The Amazing Spider-Man #55

The Amazing Spider-Man was a great comic back in the 1960's.  With Stan Lee doing the writing, and Steve Ditko and later John Romita handling the art, it succeeded far more often than not.  In the first 100 issues, there are a lot of highlights, and today I thought I would feature one of them.

This is the cover from Amazing Spider-Man #55.  The story has it all; Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus in a multi-page battle, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, Aunt May in the hospital (as usual), J. Jonah Jameson bad mouthing Spider-Man, and a secret military weapon called "The Nullifier" that is ultimately stolen by Doc Ock.  It even has references to Tony Stark, the Iron Man.  The end of the book has Spider-Man losing his memory and possibly his powers.  The cover is simply fantastic...Spider-man getting pummeled by Doc Ock, and our vantage point the same as Peter Parker's:  staring into the eyes of the menacing villain.

A few years ago I had the privilege of meeting John Romita up in San Francisco at Wonder-Con.  He had an exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco.  He was offering sketches in the book he was selling if a donation was made to the museum.  Whenever in that situation, I always ask the artist to sketch what they want...the results in this case turned out pretty good with a nice sketch of MJ and Spidey on the inside cover of the book.

Until next time...