Golden Books 3489: Amazing Spider-Man Comics To Color
Background
This is a definite oddity among the other more conventional "Golden Books". It is marked with the "Gold Key" logo, and brands itself as a "Comic to Color".
The back cover says "Be on the lookout for other Golden Comics to Color. Collect them all!" I'm aware of a Batman Animated Series tie-in, and two X-Men issues in the same series. However, this is the only Spider-Man one as far as anybody seems to be able to tell.
Story Details
Golden Books 3489: Amazing Spider-Man Comics To Color
| See Original Credits, plus... | |
| Publisher: | Western Publishing Company, Inc. |
| Part Reprints: | Web of Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #83 |
Physically, this book is a magazine-sized portfolio, 8.5" x 11". Inside is a single page which unfolds to be a 7-page wide landscape piece of paper, roughly 60" x 11".
On one side of the giant foldout page is six pages of line art from Web of Spider-Man #83 featuring Bobster. The color has been removed, so that you can... put it back again.
That leaves eight more pages, which have been filled up with amusing puzzles, games and trivial. For example:
Q. What did Spider-Man say when he saw Mary Jane?
A. "I spied-her".
Laugh? I nearly did! No, not really. Well, if jokes aren't your thing, try one of the puzzles. Can you unscramble this name of Spider-Man's foe? EGREN GBLOIN.
See, we're having fun already, aren't we?
No, me neither.
General Comments
What a disappointing effort this was. It contains one third of a comic, with line art not particularly ideal for coloring with the pencils that aren't included.
The jokes clearly got rejected from the 1992 Christmas Cracker list for being too intellectual. Meanwhile the page of scrambled foes is disappointing, but not quite as disappointing as the fact that the following page contains... more scrambled foes.
As you'll recall, 1992 was right about when comics were riding high. Zombie fan boys were buying every comic that Marvel could shove out the door, with dreams of selling them a few years later at twice the price.
In fact, things were so crazy that even rubbish like this coloring "book" could be offered for sale without raising an eyebrow.
Overall Rating 
I'll give it a little bit of credit for trying to offer a novel format. But in terms of content, there's no cause for kindness.
One and a half webs.