By Roger Stern, John Romita Jr. & Jim Mooney (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-572-0
Here’s one more slim yet elegant lost treasure from the early days of graphic novel compilations that might amuse and will certainly delight all-out aficionado and neophyte Spidey fans alike – and perhaps the odd X-Men completist also.
Released in 1989, this full-colour 48 page compendium collects two supremely impressive issues of Amazing Spider-Man (#229-230 from June-July 1982) which perfectly encapsulate everything that made the wondrous Wall-crawler such an unalloyed superstar and icon of youthful exuberance.
The drama opens as Peter Parker is warned by blind, paraplegic clairvoyant Madame Web that her life is about to be endangered by a monstrous and uncompromising force of nature – and that he is her only hope of survival. The Arachnid Adventurer has had experience of the seer’s psychic prowess before and his usual scepticism is tinged with genuine foreboding…
Meanwhile out at sea, a nondescript freighter is carrying mutant menaces Black Tom Cassidy and Cain Marko, the inhuman colossus known as The Juggernaut towards New York. Tom is determined to destroy the X-Men and plans to kidnap Madame Web and exploit her gifts to that end. Unfortunately, he has no idea that if she is unplugged from her life-support chair for even seconds she will die…
Brutish and impatient the mystic man-monster Marko, drops into the ocean and walks through the airless depths of the Atlantic sea-floor across the remaining miles to the Big Apple, for truly ‘Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut’…
Striding ashore determined and oblivious to all attempts to stop him, the Juggernaut ponderously proceeds in a direct line to his target, smashing through people, cars, buildings and Spider-Man. Unable to defeat or even slow the monster and with no other super-heroes available the Web-Spinner redoubles his efforts but fails to save Web…
Realising he has failed when the savant collapses into a coma, Marko callously turns away and starts his long, slow, immensely destructive walk back to his ship…
The saga concludes with ‘To Fight the Unbeatable Foe!’ wherein an impossibly overmatched and righteously enraged Wall-crawler determines to make the monster pay for his crimes at any and all costs, resulting in one of the most improbable and incredible triumphs of his career.
This spectacular David and Goliath clash, riotously referencing the classic monster-invaders-and-trashes-the-big-city film genre, is a perfect slice of what makes Spider-Man great: tension-packed drama, heroic ingenuity, indomitable courage and astounding action. This yarn is indubitably one of the best individual collections of the hero ever assembled another perfect primer for anyone looking to discover the magic for the first time.
© 1989 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.