Amazing Spider-Man Annual 21 (Summer 1987)

Back in the late twentieth century, most continuing Marvel series spawned a special type of comic book known as an annual every summer, which contained stories and ephemera that weren't strictly tied to the monthly continuity of that series. The concept of the annual reached its peak at the end of the '80s, when nearly every Marvel annual of a particular summer was tied together to tell the huge crossover stories of The Evolutionary War (1988) and Atlantis Attacks (1989). Most of the main characters in the Marvel Universe were involved in these stories, no matter how odd it might seem that, say, the Punisher (a vigilante who was concerned primarily with drug dealers and mobsters) would be in any way involved with stopping the undersea kingdom of Lemuria's attempts to resurrect the god Set and conquer the land dwellers of planet earth.¹ Not surprisingly, these crossovers were bloated, overly complex, and not particularly good--even from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old who would read pretty much anything uncritically.

Nevertheless, a Marvel annual would sometimes serve as the repository for a significant Marvel event, and one such event, contained in Amazing Spider-Man Annual 21, was Peter Parker's wedding to Mary Jane Watson. For a Marvel comic book fan, this was a big deal. Peter and Mary Jane had been dating, off and on, since the mid '70s.² Mary Jane, being a gorgeous party girl, was arguably out of Peter's league, and much of the drama of their relationship hinged on this mismatch (not to mention Mary Jane's irritation that Peter was always disappearing to do his Spider-Man thing). Fan reaction to the wedding was probably mixed (I don't really know), but it was the kind of landmark story that got a brief mention in some newspapers around the country (if it happened to be a slow news day). Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee, who still wrote the daily Spider-Man newspaper strip, was the one who spearheaded this marriage, and he wrote the wedding into the strips that were published that summer. Real-life fashion designer Willi Smith designed MJ's wedding gown. Like I said, a big deal.

As a story, though, the annual is only so-so. First, Spidey battles Electro in a fight that has absolutely no bearing on anything related to the rest of the issue, because (a) this is a superhero comic not a romance comic, and (b) otherwise the rest of this issue would be filled with a lot of pointless hand-wringing, second thoughts, and cold feet.


Typical Spidey banter with a supervillain; too bad this fight is literally pointless.
I can think of a half dozen ways in which to make a superhero's wedding interesting without resorting to the "I don't know if I really want to get married" cliche. And yet both Mary Jane and Peter spend the majority of this comic book thinking about how their pending nuptials are probably a huge mistake. MJ in the form of some rich creep who keeps bribing her with expensive cars and trips to exotic places:


Ugh. That MJ even smiles at this guy's crass behavior is a bit unsettling.
And Peter in the form of guilt over loved ones who died, either directly (Gwen Stacey) or indirectly (Uncle Ben) because of his Spider-Man alter ego. He even has a supervillain-filled nightmare about the danger MJ might be in as Spider-Man's wife:


The angst! My god, the overwrought angst.
But I think the biggest red flag should be this couple's inability to tell the most important people in their lives that they're getting married. Aunt May is Peter's closest relative, biologically and emotionally speaking. And yet he doesn't tell her he's getting married until a few days before the wedding. I should clarify that they're not eloping; their friends and families are fully expected to show up at this formal occasion--but invitations were not, apparently, sent out.


MJ forgot to finish her sentence: "We're getting married...tomorrow!"
Likewise, Peter asks Flash Thompson to be his best man in the same breath as he's telling Flash he's getting married, which Flash had apparently heard from someone else beforehand.³ And the wedding is in, like, twenty-four hours.


Peter forgot to finish his sentence: "I'd like you to be my best man...tomorrow!"
Yes, I'm probably taking all this too seriously. As I mentioned, Amazing Spider-Man was a superhero comic, not a romance comic. The writer, David Michelinie, was (is?) actually a pretty good writer, and penned a lot of good Spider-Man comics in the '80s. But you can tell that this story wasn't really his idea. He gets through it, but the whole thing is written by the numbers. There are no surprises or genuine moments of tenderness.

Which might lead you to wonder why I'm writing about it at all. And the answer to that question is that, as a connoisseur of Archie comics (especially the sappy ones), I wanted this to be a great, romantic comic book. Alas, the only two moments of romance are (a) when Peter presents MJ with an engagement ring (after they'd already been engaged for a while) upside down while he kneels on the ceiling, and (b) when Peter, in his Spider-Man costume, gathers MJ up in his free hand and web-slings them to the top of a skyscraper with a gorgeous panoramic view of the Brooklyn Bridge, where MJ promptly mentions Peter's dead girlfriend (the aforementioned Gwen), they share an awkward silence, and Peter returns them to their apartment in a funk. Sigh.

Anyway, not a great comic. But at least these two are still married.

Oh, wait. Never mind.⁴

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Pointless Footnotes

¹ Except insofar as, y'know, he would probably not be a fan of the god Set conquering the land dwellers of planet earth--being a land dweller himself and all.

² Which may sound, to the untrained reader, as if Peter and Mary Jane had been dating for over a decade by that point. This is (sort of) true from a fan's real-world perspective, but Marvel continuity is a tricky thing: although Peter Parker was created in 1963 as a high school student, by the late '80s he was only just in his early twenties. Time moves much more slowly in the Marvel Universe than it does in the real world. And if I recall, Peter and MJ weren't really dating much at that point in the comics. I think Peter was more interested in Felicia Hardy.

³ Who, exactly?! Who would know about your wedding before the guy you want to be your best man? For that matter, who would know before your aunt, who raised you and is one of the most important people in your life? It makes no sense....

⁴ See the "One More Day" storyline.

Silver Surfer 12 (Jun. 1988)

The Silver Surfer is rad. Norrin Radd, that is. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1966--the same year the Beach Boys released Pet Sounds and at the tail end of the beach party movie craze (Beach Blanket Bingo et al.)--the Silver Surfer first appeared in Fantastic Four as the alien herald of Galactus, Devourer of Worlds. Two issues later, after the Silver Surfer has betrayed him, Galactus strips the Surfer of his space-time powers, effectively stranding him on earth. This paved the way for the Surfer's solo series, which debuted in 1968 and lasted 18 issues. As a nearly all-powerful outsider observing the tumultuous earthbound events of the late '60s, the Silver Surfer spent a lot of time lamenting (out loud, for the reader's sake) humanity's urge to destroy itself. The series was fairly preachy and not particularly fun. I'm not surprised the series barely lasted two years.


The Silver Surfer's first appearance, from Fantastic Four 48 (Mar. 1966).
Seventeen years later, the Surfer was given his second ongoing series (technically considered volume 3 because of a one-shot published in 1982). Written first by Steve Englehart (later by Jim Starlin) and illustrated initially by Marshall Rogers and Joe Rubinstein (later by Ron Lim and Tom Christopher), Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four figures out a way to free the Surfer from his earthbound restriction, allowing him to once again travel the galaxy. As a result, this new Silver Surfer series initiated some of Marvel's most cosmic stories (the second Kree-Skrull War, the Infinity Gauntlet saga) and featured Marvel's spaciest characters (Galactus, Thanos, Nova, the Eternals) of the late '80s and early '90s. As a sci-fi nerd, this made Silver Surfer one of my all-time favorite series.

In issue 12, the reptilian space pirate Reptyl has captured the Silver Surfer and Galactus's latest herald, Nova, and is sheltering the Elder known as the Contemplator from Galactus. Clumsy Foulup (don't ask) rescues Nova, who in turn rescues the Silver Surfer. It's a good issue, but it ends with one of the more unexpectedly shocking moments in a Marvel comic book supposedly approved by the Comics Code Authority. Reptyl suddenly turns on the Contemplator and, well, eats him:


This may not seem like such a big deal in 2017, what with shows like The Walking Dead available on basic cable, but in 1988 this moment was a little too much for my 14-year-old brain. To say it scarred my psyche would be overstating it, but let's just say it was not my favorite comic book-reading experience. Nowadays, of course, I look at this sequence and struggle to put myself back into whatever adolescent mindset I'd been in that reacted so negatively to such a cartoony sequence. But I think that was the shock of it: the series's motifs and, more importantly, Marshall Rogers's art style (especially in terms of Reptyl's "funny animal" design) didn't adequately prepare me for a moment of cannibalism.¹

Regardless, this event didn't prevent me from enjoying this series for many more years to come.

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¹ Is it really cannibalism if a member of one sentient species eats a member of another sentient species?

Dakota North 1 (Jun. 1986)

I found this issue (along with Dakota North 2) on a massive comic book rack in the magazine section of a Cheboygan, MI, grocery store while on summer vacation in the summer of '86. I convinced my dad to buy both of them for me using a tactic I like to call "twelve-year-old businessman." I suggested that, because they were the first two issues of a series, they would someday be worth a lot of money. Thus, a sound investment!¹ I don't think my dad necessarily believed this, he was just happy to buy me a couple of comics.

Needless to say, these two comics are not worth a lot of money thirty years later. In fact, I doubt I could get even double their 75¢ cover price. (Having sat in a wire rack in a grocery store for several weeks before I rescued them from oblivion, my copies are not in pristine shape.) The series did not sell well and was canceled after five issues. Much like my beloved Archie, I believe that Dakota North was intended primarily for a female audience. Although Dakota is a private investigator in tight leather pants, and her adventures (to say nothing of her enemies) had a distinctly '80s-action-movie vibe, the series nonetheless featured significant romance and fashion elements.²


Everybody loves Dakota!
I would guess that Dakota's cocreator and writer Martha Thomases might have planned on a slightly less gun-centric, more girl-friendly vibe than is present in the book that ultimately made it into print, but that's strictly conjecture. In any case (and to add even more conjecture to this posting), Dakota North would have had a steep uphill battle in trying to find enough female readers to make the series profitable. There are a lot more female readers of Marvel and DC comics now than there were thirty years ago (and the bar for a successful Marvel comic was a lot higher then than it is now).


Don't let his age or the wheelchair fool you; Dakota's dad is a badass.
Regardless, I still love the five issues that were published. Thomases' lighthearted, funny stories zip right along at a brisk pace. They don't always make complete sense, but they're enjoyable.


Dakota chases some kidnappers through a department store...on her motorcycle.
Dakota North's cast of goofy, memorable characters is the area in which Thomases' writing really shines. Dakota's assistant, the trigger-happy Mad Dog, is just like Rambo--if Rambo had been written by someone with a sense of humor.


Dakota with her one and only employee, the aptly nicknamed Mad Dog.
Then there's Ricky, Dakota's bratty younger brother who's forced by their father to move in with his big sis. He spends his free time getting on Dakota's nerves, barging in on her capers, and dating models.


Ricky, who wears sunglasses even when he's indoors and playing Galaga.
Of course, the story would be nothing without some dynamite illustrations to back it up, and Tony Salmons' delicately rendered artwork reminds me of the inestimable Alex Toth's. Salmons' line work perfectly compliments the book's tone, which shifts seamlessly from comedy to drama to romance, sometimes all on one page--if not all in a single panel. As far as I'm concerned, Marvel canceled Dakota North far too soon.


Dakota North = Modern Art
Fortunately, Dakota North (the character, that is) didn't disappear completely from the Marvel universe. She popped up again in a few random issues of other series in the late '80s and early '90s, and played a significant part in a long string of Daredevil issues written by Ed Brubaker in the mid- to late '00s. What she really needs, however, is another solo book. C'mon, Marvel: bring back Team Thomases and Salmons!

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Pointless Footnotes

¹ See this entry for one of my many real-world lessons in comics as investments.

² She had her own paper doll (albeit pretty tongue-in-cheek) in Marvel Age Annual 2, for goodness' sake!

Daredevil 229 (Apr. 1986)

In 1986 I bought a lot of G.I. Joe back issues from American Comics, a mail order company that ran monthly ads in Marvel's comics. Sometimes they would throw in a random comic for free, presumably to get rid of overstock while also generating some customer goodwill. Some of them were garbage (like The Adventurers 1), but most of them were actually pretty good, and led me to series beyond G.I. Joe.

One of the free issues American Comics sent me was Daredevil 229, which was nearly a year old when they gave it to me. I've mentioned before that Daredevil interested me, but this was the first issue of his series that I read (other than issue 7, which was anthologized in the Giant Superhero Holiday Grab-Bag)--and it singlehandedly altered my understanding of what a superhero comic could be.

First, the cover. Unlike every other superhero comic book on the stands at the time, there's nobody dressed in tights beating up somebody else in tights. Instead, there's a homeless-looking guy confronting a dude dressed as Santa and wielding a knife. Turns out, this homeless-looking guy is Matt Murdock, a.k.a. Daredevil, and he doesn't wear his Daredevil costume once in the entire issue. As someone relatively new to superhero comics, I couldn't quite wrap my head around this at first. Plus, he was injured, suffering from a broken rib (from a fight with the Kingpin in the previous issue) and the stab wound that Turk (the thief in the Santa outfit) inflicts on him halfway through the issue. These details, combined with the other elements of the story written by Frank Miller--not to mention David Mazzucchelli's gritty artwork--made it feel real. Or at least more real than the other superhero comics I'd read up to that point.

In the '80s, it was nearly impossible to pick up a random issue of a long-running series without feeling a bit lost. Marvel comics at the time were deeply continuity-based, like a long-running soap opera. This kept me from reading a lot of series at first, but because this issue had simply been given to me, I read it. And I was most certainly dropped into Matt Murdock's life in media res--but Frank Miller had a way of writing a story that, even halfway through, compelled its readers to find out what happens next. This particular issue opens with a tantalizing flashback to the origins of Matt's superpowers. Then we return to the present, where Matt wakes up in an alley among several of New York City's homeless (of which, I learn later in the issue, Matt is one). Then we follow Matt's law partner, Foggy, and Foggy's friend Glori, who is mugged in Rockefeller Center. Ben Urich, the Daily Bugle reporter, visits a Lieutenant Manolis in the hospital, where Manolis's son is being treated. In Mexico, Karen Page--whom I knew as Matt and Foggy's sweet secretary (back in Daredevil 7)--looking very strung-out, robs a blind beggar in Mexico.


Then Matt confronts Turk, one of Daredevil's recurring nemeses, and gets stabbed for his efforts.


Meanwhile, Karen visits a Mexican drug dealer, begging him for some heroin and a ride to New York. Halfway through their conversation, some thugs attempt to take possession of Karen for reasons that weren't clear to me at the time, but the drug dealer blasts them with a shotgun and helps Karen escape.


Back in New York, Glori kisses Foggy, while Matt discovers that his townhouse has been razed to the ground by the Kingpin, and Ben's fingers are broken by a nurse built like a tank who warns him to stay out of the Kingpin's business.


In the final scene, Matt goes to his father's old gym and passes out, where he is found by a Catholic nun who seems to know him.

I ask you, how could I not want to read the next issue after all that?

Thanks to Frank Miller's and David Mazzucchelli's mini opus, Daredevil immediately became the fourth series I started to read regularly, beginning with issue 239. (Never mind that, by then, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli were no longer working on the book. Ann Nocenti had taken over as the writer, and she was pretty amazing.)

Archie's Double Digest 10 (May 1984)

One of the central conceits in Archie comics is that Archie is dating two girls, Betty and Veronica, at once. Veronica is the one Archie prefers to date, but since Veronica is frequently unavailable (physically, emotionally, or otherwise), and because Betty makes her attraction to Archie obvious to everyone--Archie included--Archie dates her when he can’t date Veronica. But the direction in which this love triangle’s arrows point is clear: Betty’s arrow points to Archie, but Archie’s arrow almost always points to Veronica.

As a message for adolescent girls (who, I readily acknowledge, are the primary demographic that reads the Archie comics), this conceit is pretty awful. I can only assume that most girls identify with Betty (friendly, conscientious, largely invisible to the boy she has a crush on) rather than Veronica (self-centered, impossibly rich, the object of several boys’ affections). The message Betty’s actions sends to these girls is, essentially: Keep chasing that boy who likes someone else. If you're persistent, he will grudgingly date you whenever that other girl isn’t available. Self-esteem be damned!

To be fair, Betty’s love for Archie is frequently exaggerated for laughs, as the Archie comics are ostensibly humor comics. There’s one story in which Betty’s father is freaked out by all the Archie “memorabilia” Betty has in her room (dolls, posters, and pillowcases, etc., emblazoned with Archie’s face) as if he were a famous movie star instead of a normal teenager. At times it seems as if Betty is infatuated with Archie in the way that girls of the ’50s were infatuated with Elvis, girls of the ’60s were infatuated with the Beatles, girls of the ’70s were infatuated with Davy Jones, etc.

Furthermore, Betty--despite being the “nice” girl--isn’t above scheming against her rival, Veronica, in order to score a date with Archie through dishonest means. Yet by and large, Archie pushes poor Betty aside whenever Veronica deigns to spend time with him.

When I was reading Archie comics as a kid in the late ’70s and early ’80s, this always bothered me. My answer to the age-old question (“Do you prefer Betty or Veronica?”) was always Betty. She’s a sweet girl, just as cute as Veronica, but without Veronica’s spoiled attitude. I couldn’t understand why Archie was her only romantic option. Of course the supporting male characters in the books weren’t viable options (asexual Jughead, who prefers food to girls; obnoxious Reggie, who prefers Veronica exclusively; dumb jock Moose, who already has a girlfriend; brainiac Dilton, who may not be asexual like Jughead but who is certainly out of Betty’s league; all-around nice guy Chuck, who like Moose has a steady girlfriend), but surely another character could be introduced to provide Betty with someone other than Archie to crush on? As far as I’m aware, though, this never happened, and Betty was left to pine for Archie eternally. As such, my favorite Archie story is the one in which Archie finally acknowledges how his actions have the ability to hurt Betty’s feelings.

“The Last Kiss” (by Frank Doyle and Bob Bolling), which I read in Archie’s Double Digest 10 (reprinted from Life with Archie 120), begins with Archie dropping Betty off at home after a date. It's only 10 o'clock, but Betty and her parents are leaving early the next morning to visit Betty's grandparents. After Archie drops Betty off at home, he runs into Veronica on the street and offers to drive her to her car, which is a few blocks away. Betty (whose father has just sent her out for motion sickness pills for tomorrow's drive) happens to see this and is, understandably, devastated--because it appears as if Archie ditched her so he could start his “real” date with Veronica.


Poor Betty runs back to her father, who consoles her after she explains why she's so upset.


Mr. Cooper, who seems to have had about enough of Archie’s insensitive treatment of his daughter (for the past thirty years!), storms over to the Andrews household and starts yelling at Archie’s dad. But Archie, who’s already home (since he wasn’t actually on a date with Veronica--he was in the kitchen eating a piece of cake), comes running and explains the misunderstanding to Mr. Cooper.


Chagrined, Mr. Cooper apologizes, but everyone agrees that they can’t tell Betty the truth or she’ll be mortified that her father confronted Archie. So instead, Archie wakes up early the next morning to surprise Betty at the state border....


...Where he gives her what I have to admit (considering that he dresses up as a state inspector and goes through this whole routine about how Betty is smuggling contraband via her lips) is a pretty romantic goodbye kiss.


Naturally, this dispels Betty's hurt feelings, and she spends the rest of the eight-hour drive dreamily thinking about Archie and that kiss. Order in the Archie universe has been restored.


Does this one story make up for, as I mentioned above, thirty years of mistreatment? Probably not. But it’s still my favorite Archie story.

Web of Spider-Man 25 (Apr. 1987)

Whenever I went to the grocery store with my mom, it was usually so I could browse the magazine and comic book racks while she did the shopping. In the early '80s, I was looking for the newest Archie digests. In the late '80s, I had begun reading other types of comics. One cold day in early 1987, I was browsing the racks and had picked out a book for myself, probably the latest G.I. Joe, X-Factor, or Daredevil, and sweetly asked my mom to buy it for me (these grocery store trips, you see, were how I supplemented my allowance-purchased comic books). She agreed, but asked me to pick out something for my brother too, because our mother is nothing if not fair.

The hitch in this plan was that my brother wasn't a big fan of comics. He read a few here and there, but wasn't nearly as interested as I was. So I couldn't simply pick out the latest issue of whatever he read because he didn't read any series regularly.

I chose Web of Spider-Man 25 for him because, well, Spider-Man. I can only guess why I chose this particular book and not, say, Amazing Spider-Man 287 or Spectacular Spider-Man 125 (which were on the rack at the same time): The ASM book states that it's "part four" of "Gang War" and the SSM book doesn't even have Spidey on the cover. Plus, Spidey's getting squeezed to death by a badass alien on the cover of WSM, and my brother and I were big into sci-fi back then. I suppose that's why Web of Spider-Man is the one I picked for him.

In any case, it turned out to be a good choice. Mike read it and liked it enough to begin reading Web of Spider-Man regularly, which in turn led to him reading Amazing Spider-Man regularly about a year later. This was great for me because it meant I could read both Spider-Man books without having to spend my money on them. Thanks, Mike!

Daredevil 3 (Aug. 1964)

In 1986 my allowance didn't amount to much. I recall earning maybe two or three dollars a week for yardwork and various chores around the house. So I had to choose my comic book purchases judiciously, especially since I also spent my money on books and records. Fortunately, Vintage Books and Comics priced their back issues reasonably--often, in fact, cheaper than the new comics (which were 75 cents at the time). So I was able to load up on older comics for 50 cents or even a quarter apiece.

But sometimes I would discover a big-ticket item in one of Vintage's many back-issue longboxes, and I'd kneel there for a while with the book in my hand, doing math in my head. The first such book I pondered was Daredevil 3. Published more than twenty years earlier, it was the oldest comic book I'd ever seen in person. It wasn't in great shape (most collectors would probably have put it in the "good" category) and it was priced at five dollars. Compare that to an LP, which cost about ten dollars at the time, or a mass market paperback, which cost about four or five dollars new. Even as a fan of comics, I felt that 22 pages of art and story didn't really compare to a three-hundred-page book, or a record that I'd listen to over and over again.

And yet, I could not force myself to put this beat-up old comic back in the longbox. Its age, its ancient-looking cover art (by Jack Kirby), its single-digit number--all this teamed up against my frugal nature and eventually triumphed. I absolutely had to have this artifact from Marvel's early days. So, with trembling hands, I put back all the other, much cheaper comics I'd planned to buy that day and took Daredevil 3 to Don at the cash register. I handed him five dollars, went home, and spent the rest of the afternoon gently turning the book's pages, as if I were inspecting one of Gutenberg's original bibles. It all seems a bit silly and overblown when I look back on it now, but my thirteen-year-old self was in awe of this book. Not just its contents but the physical book itself. It was a piece of comic book history, something that hordes of my fellow teenage fans had never seen before. These days, finding the story in this issue is easy--it's readily available in the various Marvel Masterworks or Essentials editions of the Daredevil series--but back then it was only as easy to find as the issue itself (which was decidedly not easy to find, in those pre-ebay days of yore).¹

In the coming months and years, I would eventually buy comic books that were worth more than Daredevil 3 (though, according to Mile High's website, anyway, my copy is now potentially worth between forty and seventy dollars), but Daredevil 3 remained the oldest comic book in my collection until very recently. And it's still one of my most treasured issues.

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Pointless Footnotes

¹ Besides, reading these stories in the black-and-white Essentials or even the gussied-up Masterworks formats loses a lot of the charm of the original four-color-on-newsprint printing of the story.