The Amazing Spider-Man (The Essential Spider-Man, Volume 1)

Customer Reviews

Spider-Man: The Hero That Lives On!

The Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1 is awesome, y'all! After watching Spider-Man: The Movie, I bought it and loved every minute reading it! All issues are in black and white, but who cares! I'd rather get the first issues of Spider-Man in one book, than looking around everywhere, spending precious dollars for the same issues but in color. If you like the movie, you'll definetly like this!

What I like best about this book is it introduces some of Spidey's major villians:

Dr. Octopus (a.k.a. Doc Ock)
Dr. Doom
Kraven the Hunter
The Chameleon
Mysterio
The Vulture
The Scorpion
Green Goblin
The Sandman
The Ring Master
The Enforcers
The Lizard
Electro

And there's guest appearances of The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and the Hulk!

A must-buy!

Nuff said, y'all!

Stories well-worth reading available for a reasonable price

After having read this volume (which collects Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spiderman #1-20 and Amazing Spiderman Annual #1) the conclussion I must draw is that this is probably the best choice for someone who wants to get old Spidey stories sheer for the fun of reading them. Collectors and people who want their stuff to look good on their shelf might rather choose for the more expensive Marvel Masterwork volumes (which are more than twice the cost per volume, very hard to get, collect half the stories that are collected in here per volume, but are hardcover and in color), but if you're solely getting a collection to read these issues THIS is your best choice I think. Given, the art is in black-and-white but it's solid and detailed enough for that not to be a problem (although I'll be the first one to admit it doesn't work that way with every artist). The issues collected in here are ALL written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko. Although some of the stories are, when compared to many stories written since then, maybe a little old-fashioned, it's good to see there are a lot of issues in here which are surprisingly good compared to a lot of other Marvels that were published at that time (of which a lot would be considered very corny today). I think some of them would even be considered 'reasonably good' if they were printed today. The art by Ditko is also very solid (you can really see how detailed he worked in black-and-white) although in all honesty his successor, John Romita sr. was just a tad better. For persons who've been reading Spiderman for a longer period of time there are very nice reads here about, for example, the first appereances of Doc Octopus, The Lizard, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio and of course the original Green Goblin. Especially look for #6 (origin of the Lizard), #15 (Kraven hunting Spiderman) and #20 (the creating of the Scorpion) which are as far as I'm concerned the best issues in the book. I'd also like to mention that it's not all just about supercharacters fighting each other, but that reading about the inter-personal relationships between some of the characters is a big plus for the title. You get to see how and why Peter first picked up a camera, him and Aunt May worrying too much over each other, him really being bullied by Flash Gordon (Spidermans biggest fan!), his first meeting with Daredevil and off course his blooming feelings for Betty Brant. If you've read some of the later Amazing Spiderman comics you'll find yourself going "oh yeah !" a lot with this book when you recognize certain things from how they are now. Good reading for Spiderman fans. I'll add though that if you're not really into Spiderman continuity and are just looking for a nice (mostly self-contained) Spiderman story there are better choices like "Parallel Lives", "Origin of the Hobgoblin" or "Spiderman vs Green Goblin".

These graphic novels are truly NOVELS

I love graphic novels as much as the next collector and have just about everything listed by Amazon. Not exactly everything, but a great percentage. This graphic novels should actually be rated and listed the same as regular novels, because the dynamics of their stories, not just the fantastic artwork, takes you away to places that novels, such as STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, CHILDHOOD'S END, FOUNDATION, RINGWORLD, STAR TREK novels, DARKEYE: CYBER HUNTER and so forth, take you. All are extremely imaginative and have visually-gratifying narrative/dialogue not too far removed from graphic novels such as this or any other. Broaden your minds, but hang on to the graphic novels as well!