Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5. The Red Skull

(Cover from 1968.)

"The Parents Of Peter Parker!"

Written by Stan Lee.

Drawn by Larry Lieber.

Inked by Mickey Demeo.

Lettered by Art Simek.

It's amazing what you discover when you accidentally break open a padlocked trunk in your basement. I once discovered my parents were exposed by the world's press as traitors at the time of their deaths.

Well, no I didn't but Peter Parker does. Faced with this revelation, our hero has no doubts what he must do. Out to clear their names - despite having no reason at all to think they were innocent - he heads off to Algeria and uncovers a plot involving that dastardly cranium of chaos the Red Skull.

Given its importance to the life of our hero, I'd like to say it's a momentous issue but the truth is it's a tale that's misconceived in more ways than one.

For a start you have the basic structure of the tale which starts with Spider-Man in Algeria before having a prolonged flashback to how he got there. It may be an attempt to start the story with a bang and a mystery in order to hook the reader, or it might be an attempt to add complexity to a plot that's startlingly straightforward, lacking twists, turns and supporting characters but, whatever, it doesn't really work. It would've been far better to relate events in the order they occurred, as happened in the Amazing Spider-Man comic each and every month.

There's also a problem with the choice of villain. Somehow, like Dr Doom before him, the Red Skull feels totally out of place in a Spider-Man story. We're used to Spidey dealing with people who want to become crime boss of New York City or to steal some valuable jewels. Having him up against a Hitler substitute with dreams of world conquest just feels completely wrong for our hero.

But the biggest problem with the thing is the central idea behind it that Peter Parker's parents were secret agents. For me, one of the appeals of Spider-Man is that, despite his power, Peter lives in a recognisably real world and his life was fundamentally dull until he got spider-powers. Being told his parents were secret agents, killed by the Red Skull, is simply too melodramatic an idea to ever rest easily on the strip's shoulders.

Maybe I'm just getting used to it, or maybe he genuinely improved but Larry Lieber's artwork's better here than it was in the last annual - although he clearly gets a huge helping hand in places from John Romita. The fact that Romita-drawn panels appear seemingly at random throughout the tale suggests Romita went through Lieber's pages and replaced any panels he thought weren't up to scratch. It probably wasn't too good for Lieber's ego but it does make the thing look better and it's oddly pleasing to play the game of, "Spot who drew what."

I think this is the first annual since Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 to feature all-new material, and the back-up strip is a Marie Severin drawn comedy in which Lee, Lieber and Romita are struggling to find a plot for the latest issue of Spider-Man. They think they have it until Roy Thomas walks in and reveals he's just used exactly the same plot for that month's issue of the Avengers. Humour's a personal thing but, frankly, it's terrible and not a patch on the similarly themed Steve Ditko tale that appeared in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1.

Proof of Stan Lee's notoriously bad memory. How does Spider-man get to Algeria? Simple. He hitches a lift in a flying car belonging to the Fantastic Four. The car's blatantly the one gifted to the FF in Fantastic Four #52 by the Black Panther. Clearly Stan the Man's forgotten all about this and has Mr Fantastic tell us it's a new device cooked up by SHIELD that the FF are testing for them. This is the second consecutive Spidey annual that's visually name-checked the FF's first meeting with the Panther. Clearly that story stuck in Larry's mind a whole lot better than it did in Stan's.

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #4. Mysterio, the Wizard and the Human Torch

(Cover from 1967.)

"The Web And The Flame!"

Written by Stan Lee.

Pencilled by Larry Lieber.

Inked by Mike Esposito/T Mortellaro.

Lettering by Jerry Feldmann.

Well, there's an odd thing. I came to bury Caesar but might end up having to praise him.

Having read this tale many moons ago, I was under the impression that it's quite the worst Spider-Man story I've ever read but, reading it again for the purposes of this blog, I may have to admit it's not as bad as I recalled. It's not great but it is at least more fun than it once seemed.

In truth, my antipathy came mostly from the fact it's drawn by Stan Lee's brother Larry Lieber who doesn't even get a credit. It might be a sign of my ignorance but I tend to think of Lieber as the bloke who wrote stories when Stan was too busy to do them, rather than as an artist who drew stories when John Romita was too busy to do them. Looking at his work here, you can see why. Highly simplified and kinetic, it has that Jack Kirby vibe but Kirby's style was never suited to Spider-Man. It also has that John Romita vibe and it's obvious that one or two panels have been touched up by the great man himself. So, if you've ever wanted to know what would've happened if Kirby and Romita had ever got mixed up in the Fly Machine, this comic's the place for you. Lieber's art doesn't hurt your eyes as such but it is startlingly naive in its execution and lacks the polish and slickness you'd expect of a major comics publisher.

Having seen Spider-Man and the Human Torch fighting thanks to a misunderstanding on a film set, the Wizard decides it'd be a spiffing wheeze to sign them up to make a movie and turn them against each other in the hope they'll kill each other. This has the obvious flaw that the Torch is sworn never to hurt anyone with his flame, and Spider-Man's never shown any inclination toward murder, so there's no reason to believe either of them'll be willing to kill his rival.

Such logic has no place in the world of the Wizard off and so, to enact his mighty plan, he recruits the services of ex-Hollywood special effects man Mysterio (who he contacts by putting an ad in a newspaper, complete with his address so Mysterio can find him!). Needless to say, with such a high level of intellect behind it, the scheme goes belly-up and, in due course, the good guys polish off the super-creeps.

The thing that strikes me as clever about this tale is that the Marvel approach to super-heroes meeting (especially Spidey and the Torch) is that they meet, have a fight and then team up to take on their mutual foe but what happens here is that Spidey and the Torch meet, have a fight, bury their differences... ...and then, mere pages later, they fall out again and have yet another fight. I could put this down to a desire to break the mould of reader expectation but I suspect it was done purely because the story's forty pages long and Lee and Lieber got round the problem of filling extra pages simply by having everything happen twice. In this sense, it's a cheat but it does make a change from what we're used to and it also means the first half of this tale is at least lively.

The second half's lively too as, misunderstanding finally cleared up, our heroes pursue the wrong-doers, along the way having to see off a variety of traps, including a giant gorilla that's clearly blundered in directly from the pages of Fantastic Four #53. There's a bizarre sequence where the Torch and Spider-Man are trapped in a giant cage. The only problem with the thing being that it's suspended in mid air and doesn't have a bottom, meaning they could get out of it any time they wanted. Bafflingly, this doesn't occur to our heroes who seem to think they're in some sort of life or death peril from it. The Stan Lee school of science kicks in to give us a magnetically activated fluid that Spidey incorporates into his webbing in order to reverse a magnetic field and send flying rocks hurtling away from our good guys.

Basically, it's not a classic. A more cruel reviewer than I might say it's forty pages of padding and running around and serves no purpose whatsoever. They'd be right but it is at least action-packed padding and though I have to admit I wouldn't care if I never read it again, it's not quite the car crash I once thought it was.