1968
Part I:
1968-1970 The Spectacular Spider-Man #2
It was 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, the Democratic National Convention, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and Marvel was experiencing the first major expansion of its line of comic book titles in over a decade. Sales were climbing and its characters sank deeper into the public consciousness. But even as artist Jack Kirby’s tenure at the company was drawing to a close; the philosophically confused Silver Surfer was launched in his own book; Steranko reached a crescendo on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD; and new life was born to members of the Fantastic Four. Editor Stan Lee remained eager to escape the comic book spinner rack (“Hey, kids! Comics!”) and reach out to the older readers he was increasingly identifying with at speaking engagements and visits to college campuses. But how to do it while retaining the comics format that seemed to have intrigued the counter-cultural element who were as likely to visit a head shop as they were to drop in at the corner tobacco store? Lee’s solution was to create a comic book that didn’t look like a comic book but a magazine. Capitalizing on Marvel’s growing penetration of the market, he decided the new magazine should spotlight Spider-Man, the company’s most popular character and presumably, the one with the most cache among college students. To further separate it from regular comics, the new magazine would be printed in black-and-white and due to its greater dimensions, sold on the magazine rack beside Time and The New Yorker instead of with its four-color peers. But first, Lee would have to convince publisher Martin Goodman who wasn’t crazy about doing magazine-sized comics. At the time, black-and-white comic magazines were the province of fly-by-night outfits that exploited blood
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“The Spider-Man Saga”; Stan Lee (script), John Romita (pencils & inks) “The Goblin Lives”; Stan Lee (script), John Romita (layouts), Jim Mooney (pencils), Frank Giacoia (inks)
Spectacular Spider-Man #2: Marvel’s first attempt to break out of its four-color straightjacket and capture the notice of a wider adult audience was short lived but yielded two great extra-length tales by Lee and Romita at the height of their powers!
Par t I: 1968-1970
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