Lee/Ditko Spider-man

Again, I take the boasting to be Ditko saying "When you give certain people even a little bit of power, it goes to their heads. Evil is 1% about power, 99% about megalomania."

I like that. I wish it showed up more in comics today.

Yeah, I always felt that was a great deal if the point with a lot of early Spider-Man villains. Spidey had "with great power comes great responsibility" and most of his villains had acquired their power through some accident (much as Spidey did his) and elected NOT to use it responsibly. The villains echo him, and play out his essential theme nicely (And a lot of them are named after animals or insects or something, just like he is!)

Eh, I like the Vulture on the virtue of being a classic villain, but I really think his classic portrayal is a little lame. At the least the Spectacular Spidey cartoon gave him body armor and lasers. Others like Mysterio and Chameleon aren't the strongest, but at least they have useful niches. With the Vulture, I never understood why he was in the Sinister Six. "Check it, guys, I can fly!" "Uh, so can Hobgoblin, and he also throws bombs. You're fired." Kraven was never really my favorite either, for similar reasons.

Kraven is a character that works really well in his own story, but shouldn't be paired up with other supervillains, I think.

...there is no defending the Vulture.

I thought the Vulture came off as fairly menacing in the Sinister Six novels, where he was shown actually cutting people in half with his wings.

As for the Lee and Ditko stories, I personally believe that the Vulture was invented because Steve Ditko said to himself, "It'd be fun to draw Spider-Man battling a villain in mid-air, hundreds of feet above the streets of Manhattan."

...but...but we have the Goblins for that....

Except that the first goblin character didn't show up for another 12 issues after the Vulture did. They probably also got a kick out of the idea of a teenager battling an elderly man.

So in other words the Vulture should have a portrayal similar to the Shocker from the Ultimate line? Makes sense.

"Hi Adrian."

Again, Ditko seemed to like giving people pathetic powers and giant ego and showing how much trouble they could cause. "Irresponsible power" as a foil to "With great power, comes great responsibility."

Necro-thread half-decade late...but some of you guys still post elsewhere...and oh hey I made a page for Lee-Ditko Spider-Man.

Looks pretty good. Might add a few things of my own, if that's ok?

Couple notes though:

• Some of the examples feel needlessly long, with a lot of redundancies/over-explanations. It's usually best to keep it simple.
• In the YMMV, you mention that people Love to Hate Gwen Stacy, and prefer this version of her. I've never heard that before; maybe a link to an article or a high-profile creator example could be added?

Edit: I added a few more tropes, and edited down some of the longer examples to remove the repeated information. Left the Love to Hate part the same in case you wanted to do something with it.

Edited by Eldritcho on Dec 5th 2018 at 9:02:40 AM

I've also never heard that before.

Yeah, don't think Gwen was ever in the Love to Hate trope. The worst I've heard people say was just that she was kinda dull, especially compared to MJ. Not sure what trope that goes under.

Here's the one about people preferring Ditko's Gwen:

http://www.comicscube.com/2014/04/gwen-stacy-and-challenges-of-comic-book.html

The fact is that people have been combing stuff from this era mostly because people got tired off the Church of St. Gwen, Our Lady of Necrophiliac Longing...and Ditko's Gwen is a standout.

Thanks to Eldritcho for your edits. Go ahead and correct me if you please...

I feel like that after issue 33, Amazing Spider-Man under the Lee/Ditko partership hit a lull. The only really good issues until #39 was the Kraven issue and the Robot one.

I thought Ditko’s final issue was decent although, I can kind of see what you mean. The college subplots don’t seem to go anywhere (that might have been different if Ditko had stayed) and I don’t think the villains were as strong (I dare someone to find a fan of The Looter.)

Edited by Bec66 on Feb 4th 2019 at 7:20:14 AM

After the Master Planner arc, you kind of do have to dial down rather than follow with another one...and the issues after that are more character centric and one-and-done.

I don’t think Looter was in another comic until at least a half a decade after that ASM #35.

Edited by ThatRandomChannel on Feb 4th 2019 at 7:42:11 AM

I understand dialing it back to one-shots, my problem was that most of the villains and sub-plots just weren’t as interesting as what came before. For example, Molten Man comes back in an issue that’s just a fight between him and spider-man with no sub-plots; I’ve already mentioned that the looter isn’t that interesting.

I did like the issue involving Dr.Stromm, mostly for how it related to Norman. I also fought the Kraven story and the last Ditko issue were decent. I just thought what came before was more interesting, and I’m not just talking about the master planner arc.

The only thing I can recall from the second Molten Man issue was that the controversial Ditko cover had Spider-Man’s entire ass showing, so Lee got Kirby to change Spider-Man at another angle