a Spider-Man comic rec

I've just finished reading the Essential Spider-Man Vol. 2, and it was a lot of fun to read that many of the early Amazing Spider-Man stories in one setting. That way it's much easier to follow the drama of Peter Parker's daily life. I got the Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1 collection when I first started reading the current Amazing Spider-Man -- which I can btw recommend also, currently it's written by J. Michael Straczynski, art by John Romita Jr. (pencils) and Scott Hanna (inks), the team that took over with issue #30 of the current series, and both art and writing are great -- and just now the second one. Marvel's "Essential" collections are great value: You get over 20 consecutive issues in one paperback for about $15.00, and personally I like very much that they're in b/w.

Anyway in Essential Spider-Man Vol. 2 you can read for example about the on-going problems Peter has with his costume: His one costume gets wet, preventing him from getting out as Spiderman when he needs to be, then he decides to sew a second one, but his aunt finds that, and admonishes him not to wear costumes of such superheroes to parties, finally he looses his original costume, and falls back on one of the Spiderman costumes sold by a costume store, however that one is of inferior quality and throughout the issue it always slips and hinders him during his fights...it's hilarious.

You'll need some tolerance for "meta-commentary" during the issues, however that's part of the unique style of these comics, so it doesn't bother me that the narrator addresses the readers sometimes. It does set those comics apart from the usual current style of story telling in comics though. I think it's a fun way of not taking themselves too seriously, that at the beginning of a fight scene, you'll sometimes find a text box like "And now, we promised Artie Simek we'd let him go wild with sound effects for a page or two, so here goes --" and then follow eight panels of fighting with outrageous onomatopoeic words.

Anyway, for good escapist fun that has lots of important character development for Peter Parker/Spider-Man as well, you should get Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1, collecting Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spider-Man #1-20 and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, mostly by the team of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, covering the time from 1962-65, as well as Essential Spider-Man Vol. 2, collecting Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spider-Man #21-43 and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2-3 (that is the non-reprint parts of the Annuals of course), those mostly by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and later John Romita, covering the time from 1965-66. The other "Essential" collections are most likely worth reading too, but I haven't read those yet.

The first issues of the current team of Amazing Spider-Man are also available as collections already: Coming Home collects #30-35, Revelation collects #36-39, and Until the Stars Turn Cold collects #40-45, if you don't want to track down the single issues.

Also I'm afraid I'm boring any non-comic fans among my few readers to death recently...

continuity

I remember those debates in TS fandom about how the canon was never really clear about Jim's birthday and age, and the issues with differences between prop canon and what is shown in the flashbacks in some episodes, and how sometimes the months between the episodes don't really line up with the shown season of the year in a coherent chronology etc. And I remember how everyone used to bitch that the canon was so inconsistent.

Hah. Trying to just get a basic idea what pieces of canon are still valid and what has been retconned for just a little part of the current DC universe continuity makes me laugh at those complaints in retrospect. Current "definite" canon is more slippery than a wet fish for the DCU.

I mean, so far I've only read post-Crisis DC but not even that makes it really easier. Right now I'm reading through DCU FAQs to understand the impact "Zero Hour" had on post-Crisis continuity. Zero Hour apparently was the second retcon intended to fix the snafus and inconsistencies in the wake of their first retcon...

I get the need for retcons in comic canon to adjust it from time to time, but the way DC did it is certainly, uh, challenging. I guess I'll add the relevant "Zero Hour" issues to the ever growing list of "comics to get eventually" and hope I'll be able to figure it out at some point.

(Or at least get used to it, sort of like with quantum mechanics, you don't really understand it, but get used to it when you just use the formulas often enough...)