After the success of Amazing Fantasy 15, Spider-Man was given his own series, with not one, but two stories in the first issue. Back in the day, comic magazines often featured several 5 or 10 page short stories, rather than the issue length stories that have become the norm.
In the first story (the official name is apparently “Spider-Man,” but that’s gonna get confusing real quick) we get a brief recap of AF 15. Peter tells us he got powers and tried to cash in with them.
Peter says his uncle died because of a crook that he could have stopped was too late to stop, but didn’t, and so now Peter has to atone for his guilt make money.
Wait, what?
I’ve read these stories a dozen times but I’m just so used to Spider-Man being driven by guilt that this scene didn’t register with me for the longest time. Peter’s more like Han Solo or Luke Cage here than the Spider-Man we all know and love. Almost a different person.
After thinking about it, it’s not surprising that Lee/Ditko decided to go in this direction with Spider-Man, at least at first. Peter’s desire for wealth and fame is touched upon many times throughout AF 15; his guilt over Uncle Ben only gets a few panels at the end. Over time they must have realized that a character atoning for guilt is much more appealing than a guy simply trying to make a buck. Spider-Man might be a deconstruction of Superman but still, he has to be heroic.
He tells Aunt May he’s going to drop out of school and get a job, but she won’t hear it. He has to be a scientist, like Uncle Ben always wanted. So, Peter figures, maybe he should be a bank robber.
I’m not sure if making Peter more money driven in these early stories is a misstep or a savant-like flash of inspiration. I’m glad greed isn’t Peter’s primary motivation throughout the series, but I like that he doesn’t jump straight to altruism. He has room to grow, and growth, more than guilt, is the character’s defining trait.
Peter’s flawed but still, he’s no supervillain. He’s gonna use his powers to make money legitimately. Or so he thinks.
This whole sequence is probably the funniest thing to ever happen in a Spider-Man comic. Stan Lee has a natural gift for writing humorous dialogue.
Social security cards, a driver’s license. Spider-Man’s at its best when it’s a superhero comic that’s a little more down to earth, and this moment is on the Mt. Rushmore of Spider-man sequences for me.
We’re three pages in and already Spider-Man can’t do any of the things he did in AF 15. If Amazing Fantasy 15 was the pilot episode of Spider-Man, ASM 1 is a repilot. AF 15 is my favorite Spider-Man story, but where do you go from there? By the end of AF 15 Spider-Man’s become a rich, beloved celebrity involved in a murder. He’s less of an Everyman and more like Phil Spector. If Lee and Ditko wanted Spider-Man to be an ongoing story, certain things needed to be tweaked.
First, Spider-Man couldn’t be an entertainer anymore. A high school student is a lot easier to relate to than a guy who performs on Ed Sullivan.
Second, Peter had to struggle with money. Again, this is a relatability issue. DC’s characters were millionaire playboys, established professionals, or aliens who could crush coal into diamonds. Even Marvel’s own FF and the Hulk seemed to be doing just fine with money at this point.
Luckily, these two problems can be solved at once. If Spider-Man stopped performing, he’d stop making money. So the first story in this issue is really all about solving this problem. And Lee and Ditko’s solution was elegant, a stroke of genius.
They made the public hate Spider-Man.
You’re probably thinking, of course the public hates Spider-Man. Its old hat, cliched even. But in 1962 this was pretty novel. Superman was the greatest man who ever lived, and Batman was an official deputy of the Gotham Police. Everyone liked them. The Fantastic Four were celebrities with an HQ in a city landmark. But not Spider-Man. Spider-Man, as ever, is the subversive superhero. After Spider-Man’s first issue, even his own Aunt doesn’t like him anymore.
Lee and Ditko accomplished this deft maneuver by creating the best supporting character in all of Spider-Man: J. Jonah Jameson.
Jameson makes his debut on page 1, leading a mob of people pointing and screaming at a cornered Spider-Man. It effectively mirrors the splash from Amazing Fantasy 15 with Jameson taking the place of Flash, suggesting a link between the two characters.
Flash bullies Peter, Jameson bullies Spider-Man. This suggests Peter has a thin skin, or a bit of an ego. He can’t let their insults roll off him. To be fair to Peter, Flash and Jameson’s attacks are baseless and cruel. Critically, they’re problems that can’t be punched. The best Peter can do is mock them.
Now Peter’s entertainment career has been ruined, he’s at a loss for what to do.
There’s something about the newsstand guy’s weird posture, squinty eyes, and little baby hands, combined with Lee’s dialogue, that cracks me up.
Peter’s so upset about this that he’s seemingly ready to make good on his threat to become the villain and menace that Jameson paints him as.
This brings us to part 2 of the first story. Ditko turns in a great establishing shot, but Lee’s dialogue is out to lunch.
John Jameson’s rocket launches but the guidance system is faulty. The military can’t replace it in time, so they let Spider-Man try. Spoiler alert, he does it. I don’t hate this sequence but it’s also not terribly interesting. I’ve always been far more interested in Peter’s personal life than his superhero exploits.
Still, this sequence isn’t without merit. Spider-Man wants to help Jameson’s son, but it was more to clear his name with Jameson than because he was trying to do the right thing. It’s a nice wrinkle in his personality. His motivations aren’t purely mercenary, but Peter’s a rich, complicated character.
Naturally Jameson doesn’t change his opinion, but instead doubles down.
A warrant for Spider-Man’s arrest is issued. Even Aunt May has turned against Spider-Man, and the first story ends with Peter more alienated and confused than ever. Once again the issue raises the possibility of Spider-Man becoming a villain, and threatening not just New York, but the very fate of society itself!
This first story is mostly great. The introduction of Jameson is legendary, and Peter’s personal drama is excellent. It also helps that Peter’s personality isn’t set in stone yet. Uncle Ben’s death was a wake up call, but he didn’t become a perfect hero overnight. He’s a real person, living in…well, not the real world, but something a lot closer to the real world than you’d get from Superman or the Fantastic Four. He has to worry about paying the bills just like the rest of us.
The rocket sequence is the only part that isn’t solid gold. It’s not bad or anything, but saving a test rocket is a bit grandiose for Spider-Man, who’s more at home fighting normal mobsters or trading barbs with middle aged mad scientists. If John Jameson had been held hostage by the Vulture or something, this story would really sing, but maybe that’s too much for 14 pages.
Let’s see how the second story, “Spider-Man Vs. the Chameleon” fares
“Spider-Man Vs. the Chameleon”
This story starts just like the first one: Peter needs to figure out how to make money off of his superpowers.
He breaks into the Baxter Building and engages in cross promotional, page wasting shenanigans. Because of course, he’s gotta meet the most popular Marvel heroes and get into a fight with them. Heroes aggressively fighting each other over a childish misunderstanding is my least favorite trope in the genre (followed closely by villains creating a fake movie shoot to trick the hero). Fortunately this fight isn’t as endless and tiring as it could have been, and we get to see Steve Ditko draw the Fantastic Four.
Once everybody calms down (seriously, I wish superheroes would pursue their villains as aggressively as they pursue each other) Spider-Man makes his pitch: let me join the FF.
But it turns out that this group of spacefaring adventurers, with two flying cars, a personal rocket, computers, and a booby trapped high tech hideout based in the top 5 stories of a New York skyscraper don’t actually have any money. They’re a nonprofit. Reed explains that they have just enough to cover their expenses. They’re practically scrimping and saving to fund their crime fighting gear.
The real reason Spider-Man can’t join the FF is “Spider-Man is a lot less fun and relatable if he’s also a rich celebrity hero,” and on the one hand I’m glad they addressed this. It’s logical that Peter would assume he could join the FF and that they’d pay him. But Reed’s explanation is stupid. One of them mentions not wanting to team up with an outlaw, which is a much stronger reason to reject Spider-Man. I wish Stan Lee had played that up more. So Spider-Man leaves, and the FF are like “Wait! We can help you!” They come off really bad in this issue.
Spider-Man’s Baxter Building break-in makes the news, and reaches the ears of that no good dirty commie master of disguise, the Chameleon.
The Chameleon should maybe consider a change in careers. Instead of being a Soviet saboteur he should be a life coach, or a psychic. He’s able to guess pretty much everything about Spider-Man, short of his secret identity, from this one newspaper article.
I try to be forgiving with scenes like this. Old comics are much faster paced than modern ones and part of what makes that possible is these stilted exposition scenes. I actually prefer these 2 panel dumps to 5 pages of inconsequential blather, but the Chameleon makes way too many assumptions here. Why would Spider-Man be a perfect fall guy? Just pin your crimes on someone else, someone who doesn’t have superpowers! It’s sloppy.
Then we get to the most baffling part of the whole story. This story is a Thanksgiving feast of nonsense. We just finished the mashed potatoes and now it’s time to get on with the turkey.
That’s right. Chameleon not only guesses Spider-Man needs cash, but also guesses that he has a Spider Sense, and also knows how to make a radio that specifically broadcasts to the limited psychic abilities possessed by Spider-Man. This is the first time Spider Sense is mentioned, by the way.
I think this was probably Stan’s fault, if I had to guess. The way these comics were produced was that Stan would come up with a basic plot idea, then he and Ditko would expand on it. Ditko would then do the nitty gritty of the plotting, stuff like the page layout and the pacing, the character designs, the fight choreography. He’d hand it back to Stan Lee who would then add the dialogue.
So if you look at that sequence without the dialogue it’s easy to imagine that, in Ditko’s mind at least, the Chameleon simply has some normal broadcast equipment. You can imagine him turning on his normal radio and saying “Attention, Spider-Man, whoever you are, I can help you make money tonight” There’s no need for it to be a secret signal that only broadcasts to Peter Parker’s brain.
If I could speculate further, I’d guess that they talked about Peter having a Spider Sense, and maybe Ditko told Stan Lee that he’d indicate that with those wavy lines around his head. Spider Sense functioned differently in these early stories. Their original idea was that it helped Spider-Man feel the presence of nearby enemies, rather than the threat of impending danger.
This is from later in the issue. The Chameleon isn’t about to attack Spider-Man; he’s trying to make a getaway. Getting back to the radio broadcast sequence, I can imagine a scenario where Ditko intended Spider-Man merely to sense that an enemy was talking to him, rather than for him to be listening to a special broadcast only he can hear. But then Stan Lee, seeing the Spider Sense wavy lines around Peter’s head, decided that maybe the radio was somehow interacting with it. It’s hard to know how closely the two men worked together. Maybe it was actually Ditko who twisted Lee’s arm into writing all this.
Anyway, Peter isn’t at all suspicious of someone who can talk to him using a radio that communicates with him via a superpower that he has never used before and hasn’t told anyone about yet, so he decides to go see what’s up.
Spider-Man’s 60s theme song says “Action is his reward,” but at this point it’s money. He’ll do anything for money, from beating up the Fantastic Four to meeting a mysterious weirdo late at night, and maybe even turning to a life of crime.
The Chameleon’s plan, by the way, is to steal some missile defense plans and to frame Spider-Man, who’s easy to manipulate because of his insatiable lust for cash. So far his plan is working, he’s disguised himself as a janitor and stolen the plans.
I’ve been hard on this story, but I like the Chameleon. Steve Ditko has a knack for what I can only describe as “weird, semi-plausible tech,” which you can see here. I like the Chameleon’s blank mannequin face and his vest full of faces. It’s not as good as Spider-Man’s web shooters, Green Goblin’s glider, or the Question’s mask, but I like it. I get the feeling Steve Ditko spent some time coming up with this sort of stuff.
Chameleon disguises himself as Spider-Man and takes the defense plans. The Chameleon isn’t the science prodigy that Peter is, so he shoots his webs from something less impressive than the wrist shooters. Or maybe the Chameleon thinks Spider-Man produces his webs naturally (unlikely, given the sophisticated understanding of Spider-Man’s powers that he’s shown so far). Or maybe Ditko gave him a web gun as a little knock on Jack Kirby, whose original Spider-Man concept gave the character a web gun. Who knows!
Peter shows up at the meeting place, only for the cops to arrive just in time. The Chameleon’s plan worked perfectly. Luckily for Spider-Man, he can home in on the Chameleon’s helicopter.
I’ll try not to harp on this too much going forward but man, early Spider Sense sucks. It’s basically Daredevil’s radar sense, but only for bad guys, and only when they’re doing plot relevant stuff. It’s vague, and only half as exciting as the split second danger warning that it would become.
Spider-Man tracks down the Chameleon but he runs out of web fluid. Luckily this would never happen to Spider-Man again.
The Chameleon then pretends that Spider-Man is the Chameleon.
This is great. I wish the story had more stuff like this. But it doesn’t work, and the Chameleon is apprehended. The story kicked off with Chameleon reading a newspaper story about the FF; now it ends with the FF reading a story about the Chameleon. Poetic symmetry, or lazy exposition?
Again we return to the idea of Spider-Man going bad. A much stronger reason for the FF to reject him than the non profit nonsense. This story started off okayish, got very sloppy, and then sort of rallies at the end. What can I say? I like the Chameleon and his tricks, and I like Spider-Man being morally gray at this point in the series.
This story is a bit hard to judge because I get the feeling it didn’t start out as a Spider-Man story. It seems like a leftover 5 page story from Journey into Mystery with Spider-Man pasted into it, book-ended with some Fantastic Four appearances for the sake of cross promotion. Spider-Man hardly fights the Chameleon, and he runs away before the Chameleon gets apprehended. It’s very odd.
At the very least, the first story felt tailor made for Spider-Man, even if it hit some sour notes. This second story reads like repurposed filler. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the Chameleon’s cool design.
Ranking:
The first story is mostly great. I love the introduction of Jameson, and how he forces a drastic change in status quo for Spider-Man. Peter’s money problems are strongly conveyed and give him a lot of room for growth. The John Jameson rocket test sequence is pretty meh, and John Jameson himself is a character I like in theory, but who is constantly mishandled.
The second story is a mixed bag. It gives us our first costumed supervillain in the form of the Chameleon, who isn’t anyone’s favorite villain, though I like his name and his visual design. He’s packed to the gills with Ditko weirdness. But the plot itself isn’t anything special, and its use of Spider-Sense is egregiously bad.
Peter’s personal drama in the first story is probably an A or a B, but the missile test, and the Chameleon story, drag the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man down to C tier.
Favorite Panel from the First Story:
I might have been indifferent about the rocket test, but this panel is great. It’s exciting and well composed.
Favorite dialogue:
“Just make the check out to Spider-Man!”
“I don’t believe that there is a Spider-Man! It’s all a publicity stunt!”
Favorite Panel from the Second Story:
This is also my favorite dialogue. “Wha..?”
Thanks to these posts, I nabbed myself a copy of the Definitive Collection of Lee and Ditko Spiderman Comics and have been reading through these. I've been enjoying them massively.
One thing I couldn't help but laugh at was in the Chameleon arc, Peter's name was written as Peter Palmer on 3 separate occasions and are only times he's referred to by his real name as opposed to his superhero name.
I wasn't sure if you may some insight on this, or maybe I got a misprint edition, or perhaps the letterer just wasn't paying close enough attention to the script that day.
Either way, I found it very amusing.