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!
No comments:
Post a Comment