Tangled Webs: Stan Lee’s Late Silver Age Amazing Spider-Man

With Stan Lee’s centenary last year bringing more attention to his legacy, in addition to the new Disney documentary and the passing of John Romita Sr, it seems useful to look at some of their less covered Spider-Man work. This isn’t exactly obscure material, but the latter third of Stan Lee’s run seems to get much less focus than the rest.

This may just be informed by how I read Essential Spider-Man Volumes 1-3 when I finally had some access to good comics, and how my hardcover omnibus of Amazing Spider-Man Volume 2 ends with Issue 67, but it seems there hasn’t been much coverage of the issues Stan Lee wrote afterwards. Steve Ditko and John Romita Sr are correctly credited as two of the best Spider-Man artists ever, and it’s worth noting both artists made significant contributions to plotting. During the Tablet of Time saga, John Romita Sr was around to plot, but wasn’t always able to finish the art, and that had an impact.

These stories aren’t as well-regarded as Lee’s earlier work. I didn’t care for it as much, although it may just have been that by the time I got my copy of Essential Spider-Man Volume 4, I was a more discerning reader (a high school junior with a bit of disposable income just when good stories were regularly available as trade paperbacks and the regular Spider-Man comics were pretty damn good.) That said, it doesn’t seem to just be me. Comic Book Resources asked readers to pick their favorite Stan Lee stories. In the ensuing Top 100, the Lee/ Ditko run was well-represented with ten stories, and two in the top five. The Lee/ Romita run got seven stories, with two in the top ten. Stan Lee’s later Spider-Man work appeared four times, never in the Top 25 (one of the stories was a back-up from Amazing Spider-Man #600 with Marcos Martin, which is a different category of Stan Lee comic) and it’s none of the stories from this entry. In fairness, the Tablet of Time saga did make Comics Buyers Guide’ list of the best comic books ever.

The final issues of Amazing Spider-Man as the silver age came to an end show Stan Lee at his most experimental, telling a larger story over ten issues, and then shifting to single issue material. It starts with the Tablet of Time. Initially the story was called the Petrified Tablet saga, because it wasn’t clear what made an old clay tablet special. In the opening to Marvel Masterworks Volume 8, Romita admits that there wasn’t much of a long-term plan.

Amazing Spider-Man #68-70
It starts out pretty well. Say what you will about Stan Lee, he was head and shoulders above his contemporaries when it came to melodrama and characterization. The Kingpin’s reintroduced beating the holy hell out of some of his henchmen in a workout ritual. Aunt May’s sick from the previous issue and claims to cheer up by seeing Peter happy with Gwen. Then it turns out that she doesn’t want to ruin their mood by revealing how bad it is. Randy Robertson makes his appearance, so even at this point in the run, we still have introductions of major recurring characters.

This story gets into a protest about campus housing, which is handled in a rather nuanced way. Some critics think a situation is obviously unfair, and calls for immediate protest. Peter and Robbie think that there may be more to the story and call for a more measured response. Jonah thinks the protesters are obviously wrong. The Kingpin sees it all as an excuse to attack.

There are some flaws here. Some of the fights are more than a bit generic, and it’s not always believable that Spider-Man’s not able to deal with the challenges, especially when the bad guys don’t have superpowers. But when Spidey essentially has a nervous breakdown, you believe it. And there are some consequences to it.
A-

Amazing Spider-Man #71
It’s a one-off in the middle of the Tablet of Time saga, as Spider-Man deals with the consequences of a rash decision, and get into a perfunctory fight with Quicksilver- an example of a typical silver age misunderstanding. There are some good scenes with Jonah as he’s recovering from a heart attack.
B

Amazing Spider-Man #72
The combination of John Buscema on pencils, and John Romita Sr works- Buscema has a reputation as one of the Marvel greats who never quite clicked with Spdier-Man, but he’s fine here. The Shocker’s return is generic, but the highlight is Peter realizing just how he screwed up.
B+

Amazing Spider-Man #73-75
Reading this I’m not shocked by Romita’s admission that they were making it up as they went along. This three-parter hints at ongoing stories, and has a good set-up to a rematch with the Lizard, but it’s mainly about new characters caught in Spidey’s web. Silvermane, Man Mountain Marko and Cicero are not on the level of the Osborns or Dr Octopus, but they do feel lived in- as if they’ve had years of disputes and petty jealousy. This story elevated the Maggia- introduced in the Avengers- to a major force in the Marvel Universe. The regular title seems adrift given the lack of attention to anything to do with Peter Parker’s life, but that’s not as obvious since Spider-Man’s main adventure is compelling.
A-

Amazing Spider-Man #76-77
Romita’s not even the inker- the art is by the team of John Buscema and Jim Mooney, and there’s a reason they don’t make “best of” lists when ti comes to Spidey. An epilogue to the Tablet of Time, this two-parter is a generic Lizard story elevated by an okay twist. It’s 50 years old, but maybe it’s better if one or two people discover it for themselves and not on the back of a trading card like I did. It’s an okay story- imperfect but the A-plot has a decent complication for Connors, which adds drama even if it ends quickly.
B

Amazing Spider-Man #78-79
The first issue may be one of the most decompressed of the silver age. Peter Parker mopes for ten pages, before we cut to a window-washer who decides to become a supervillain. He attacks the Daily Bugle. The concept was John Romita Jr’s first contribution to the Spider-Man comics.

It was originally supposed to be a three-parter, but it may have been too lightweight. I wonder if there was pushback internally after the Tablet of Time saga, because not only was this story resolved quicker than expected, it was followed by a few standalone issues. This was quite experimental in a good way, focusing on someone who is not a typical character for superhero stories: a frustrated African-American man who is not cut out to be a supervillain- that’s the whole point of the story. The first issue feels a bit underwhelming because it ends with Peter (not even in costume as Spider-Man) encountering the bad guy. It leads to Spider-Man making a pivotal decision- this may be worth examining as a significant time in the series. Part of it seems to be an emphasis on the people caught in his web, be it Hobie Brown, the Lizard’s family, or the Maggia types. Romita’s winding down and Stan Lee is leaving other titles, so they’re figuring out an identity for the series. This is a minor Stan Lee story, but a reminder of why he’s so popular- his work holds up so much better than most comics at the time.
A-

Amazing Spider-Man #80
A change in direction with a one-off fight  against a Lee/ Ditko villain as Peter also resolves ten issues worth of personal conflicts and misunderstandings. This was also the first Silver Age comic I bought an original copy of, so it holds slight sentimental value. It’s nice to read a comic where things are largely going well for Peter. The Chameleon’s plot is lightweight but fine. There are some okay twists with it, and it connects the bad guy to Peter’s life in a way that plays fair.
B+

Amazing Spider-Man #81
The Kangaroo is a notoriously lame bad guy though this story doesn’t pretend he’s a threat to Spidey- it’s more about special circumstances that make the situation worse. Peter also makes a big mistake for Aunt May, which also leads to an unintentionally iconic scene that’s a bit different in context.
B

Around this time, Spider-Man appears in the Silver Surfer monthly title.

Silver Surfer #14
The guest appearance fits Lee’s interest in the stories of bystanders, which was also a major element of Silver Surfer with John Buscema- Norrin Radd is trapped on Earth, and discovering the good and bad of humanity. This issue showcases that Buscema is not a great Spider-Man artist, and features one of my pet peeves- it kicks off with the coincidences as the Silver Surfer is weakened after preventing an unlikely event, and then Spidey happens to accidentally grab onto his surfboard.
B-

Amazing Spider-Man #82
One of Dan Slott’s favorite Spider-Man stories, and perhaps the most acclaimed single issue of this stretch of issues. There’s good reason for that. It’s a strong standard issue of Spider-Man. The lists of the best Spider-Man stories tend to be populated by major first appearances, major deaths and changes in format, but there also have to be the regular Spider-Man stories where Peter Parker has some trouble, and Spider-Man fights one of his bad guys. And this is one of the best regular stories.

Spidey’s got a bad day, and the details are great- his problems are bad in a relatable way. The screw-ups are meaningful in the short term, and minor in the long-term. You could make a case that this is the best normal single issue Spider-Man story.
A+

Amazing Spider-Man #83-85
This mob story is a bit generic. There’s another crime wave with a new guy called the Schemer threatening the Kingpin. A nice detail is Spider-Man recognizing one of Kingpin’s hoods from a previous encounter. This story could be seen as tying up the Kingpin meg-arc, with a focus on his family, paying off plot points seeded in the Tablet of Time saga. It’s also interesting to see anachronistic details like Peter being cranky that he wasn’t drafted to go to Vietnam.

Gwen is hurt in a car accident. It’s a decent scene, but an artifiical raising of the stakes. Granted, this comic probably wasn’t meant to be scrutinized over 50 years later. A snowstorm adds some texture. The art is solid; John Romita Sr’s work is always a pleasure.

The Schemer’s not exactly an A-lister. His supercar seems out of place, almost as if Lee and Romita needed to pad a few pages in a longer storyline. The high point is Peter’s private life as Gwen’s getting suspicious of what’s going on with him, a scene that has greater power because of subsequent tragedies in the saga. The complications to his private life do work. The twist with the Schemer is predictable, but it does lead to a worthwhile end to the Kingpin saga, even if this may be Lee and Romita’s weakest longer storyline. Let’s be honest, plenty of creative teams have done worse.
B-

Amazing Spider-Man #86
This marks a redesign for Black Widow that Marvel largely stuck with, so it’s one of her most important silver age appearances. The costume isn’t just an improvement; it’s an all-time classic. Spidey’s got another bad day, dealing with illness and a messy private life. It’s not the best, or even an above-average Silver Age Spider-Man adventure, but it’s got lasting consequences, great storytelling and a compelling arc for Peter.
B+

Amazing Spider-Man #87
If Spider-Man has a fever, he’s going to make some big mistakes. A deep cut helps him out, and it does lead to what is arguably the last Spider-Man issue of the Silver Age (it came out two months before Jack Kirby wrote and drew the first issue of the New Gods saga in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen Vol 1 #133) featuring a panel with Spider-Man unmasked as a black man. The story comes across as a bit unfocused, but that does work when the lead is still figuring things out. This is a weird comic, but interesting and ahead of its time in many ways.
A

There’s an argument that the first 150 issues of Amazing Spider-Man represented something special, that this was when the character had consistent growth. So this stretch of comics is worth checking out, undercovered because it came after the really famous stories and because there would be more experiments going forward with the death of Captain Stacy, Harry Osborn’s drug addiction, ripped from the headlines stories about terrorism, police brutality and prison conditions. It still featured some decent debuts, and highlighted how Spider-Man can be an engine for different superhero stories.