Amazing Spider-Man

Here's a golden oldie. This is The Amazing Spider-Man King-Size special number 6 from November 1969. It reprints material that first appeared in the first Spider-Man annual and in Amazing Spider-Man #8 both from 1964.

As you can see from the cover Spider-Man battles the Sinister Six! Great name for a group of bad guys, bet they had committee meetings and focus groups to come up with that. Anyway Spidey discovers that the villains led by Dr. Octopus have captured his then love interest Betty Brant and his Aunt May, and he has to battle the Six all in turn to save his loved ones. Of course the bad guys are dumb and want to fight him individually to show their superiority so Spider-Man can defeat them and then move on to the next one. The scene from the cover never actually happens in the book. What does happen is numerous brief appearances from all the other Marvel heroes from 1964. So the Fantastic Four, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the X-Men and the Avengers all make single panel appearances with a caption box directing readers to buy their own magazine, This cross-promotion by Marvel is absolutely blatant and rather charming in a way.

This is of course written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko, and the best thing about it is that each confrontation gets a single full page splash image which are worth the price of admission alone, or would have been in 1969 when this book was 25 cents.

As you can see from the scan this is a fairly beat up copy, the cover is just about hanging on but it's all dog eared and creased. The pages are all intact which is nice for a disposable comic book that is now 42 years old. And here's the thing, I have no idea where it came from. It's in my collection and I discovered it when bagging and boarding every thing properly a few years ago. But I have no recollection of when I bought it or where. Maybe I found it in some old back issues box at a shop or a show? It certainly came into my collection long before eBay.

Isn't it nice to come across a little gem like this? It's probably worth pennies but it's just nice to have.