Best and Worst of the Complete Marvel Reading Order #2

The Best - 435: Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #33

It seems fitting that the first full length story to get 5 stars is in "Amazing Spider-Man".  This story has all the stuff that is good about early Marvel in it.  First, Marvel isn't afraid to put its characters in what feels like serious mortal danger.  I mean, sure, super-heroes face dangerous stuff all the time, but Lee and Ditko make you feel it.  Spidey is straining to his limits, fighting exhaustion, on the ropes and near the edge of endurance.  For example, this iconic sequence...

This was the template for a scene in "Spider-Man: Homecoming".  I think an important touch to this sequence is the way the water keeps falling right on Spidey's head the whole time.  Its this extra piece of misery thrown in, but it also ties the whole page together visually, the vertical lines of the falling water guiding your eye down the page and giving you a kind of ruler to measure the distance Spidey has pushed up the wreckage on his back.  That kind of visual story telling is what I love the most about comic books, its not just the words and its not just the art its the marriage of the two in harmony which creates something far more than the sum of its parts.

Another iconic set of panels from this story...

Peter has triumphed, he has saved Aunt May through water, wreckage, and a platoon of Doctor Octopus's henchman.  He has succeeded through physical prowess and also through his own intelligence; its his insight that ensures the cure of Aunt May will succeed.  And you can see it in his hunched shoulders, his bowed head as he walks from the hospital, how close he was to failure.  

Another thing this story demonstrates is just how much story they packed in to a typical Marvel book back then.  Wow!  This one book would take 4 or 5 to cover in just 1990, let alone today.  

On the down side, oh man, Stan Lee liked to talk...

Ignore the information content in those panels and just soak in the the volume of words.  This early in the Order this still has some charm.  But by the time we get into the late '60s, there come moments where I feel like yelling at the creators "come on guys, show me, don't tell me!"   Lee is not even the worst culprit along these lines.  Trust me, just wait until we get to Gerry Conway...

The Worst - 367: Avengers (1963) #18

Early Avengers until 1968 or so is mediocre.  A lot of iconic villains are introduced, and its not without its charms, but it suffers from two elements.  First, the insistence in having all of the male characters act like testosterone fueled jerks most of the time.  I mean, even Captain America comes across as an ass, and don't get me started on Hawkeye.  The second is that Don Heck is just...not great.  He is serviceable, I suspect he was reliable in delivering pages on time, but he has no spark to him.  

But this story is the worst of the worst.  A racist piece of anti-communist propaganda masquerading poorly as a super-hero story.  I'm going to only put one piece of art from it here, because honestly much of it is just too offensive to copy over...

That's pretty much everything you need to know about this story.  

Also, I'm nearly certain that the Marvel Digital Unlimited version has been recolored, so the Asian characters do not have the original sickly yellow complexions.  But I could be wrong about that.  Its awful, 'nuff said.

The Best - 544: Thor (1966) #133 [A Story]

If you ever wondered "hmmm, who is this Jack Kirby of whom people speak, and why is he a thing, look no further than Thor #133.  Lee and Kirby are creating everything that is the Marvel cosmic sensibility in this comic from whole cloth.  I feel confident in saying there was nothing like THIS in a comic before...

I don't know, maybe something like Legion of Superheroes might have had stuff like this in the early '60s?  I suspect not.  This is where Jack Kirby always excelled to my mind.  He was a fine artist for character studies and conversations, but he was in his element when throwing mind-blowing weirdness at you.  

This whole story brings so many fun science-fiction elements into play.  Thor started out as a weird hybrid right from the first story, where he fights off the Stone Men from Saturn.  But this just shove in more.  Ego the Living Planet, with his every changing landscape and his anti-bodies.  The Recorder, an android reconnaissance device.  Its this mix of myth and space opera that is a defining feature of the Marvel Universe.  The fact that Norse gods trod the spaceways with interstellar empires, and that cosmic beings like Silver Surfer are plagued by Satannic stand-ins like Mephisto.  It all just goes into a blender and comes out as a tasty cosmic smoothie.

And there are pages like this...

I'm over 12,000 stories into the Order, and that is still in my top 5 full page panels.  It is only marred by that weird yellow narration box in the corner.  What was the point of that?  Like I said above, Stan Lee liked to talk.  Walt Simonson later did an excellent homage to this page on the cover of Thor #340...

Its stories like this that keep me reading the Order.

The Worst - 534: Tales of Suspense (1959) #83 [B Story]

"Enter, the Tumbler!"

Picture the scene.  It is Stan Lee's office in Manhattan, about 4 PM, late August or early September 1966.  Stan is putting on his coat and hat about to leave as Jack Kirby enters...

Kirby: "Hey Stan, where is the script for the November Captain America story in Tales of Suspense? I've been waiting for it."

Lee: "Jack, I can't be bothered with that right now, I've got to get a martini in me as soon as possible.  Just spin the wheel and do the whole 'Marvel Method' thing, would you?" Lee rushes out.

Kirby turns to the Wheel.  It's like the thing on "Wheel of Fortune", except around the edges are just random super-villain names.  He spins it, it clicks around and around, and then eventually comes to rest.

Kirby: "The Tumbler.  God*&#^$&*#.  I wonder if DC is hiring."

The true insult of this story is not that the Tumbler is a dumb character.  Its that only 7 issues earlier than this, they ALREADY introduced Batroc the Leaper.  Sorry, Batroc ze Leapair.  Batroc has the whole "acrobatic villain" thing nailed down, right?  Batroc is my boi, yo.  Ain't nobody comes in on Batroc's turf, is what I am saying.  Sorry, Tumbler, but the position has been filled.