Essential Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, Vol. 1 by Gerry Conway

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


There were already two Spider-man titles when Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-man premiered in 1976. So what could this new series add? Quite a bit actually. This book collects the first 31 issues of the book.

Seven of the first eight issues were written by comics legend Archie Goodwin and Spider-man legend Gene Conway who contributed tales of classic Spidey villains like Kraven and the Vulture appearing for one-off adventures and then a sensational three parter involving Morbius the Vampire.

At that point, the book fell to Bill Manlo, who wrote all but two of the remaining twenty-three issues of the book. In many ways, the tales Manlo crafted were better than what was going on in the main series. It featured some epic story arcs such as Spidey teaming up with an Arkansas based superhero in a pig costume named Razorback to battle a new age cult, and Spidey teaming up with Moon Knight to battle the Maggia. The hispanic hero, The White Tiger made several appearances and became a regular guest star. Of course, there's some 1970s goofiness as Spidey battles a disco-based villain and the Carrion arc is not without its flaws, but had some great action and features Spidey losing his sight and declaring himself the worlds only blind superhero when standing a few feet from Daredevil. This book also includes Frank Miller's first art on Daredevil, a character he'd redefined a few years later.

The stories didn't always line up with what was going on in Amazing Spider-man but Manlo made an effort when he could. However, his blindness in two issues of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-man made no impact on Spidey in his main book.

Still, these are great classic Spider-man tales and in many ways, far more similar to the character's glory days under Lee and Conway than what was going on in Amazing Spider-man at the time.



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