Spider-Man Spotlights, Part 1

Spider-Man, as a property, provides a unique opportunity for Magic. We get to see a selection of some of the most iconic printed moments in Spider-Man history. I collected most of these, just as pairs of images, but I’m going to go a bit more in-depth on each one. Either why it’s iconic, or at least something interesting from that comic. Again, starting with five at a time, just so it’s not a massive wall.

Most of the media spotlight cards utilize iconic covers. This one is from the return of The Spot, who hadn’t been seen for a while. The Spot has had a resurgence recently due to his role in the new Spiderverse movie.
Aunt May’s charity is approached by Russian mobsters that want to use her for good publicity. Peter investigates the mob, but is disrupted by The Spot doing a murder at them. He has to protect the head of the gang.
Pages 7-8 include a Rocky and Bullwinkle reference. Parker is seen using a Syno camera, a parody of Sony. And, most notably, on page 12, Spider-Man tries to talk like Christian Bale and struggles with the gravely voice.

This is not just an iconic cover, but a pivotal issue in the plot. MJ is just a friend, Black Cat is his girlfriend, all that good stuff. But most importantly, Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars had just taken place, the storyline where Peter Parker first acquires the alien symbiote suit that would go on to be Venom. In order to figure out what is going on with his suit, Peter goes to the Fantastic Four, but needs to remain anonymous, so when he takes his suit off, he wears an old F4 suit and a paper bag, thus marking the first appearance of the Bombastic Bag-Man as seen on the super fancy printing of Spectacular Spider-Man.

While not the first Black Cat-centric comic, a cursory glance at other iconic Black Cat covers and individual pages reveals that it’s very likely this one was chosen because Black Cat is often drawn very…un-family friendly, and this one gets you a nice cat burglar pose without too much T&A. This ten-issue run takes place during a major Marvel crossover event when Earth was being invaded by an army of symbiotes, and Black Cat was doing some anti-hero-ing.

If we’re talking about iconic Spider-Man covers, I’d put this in my top 5. The first milestone comic, being number 50, obviously a big story climax had to happen here. And they didn’t disappoint; Aunt May is very sick, he’s struggling in school, Gwen Stacy is flirting with him, and J. Jonah Jameson is starting to get under his skin. So Peter makes the ultimate decision. He dumps his suit in a trash can, in another iconic image. This lasts about 15 pages, when he saves a night watchman who looks like Uncle Ben and then has a big emotional roller coaster.

Green Goblin had been slain 14 issues earlier. But when a very identifiable explosion puts MJ in the hospital, Spidey is convinced that despite Norman Osborn being dead, the villainous Goblin is still around. So he goes to Goblin’s old hideout, finds it full of dust, decides to see if it is fake dust, finds out that it is, and establishes a stakeout. By creating a web hammock and just waiting. 6 pages later, as Harry Osborn (spoilers if you haven’t read any Spider-Man comics or didn’t watch Spider-Man 3) is about to finish him off, the Goblin runs out of power in his suit. Here’s what he has to say about that:

Wonder if that’s why they chose an image from this comic…also, that’s basically the end of the issue. Goblin runs out of power and runs away. Big let-down.

Anyways, that’s the first five of forty (holy crap, there’s forty of these) special cards to look at. I hope you like the context for each one, and stay tuned for more of my insane rabbit holes I have to go down to try and find the source for unlabeled individual panels.