The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 Review
“72 BIG PAGES ANNUAL”
By Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Published by Marvel Comics. All images fair use.
As someone who mainly consumes graphic novels/collections rather than single issues, I can’t say I was ever a part of the “annual” culture. The appeal is obvious, though: more pages, more features, more fun. Bigger isn’t always better in my book, but the first gathering of the Sinister Six was exciting enough of a prospect to hook me. It’s multi-villain extravaganzas like this that helped pave the path to No Way Home, after all.
The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 is also big on Marvel’s interconnectedness, which would come to define the MCU as we know it. Indeed, there are cameos galore, from the Mighty Thor to the Invincible Iron Man. Most of them feel more like free advertising than anything (“The Human Torch appears monthly in Strange Tales!”), but (a) Marvel has never been shy about hawking its heroes, and (b) it does make sense that these characters might just show up sometimes. New Yorkers’ reactions also add an extra element of realism (so to speak), as when a gaggle of them run to gawk at Giant-Man and the Wasp foiling a crime, or when Flash whiffs a right hook on Peter and accidentally stumbles through Doctor Strange’s “ectoplasmic spirit form.” I’m not at all embarrassed to say I’ve walked the streets of…
