In our last episode of this retrospective of the greatest long-running comic book of all time, The Amazing Spider-Man, we looked at Marv Wolfman’s fun-but-fluffy contributions to the character. After that, Denny O’Neil came on board for roughly 18 dispensable issues, mostly with John Romita, Jr. The only lasting impression of this run was Madame Web. It rates about a C+: Nothing terrible, but you’d like (and expect) a kid with a previous track record of As and Bs to do better.
Which brings us to . . . (Hit the break, True Believers!)
ISSUES 224-252: ROGER STERN IS GOD (1981-1983)
Roger Stern had been writing the “inferior” Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man for two years before he got tapped to come over to the front-line title. His work there had been good, but it didn’t show how brilliant the man could be. In just two short years on Amazing Spider-Man, Stern: Brought in Foolkiller (in his second issue of the series, #225, one of my favorite comics of all time) from the pages of Omega the Unknown; pit Spidey against Juggernaut in The Third Greatest Story of the 1980s (#229-230); wrote a hilarious two-parter in which Spidey had to protect Cobra from his former partner and current psychopath nemesis, Mr. Hyde; mutated the Tarantula (#233-236); created a villain even better than Green Goblin—Hobgoblin (#238-239); brought back Mary Jane and told us she knows Peter is Spidey (#242); did a “JJJ fantasy” issue in which the churlish editor got to beat the snot out of Spider-Man (#246); and the emotionally powerful “Kid Who Collects Spider-Man” (#248); and the black costume (#252). Yeah. Just about every single issue is fantastic, and all of them helped shape the character of both Spider-Man and Peter Parker. The entire tone of the book changed: Spider-Man was still a wiseass, but his book got darker and his world seemed more real. There was an increasing focus on organized crime—which had always been there, but hadn’t felt so pervasive—so atmospheric, almost. And all
the while, John Romita, Jr., did the best work of his career and established himself as an artist even better than his father. This is one of the greatest runs of anyone, ever, on 
anything—and it’s certainly the best Spider-Man run of all time. (Although JMS takes a close second, which we’ll talk about later.) Some may argue about this (they’d be wrong, though), but at bottom: If you have to choose between reading Stern or JMS’ Amazing Spider-Man runs, you can’t lose.
Roger Stern left Spidey and took over The Avengers (and created West Coast Avengers), where he proceeded to write my all-time favorite run on that series. The man is pure superhero genius. It’s a shame he got into a fight with editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and quit Marvel for good in 1987 to go to DC (where he worked on another storyline you might have heard of: Death of Superman). Stern’s work has never been collected in a color reprint. Shame on you, Marvel.
Just because you couldn’t get along with Stern doesn’t mean we the fans have to suffer.
Grade: A+. Comics don’t get any better than this.
ISSUES 253-285: TOM DEFALCO COMES ALONG (1984-1987)
How do you follow one of the greatest comic book writers in history? By building on the themes he started, of course. Tom DeFalco, working mostly with Ron Frenz, followed Stern’s Mafia-like storylines with characters like The Rose and more Hobgoblin stories, and developing the idea that MJ is in on Peter’s secret. DeFalco also had to deal with the alien symbiote thing, in #258, which left Spider-Man in Fantastic Four longjohns with a paper bag over his head. Don’t ask. Just read it. It’s terrific. This was the kind of thing DeFalco was an expert at: Prior to working on Spidey, he’d been editing the surprisingly good G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero title, launched the Dazzler ongoing series, and worked on the first Machine Man series. He was good at action-packed adventure books. And that was the tone he brought with him to AS-M.
I could have done without the Secret Wars 2 stuff, though. In fact, there were quite a few cross-promotions during this time, with Spidey being used to help promote Daredevil, the Scourge storyline, and X-Factor. Towards the end of his run, DeFalco also broke with Marvel (a common symptom of Jim Shooter’s reign as Ed-in-Chief)—Jim Owsley had to finish what DeFalco started in the “Gang War” storyline. Still, for the most part, this was a pretty damn good follow up to Roger Stern. DeFalco was dismissed by Jim Shooter, under less-than-pleasant circumstances. Beginning to sense a pattern?
During Tom’s run, we also got to read a couple fill-in issues by none other than Peter David, one featuring Frog-Man, the other featuring Spidey’s commute from Long Island. Both are light-hearted and genuinely hilarious.
Grade: B+, with many A- storylines throughout. Excellent work.
February 27, 2011
ekko1
