Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) Annual #6
Background
It’s 1969 and you’ve been looking forward to this year’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual. Last year’s was “The Parents of Peter Parker!” Can the House of Ideas top that? You’ve been searching for it all summer and it finally shows up on the spinning rack and it’s got a great John Romita cover showing Spidey, illuminated by an electric blast from Electro’s hand while Doc Ock grabs Spidey’s wrist with one tentacle and four other villains either threaten or begin to attack him, forming a circle (with the web-slinger) around the page. It’s “The Sinister Six!” and the cover blurb asks us, “And who’s more sinister than…Kraven! Sandman! Dr. Octopus! Mysterio! Vulture! Electro! ‘Nuff said!” This is going to be great! You crack the cover but the splash page looks sort of familiar. In fact, it’s not a new Sinister Six story at all. It’s a reprint of the story from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, 1964 with a brand-new cover. So, what’s up with that?
Well, American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1960s (1965-1969) tells us that “reprints even extended to Marvel’s annual King-Size Specials in 1969 when, after years of headlining original content, virtually all of them ran stories from the mid-1960s. Still priced at 25¢, the giants were no longer economically viable with new stories.” Why weren’t they? Well, in 1968, after getting out from under the constraints of his deal with Independent News distributors, Martin Goodman vastly expanded the Marvel line. American Comic Book Chronicles says, “Roy Thomas confirmed that Marvel had seen ‘a slight down-turn’ following the 1968 line expansion ‘and sales dipped briefly.’ That was enough to get Martin Goodman ‘talking about cutting expenses. Stan had been through that before,’ Thomas noted, ‘Goodman’s idea of cutting expenses was to go to Florida and have Stan fire everybody. At the time, I recall Stan toying with the idea of asking some of Marvel’s best artists to find other work – people like John Severin and John Buscema, who Stan figured would have less trouble finding other companies to work for – in order to spare the artists who couldn’t switch over quite as easily. In the long run, though, you have to keep your most important people. Luckily, as it turned out, Stan didn’t have to do anything too drastic’.” But he did have to turn all the annuals into reprint books.
Story Details
This won’t take long since we’ve seen these three stories before.
The issue begins with the full The Sinister Six! story from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, 1964. In my review, I wrote, “What can I say? A forty-one page story featuring six of Spidey's top opponents. Guest-stars galore. A recap of the origin story. Spidey losing his powers. Full-page battle shots of Spidey with each of his six opponents. J. Jonah Jameson trying to talk to a spider…It's one of the best Spidey issues of all time. Five webs all the way. If I could give it a hundred webs, I would without hesitation.” So, a treat to anyone who came in later on and hadn’t had a chance to read it.
Stan doesn’t bother to change the closing caption of the story which seems almost comical in light of the all-reprint edict. It says, “And that’s that! Just between us, we’re glad we have a full year till our next Spidey Annual! It’ll take us that long to rest up from doing this one!”
The next story comes from Fantastic Four Annual #1 (Story 2), 1963. It’s a six-page expansion of the two page scene in Amazing Spider-Man #1, March 1963 in which Spidey takes on the Fantastic Four, entitled The Fabulous Fantastic Four Meet Spider-Man. As I said in my review, “So, what's the difference between this story and the pages from ASM#1? Essentially, there are 25 extra panels that extend each battle Spidey has with each FF member (seven panels added to the battle with the Thing, six with Mr. Fantastic, seven with the Invisible Girl and five with the Torch)… Kirby's artwork is at times nearly identical to the Ditko work from ASM #1, at times similar but with variations, and at times totally new.” Check out my panel-by-panel comparison of the two versions if you’d like but, trust me, “If you're grading this book on the Spider-Man story alone, then it's pretty much unnecessary. About the only thing to recommend it is the great Kirby-Ditko art.” I gave the story one web.
Stan does change the closing caption of this story from “And that is the real reason Spider-Man never joined the Fantastic Four!! But will they ever meet again? We wouldn’t be at all surprised!!” to “Hold it, hero! Just for kicks, we’ve got a second Spidey-F.F. bout coming up on our very next page! Enjoy, pilgrim!”
Which brings us to Spider-Man Tackles the Torch! from Amazing Spider-Man #8 (Story 2), January 1964. It’s another six-page story again with Jack Kirby pencils and Steve Ditko inks. In my review, I said, “It's great seeing the Lee-Kirby-Ditko team once again but this story doesn't generate much excitement. Spidey is a complete jerk in his own mag. Are we supposed to root for him over the Torch even though he went out of his way to ruin Dorrie's party? It's hard to work up a whole lot of sympathy. Two webs is all I can muster, mostly on the strength of the artwork and those green plaid slacks that Johnny wears.”
Again, we have a different closing caption. Where before it said, “Like we always say…Spider-Man’s not so dumb! He picks his enemies very carefully! More thrills, fun, and fast-moving fantasy next issue! See you then!” now it says, “And with these two offbeat Spidey-Torch slugfests under our belts, we bid thee adieu till next year! Keep thy webs untangled, Spidophile!” Yes, next year, when we’ll have another annual filled with reprints. I can’t wait!
General Comments
To be fair, none of these stories had been reprinted before. The Sinister Six is a must-read for any Spidophile and, if this was your first exposure to it, then this issue was worthwhile. The other stories are not much more than fillers but were skipped in the previous reprints and are hard to find. Plus, this issue has a nice new Romita cover. Still, it doesn’t make up for the disappointment of looking forward to another all-new annual and finding this instead.
Overall Rating 
I’m going to call it two webs unless you’ve read these stories before, in which case, don’t bother.
Footnote
Next: Back to the Prowler in ASM #79.