain polar opposite named Heat Wave, who frequently was his rival for the affections of women.

Sonar, on the other hand, had the ability to control sounds with a special tuning fork. Again, this is not an ability likely to fascinate readers for long. But Sonar's back story was wild. He came from a small European country named Modora. Frustrated that his homeland was not a player on the world stage, he resolved to make it a major power.



In one of the annoying coincidences that plagued Green Lantern in the early years (see for example, my earlier post about Qward), GL discovers Sonar because he is searching for a stamp from Modora. He searches the mind of an old clockmaker, whose apprentice, Bito Wladon (Sonar) has just quit the job. The clockmaker is worried because Wladon had discussed his dangerous ideas before leaving.

GL battles Sonar twice, but each time the villain manages to escape. The third time turns out to be a charm and in gratitude, the citizens of Modora issue a special stamp for Green Lantern to give to Pie-Face.

Fantastic Four Annual #1

As I have discussed earlier, DC's success with "Annuals" (really 80-page reprint mags) resulted in Marvel looking to add this profitable niche to its line. The problem was that Marvel had not been publishing their superheros long enough to be able to reprint stories and expect them to sell very well, or so they thought. So Fantastic Four Annual #1 featured a brand new double-length story with the FF facing the Sub-Mariner and his Atlantean hordes.

This was the first time since Namor's return in FF #4 that he appears in Atlantis. We learn that the Atlanteans are blue in color, which raises some questions about the claims that he is "a prince of the blood" as one character puts it. We also learn that he has a love, Lady Dorma, and a rival for both the throne and the girl, in the Warlord Krang. He gives a speech to his subjects in which he vows to make the "insolent human race pay for its crimes against our people."

The next sequence shows us the FF in a typical opening, with Johnny and Ben fighting. This time they damage some of Sue's priceless gowns. In an effort to relieve the team's tension while accomplishing some business, Reed suggests a cruise of the Atlantic, where sea monsters have been reported recently.

The sea monsters turn out to be a trap for the FF. Namor advises Reed that he declares the seas and the skies above them as his territory, banning any overseas boating or flights. This of course will mean war with the humans.

There follows a brief bio of Subby; turns out he's the product of a marriage between an human and an Atlantean princess; hence the caucasian skin. The Sub-Mariner's forces quickly take over New York and other major cities on the coast. However, the invasion is thwarted when Reed manages to create an evaporation ray, depriving the Atlanteans of the water in their helmets that they need to survive on land.

Angered, Namor kidnaps Sue Storm. While the boys fight it out above, Dorma, in a fit of jealousy, breaks a window in the undersea room where Sue is being held. Sue, realizing it is her only hope, jumps out the broken window. But she becomes tangled in some seaweed, and nearly drowns. Namor flies her back to the mainland to a hospital. But his act of selflessness has a price, as the Atlanteans feel betrayed and desert him.

In the second feature, the brief encounter between Spiderman and the FF from ASM #1 is retold in an extended version. The book also contains a reprint of the FF's origin from Fantastic Four #1, and a gallery of their most memorable villains.

Ultra, the Multi-Alien

DC introduced a lot of weird characters in the late 1960s, but few of them were weirder than Ultra, The Multi-Alien. Ultra was Ace Arn, a space explorer from the near future, who was accidentally transformed into a freak with the composite powers and body of four different aliens. As was becoming common, some of the conflict in the story was actually internal; the hero was unhappy with being "different". See Ben Grimm (Thing), Metamorpho, the Doom Patrol and others. At first one of the agonies for him was the loss of his girlfriend, Bonnie Blake, but eventually she accepted him despite his strange appearance.

Ultra's powers were pretty basic--he could fly, had incredible strength in one arm, could shoot lightning and had magnetic powers as well. He first appeared in Mystery in Space #103, taking over the cover and feature slot from Adam Strange. There were eight appearances in all, with #110 spelling the end for both the Multi-Alien and Mystery in Space.

Lois Lane

Lois Lane famously appeared alongside Clark Kent in Action Comics #1. In the early Superman stories, Lois appears to despise Clark, who loves her and longs to win her himself, although it quickly becomes apparent that she's more interested in Superman.

Lois earned a feature of her own right in Superman #28. Although the title of the feature may seem sexist to us now, "Lois Lane, Girl Reporter" was accurate at the time. Many newspapers had a "girl reporter" as something of a novelty--Nellie Bly being the most famous. The stories were generally four pages long and emphasized comedy over drama, much like the Alfred series that was printed in Batman around the same time.

In 1954, a Superman supporting character was given a solo book, but it wasn't Lois Lane or even editor Perry White. Rather it was Jimmy Olsen. Olsen had been a relatively minor character in the comic books up till that time. In fact, he was so minor that in Superman #72, a character looking exactly like the Silver Age Olsen appeared, as Perry White's son!

Of course, Olsen had been a much more significant character in both the Superman radio show and on television, which is the most probable reason for the sudden launch of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen.

Lois didn't get her shot until Showcase #9, July-August 1957. She had one more tryout in the following issue, and in March-April 1958 Lois Lane #1 appeared on the newsstands. That issue also included the first artwork by the man who was to define Lois for the rest of the Silver Age, Kurt Schaffenberger.

Schaffenberger had drawn Captain Marvel back in the Golden Age, and he seemed to sense that Lois Lane needed to be slightly different from the ultra-serious Superman series. The covers often featured Lois or Superman in a particularly humiliating, yet comical situation, such as this:



The stories from this era are always a guilty pleasure. They have just the right amount of whimsical humor without quite dissolving into farce. A frequent theme had Lois being wooed by another man, either wealthy or powerful. Of course, Lois' goal was always to marry Superman, and there was a continuing "imaginary" series including the above story about the trials and tribulations of being married to the Man of Steel.

Gunner & Sarge

In the late 1950s and early 1960s war comic books became more popular, mirroring trends in pop culture as a whole. As the World War II generation moved into positions of power, they naturally wanted to explore the themes of the most important events of their generation. DC had several war magazines as the Silver Age started; All American Men of War, Our Army at War, Our Fighting Forces, and Star Spangled War Stories; they added GI Combat after purchasing the title from the old Quality Line. For the most part the stories in these comics were one-shots, featuring characters that would not appear again. This was a significant negative as most other comics had continuing characters.

So DC gradually began to add features to its titles which did not have them. Our Fighting Forces starred Gunner & Sarge starting with issue #45, with a May 1959 cover date. Gunner was a Thompson sub-machine gunner, while Sarge was the crusty order giver. The pair apparently formed the smallest squadron in the US Marines, although they grew a bit with Our Fighting Forces #49, when a German shepherd dog (named Billy, but simply called Pooch) was added to the mix. Although they mostly fought in the Pacific, oddly enough in the first story they were in Europe battling the Nazis.

That story also established a basic pattern for the series. Gunner was the decoy, intended to draw the fire of the enemy so that the Sarge could locate and finish them off. Many stories featured Gunner griping about this.

Gunner, Sarge & Pooch lasted until Our Fighting Forces #94, August 1965, when they were retired in favor of the Fighting Devil Dog, a series of Vietnam stories featuring Sergeant Rock's younger brother, Larry. However, they were resurrected a few years later for a series called "The Losers" which featured them, Johnny Cloud, and Captain Storm. Ironically, The Losers lasted even longer than Gunner & Sarge's original fifty issues, accounting for the final 59 issues of Our Fighting Forces.

Update: Star-Studded War Comics has a post up featuring a solid Gunner & Sarge story.

Pete Ross

Pete Ross was a moderately interesting character in the Superboy/Superman mythos. Young Clark Kent meets Pete in Superboy #86, when a couple of bullies pick on Clark in a theatre line. Ross soon sends the bullies packing and a friendship is struck.

But Clark has always avoided close friendships for a good reason: Because a buddy would notice if Clark suddenly disappeared all the time whenever an emergency came up requiring Superboy's services. And it turns out that Pete has a hobby that makes Clark a little nervous. He's recording information on Superboy's attributes and comparing those to Clark's. However, it all proves to be innocent, as Pete wants Clark to portray Superboy in a school play.

In Superboy #90, Pete discovers Clark's secret identity. Pete and Clark are camping out together when an emergency call goes out for Superboy. As Clark changes, a lightning flash reveals him in his Superboy costume.

This was a pretty big deal for DC, because Superman, their signature character, had never had anybody know his identity at that time aside from the Kents and Batman. Thus it would seem that Pete would become a significant character in the DC universe.

But as it worked out, there really wasn't a lot of use for him in the stories. In Superboy #94, Pete helps Superboy protect his identity, but you can only do that so many times before it becomes tiresome. At one point he was inducted into the Legion of Super Heroes because of his nobility in knowing Superboy's identity and not announcing it. But of course, once that's done, there's not much use for Pete in the Legion.

He did appear a few more times in Superboy and in Superman (as an adult) as well, but he was pretty much a marginal character despite what seemed like an exciting and promising beginning.

Hawkman in Mystery in Space

DC had a tough time launching Hawkman in the 1960s. The first three tryouts, in Brave & Bold #34-36 apparently did not sell well enough to justify giving him his own book. DC gave it another run in B&B #42-44. When those did not work out as well as planned, DC shifted the character to Mystery in Space effective with #87. In addition, Joe Kubert was taken off the art chores. Kubert had drawn Hawkman in the Golden Age, but his style did not seem to impress superhero fans (although his war comics sold well at the time).

DC handed the character to Murphy Anderson. Anderson had mostly been a science-fiction penciller for DC, although he also did inks for many titles. A fine artist, Anderson had a tight line and a terrific eye for facial expressions. Sadly, Anderson's assignment to Hawkman may have prompted the end of the terrific Atomic Knights series which he had created in Strange Adventures; the last episode of that feature appeared two months after the first MIS Hawkman.

The first story in Mystery in Space introduced a frequently recurring villain known as Ira Quimby, aka IQ. Quimby at first could think up brilliant criminal schemes but he was unable to put them into action until one day at the Metropolitan Museum, Quimby is turned into a genius by light rays falling on a glowing stone. Now his great ideas work because he is able to invent amazing machines that make them possible.

As it happens, Carter Hall and his wife Shiera are visiting New York at the time and they witness IQ's first major crime. However, he brilliantly manages to come up with a way to defeat the Winged Wonders. Quimby later figures out that the stone is behind his sudden brilliance, but his attempt to steal it results in chips of the stone being left behind. Hawkman is able to use these to defeat Quimby.

Adam Strange makes a brief appearance in the story in his archaeologist guise:



One particularly oddball facet of the Hawkman series was Mavis Trent. Mavis worked at the same museum as Carter Hall, and decided to set her cap for Hawkman after meeting him, even though he was obviously partnered with Hawkgirl. The heat gets turned up on this romantic triangle a notch in MIS #88, where Mavis impersonates Hawkgirl after accidentally finding her costume in the museum. Because Mavis has discovered a connection between Hawkman and the museum, they worry that she'll connect Carter Hall and Shiera with Hawkman and Hawkgirl, so they convince Police Commissioner Emmett (who knows their secret identities) to imply without quite lying to Mavis that Hawkman is still single.

The highlight of Hawkman's brief run in Mystery in Space came in MIS #90. The story "Planets in Peril" featured a book-length team-up between Hawkman and Adam Strange. Earth is suddenly transported to an orbit around Rann's sun, but on the opposite side from Rann, and with a slightly faster orbit, which means the two planets will collide eventually. But with the heroes of two worlds working together, they manage to defeat the villain who caused the Earth to be teleported to Alpha Centauri.

The Evolution of Chop-Chop in Pictures

Probably no character changed more and more often in the Silver Age than Chop-Chop, the humorous sidekick of the more serious Blackhawks. In the Golden Age he was a caricature of a "Chinaman" as he would have been called then (nowadays we say "Chinese") as you can see here:



By the beginning of the Silver Age, Chop-Chop had shed the queue (the ponytail) and seemed a little younger:



After DC took over, Chop-Chop began shedding pounds and became even more boyish:



In the early 1960s he began to grow a bit. Whereas earlier he was usually shown as about waist-high on the other Blackhawks, now he generally reached their middle chests, sometimes even the shoulders.



In Blackhawk #197, the crew got new uniforms, and Chop-Chop's clown costume, which he'd worn for 25 years or so, was finally retired.

In Blackhawk #203, there was a revision of the Chop-Chop origin. During this story, set back in the days of World War II, Blackhawk and the men are fighting the Japanese in China. They meet a masked fighter for the Chinese people named the White Dragon. Later they encounter Chop-Chop for the first time. He is a prince named Liu Huang who's suspected by the allies of being a traitor helping the Japanese.

It turns out he's only pretending to help the Japs while secretly working as the Silver Dragon. We also learn why the Blackhawks nicknamed him Chop-Chop:



(Of course, the reason he was named Chop-Chop in the GA was because he would use a meat cleaver whenever the Blackhawks were in a fight.)

But even that was not the end of it. In Blackhawk 228-230, the Blackhawks underwent a dramatic transformation, supposed to update them to a modern fighting group. Chop-Chop became Dr Hands, a karate expert with hands of steel:



By then, Blackhawk was nearing the end of its run; the title limped on for another 13 issues.

Rolling THUNDER

The success that DC and Marvel had with the great superhero revival of the 1960s did not go unnoticed. As discussed, ACG, which had resisted the siren call of the superhero for 20 years jumped in, as did Dell (with a notably lame effort).

A new publisher also tested the waters. Tower Comics was created by Tower Publishing. Their flagship comic was THUNDER Agents. THUNDER stood for The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves. THUNDER, while trying and failing to rescue Professor Jennings from assassins, recovered several devices he'd created.

The first was a belt, which could give its wearer a body as hard and strong as steel. Second was an invisibility cloak. And last was a cybernetic helmet which could multiply one's brainpower many times over. After some testing and deliberation, three candidates were chosen to wear the devices.

Leonard Brown wore the belt to become Dynamo because of his great personal stamina. However, the belt is not without its drawbacks--Brown cannot use it for more than a few minutes at a time for it drains his strength.

Dr Dunn, an elderly scientist near death, decides to transfer his brainwaves into an android body. He can transfer to any of several bodies automatically, meaning that he will be difficult to kill, especially with the invisibility cloak that makes him Noman.

Menthor is perhaps the most interesting character. Janus (no other name is given) is a mental and physical marvel, easily qualifying as a THUNDER Agent with the highest score ever on the entrance exam. But he's secretly a double agent, working for the Warlord. However, when he dons the helmet, he becomes a force for good, helping the THUNDER agents. Unfortunately the effect wears off when he removes the headgear, which he must do regularly, for it weakens him eventually.

Later issues would introduce other characters, like Lightning (a Flash rip) and Raven (Hawkman).

The agents of THUNDER are opposed by a mysterious figure called the Warlord and his henchmen and women. In the latter group is the Iron Maiden, a sultry charmer:



THUNDER Agents was an anthology comic, unlike, say, Fantastic Four or Justice League of America where the heroes teamed up as a band. For the most part the heroes went on separate adventures, as did the THUNDER Squad, a non-superpowered team, although brief crossovers were not uncommon within the individual stories. In addition, it was an oversized comic, with 68 pages (counting covers) for 25 cents. THUNDER Agents survived for 20 issues, or over 3 years. Unfortunately for Tower, the spinoffs of Dynamo and Noman were less successful, each lasting only a few issues.

Other links:

THUNDER Agents at Don Markstein's Toonapedia.

THUNDER Agents Homepage.

Hulk: Tales to Astonish 63-64

Although the Leader had been mentioned in earlier issues, we first actually meet him in Tales to Astonish #63. The story follows the standard Marvel radioactive origin, with a janitor accidentally exposed to Gamma rays suddenly becoming a genius. Interestingly, he also turns green, which is what attracts his attention to the Hulk.



This origin and the huge crainium appear to be swiped from Detective #217's "The Mental Giant of Gotham City", which had been reprinted in Batman Annual #3 a few years earlier. Of course, that story borrowed liberally from the famed science fiction short story Flowers for Algernon, so it's a swipe of a swipe.

The Leader heads up a giant spy ring (although the only member we ever see is The Chameleon. He's as smart as the Hulk is strong, so their battles will be the classic brains versus brawn matchup.

The stories in this era begin to fall into a common pattern. Bruce Banner is testing one of his weapons, which the Leader or the communists are trying to steal. In the course of the theft attempt, Banner transforms into the Hulk and defeats the plot. But Banner is suspected because he's constantly disappearing. The stories tend to end with a cliffhanger which is resolved in the following issue.

Lee or Ditko did recognize that the constant suspicion on Banner would result in him being imprisoned (as he is at the end of TTA #63). So in #64, they come up with a get-out-of-jail-free card. Rick Jones (who is a member of the Avengers) gets a meeting with the President of the United States, and informs him of Banner's dual identity as the Hulk. This is a swipe from Superman, who had confided in President Kennedy (with disastrous results as I pointed out in an earlier post).

The Leader is intrigued by the Hulk's green appearance. Could he also have been transformed by Gamma rays? He resolves to kidnap him and find out.

Wonder Woman #92

This August 1957 issue is still done in the GA style with Harry Peter's inimitable style. The first story concerns a missing train that aliens have kidnapped. Wonder Woman foils their plot. More amusing is this side bit with Diana and Steve:







The second story is a 6-page short but it's a pretty good story, featuring Wonder Woman's longtime nemesis, Angle-Man. He tapes Wonder Woman commanding her invisible plane, then uses the recordings to prevent the plane from helping WW.

Wonder Woman foils a criminal circus gang in the third story.

TrueVision by ACG

This is arguably outside the normal realm of this blog, as it was published by ACG in 1954. During a brief era of popularity for 3-D comics, ACG came up with an interesting process that didn't require glasses.



As you can see, the result was visually pleasing:



The effect used several tricks. First, the extension of the drawings outside the frame appears more obvious with the black pages. Second, people are drawn in bright colors while backgrounds are pastels or light greys. Not terribly difficult but it was a nice break from the glasses of the era.

Amazing Spiderman Annual #1

I skipped over the annuals in the discussion of the Ditko Spiderman, so I thought I'd take a quick rowback and rectify that situation. Annuals had appeared in comics going back to the Golden Age, but DC really got things going in the 1960s with Superman Annual #1. Despite the name, the comics were so successful that DC issued some of the annuals on both a Winter and Summer basis.

I suspect a good reason for the success of the annuals is that they were often whim purchases by parents looking for something to keep the kids busy during a long drive. I know in my own family that was often the case as Mom would hand me three quarters and tell me to get a couple of the big comics and some candy bars (weren't those the days) before we'd take the four hour drive to Aunt Bev's cottage on the lake.

But with Spiderman Annual #1, in 1964, there was a slight problem for Marvel. They had no old Spiderman stories to reprint, so they decided to create a new, extra-length story with Spidey facing a group of his old foes, banded together (yet separate) called the Sinister Six.

Overall the story would be pretty insignificant, but for one small detail. The leader of the Sinister Six was Dr. Octopus. In order to put his plan into operation, he kidnaps Betty Brant from a street corner. Worse, Aunt May happens to be talking to Betty at the time and thus must be abducted as well.

This chance meeting between Aunt May and Doc Ock would cause endless consequences for Peter down the road. The Sinister Six included Sandman, Kraven, Electro, Vulture, and Mysterio in additon to Dr Octopus. Interestingly, the Green Goblin is not included. The battles are miniatures, with some only taking a page or two. Doc Ock is clearly Spiderman's greatest enemy at this point.

Update: One redeeming feature of the story (as pointed out in the comments by the Fortress Keeper) was that each of Spidey's battles featured a full-page spread by Ditko:



And there's an interesting pop culture reference. At the end Aunt May gets upset when she realizes that while she was out she missed the Beverly Hillbillies. In 1964 the Beverly Hillbillies became the only TV show to be #1 in its first season, and was a genuine phenomenon, although I suspect that had more to do with Boomer kids than old ladies in Forest Hills.

The Coming of Nemesis

American Comics Group was a long-lived company, lasting from the Golden Age right up to the end of the Silver Age. At various times, they carried almost every comics genre--Funny Animal, Horror, Science Fiction, War, Western, Teen, Romance, etc. But oddly the one genre they'd stayed away from for almost 20 years was Superhero. That changed in the mid-60s with Adventures into the Unknown #152, February 1965, featuring the arrival of Nemesis.

Nemesis was Steve Flint, an ace private investigator. He had been fighting the Mafia, who were attempting to sabotage a moon rocket attempt. Killed by the mobsters, he convinces the Grim Reaper to send him back to Earth from "the Unknown" (which bears a striking resemblance to heaven). Being non-mortal, Nemesis can fly, has great strength, and is invulnerable to harm. Nemesis succeeds where Flint couldn't and eventually the leader of the Mafia, Goratti, dies in battle with him. However, interestingly enough, Goratti is not finished, since now he resides in "the Unknown" as well.

The series lasted for two years before finally giving up the ghost after #170. Adventures into the Unknown lasted until #174 before expiring itself along with American Comics Group.

Amazing Spiderman 43-45

By these issues, Peter was becoming so "hip" that the series seemed more like Archie at times:





Of course, based on what we know now, Rock would rather have been dating Peter.

And then again the comic would suddenly turn topical:



Perhaps an early omen of the "relevant" comics of the later 1960s?

But fortunately, Stan didn't let the soap opera aspects of his comics reduce the number of punches thrown between Spidey and his enemies.

ASM #43 features the return of the Rhino, once again after JJJ's son (apparently unaware that Spiderman has killed the space spores that made him valuable). But Spidey manages to destroy his hard skin with a special type of webbing that Dr Curt Connors (aka the Lizard) has helped devise.

In the next issue Peter is at Grand Central when he spots Dr Connors, who looks troubled. Sure, enough, the doc dashes off as he feels the transformation back into the Lizard coming on. Once again his dreams of conquering the world with lizards like him resumes.

Spidey's left arm is hurt in his first battle with the Lizard, and it's put in a sling. This causes him continuing trouble for the next few issues; just another example of throwing rocks at the hero.

Spiderman has a climactic battle in the railroad yards with the Lizard. In a moment of inspiration, he angers the reptile, who follows him into a refrigerated car. The cold-blooded creature soon is powerless, and Spiderman is able to take him back to New York and give him an antidote.

But it's on the personal side that some of the most interesting stuff happens. As noted above, Flash Thompson is drafted into the army, a jarring reminder of how old these comics are, since nobody's been drafted since 1972. Betty Brant and Ned Leeds get engaged. And Peter's budding interest in Gwen Stacy is thrown for a loop by the arrival of Mary Jane. Harry Osborn goes out of his way to be more friendly to Peter, setting the stage for the next big change in Peter's life.

Amazing Spiderman #41-42: Petey Gets Hip

With Romita taking over on the art chores two issues earlier, Amazing Spiderman began a new direction with #41. Peter begins to show increasing maturity. He purchases a small scooter to get around town. He also runs into Betty Brant and realizes he no longer has anything in common with her.

But of course, the supervillains keep coming. A new one is introduced in this issue: The Rhino. JJJ's son, the astronaut (last seen way back in ASM #1) was affected by some space spores during his last mission and the commies would love to get their hands on him. The Rhino is obviously working for them.

However, his battle with Spidey's rather dull; Peter just tires the Rhino out and wins by default. We don't learn his origin, or how he got that armor-plated skin and horn. Peter rescues John Jameson, but needless to say, his dad isn't satisfied that Spidey's not the real villain.

In ASM #42, we learn that the spores Jameson's son was exposed to have had a delayed effect, turning him to an ultra-strong and invincible superhero. In the meantime, Spiderman has apparently gone bad, robbing a bank in broad daylight. Hearing this JJJ decides that his son should be the one to bring in Spidey.

We also see Peter and Gwen starting to show sparks of interest for each other. Later, Spiderman has a short battle with JJJ's son before getting away. In a flashback, we learn that Peter had been in the bank when he realized that one of the money bags being carried by a gun was ticking. Hence his robbery was really just getting rid of a bomb.

When JJJ discovers this, he tries to call his son off the chase. But John Jameson is no longer rational; he's determined to defeat Spidey whether he robbed the bank or not. But Spidey defeats him by knocking him into an electrical dynamo which kills the spores and returns the astronaut to his normal self.

But the big shocker comes at the end of this story, as Mary Jane Watson, who has been hinted at for several years but never actually seen, finally makes her debut:

Another Great War Cover

Jerry Grandenetti at his finest.