Spider-Man - Stan Lee

For thirty years or more the eternal teenager Peter Parker has been one of the staple diets of Marvel Comics fame as the alter ego of that troubled soul Spiderman. He's been translated to cartoons (quite successfully) and a TV series (very unsuccessfully), but it's on the printed comic page that the web slinger really come sinto his own.

He was one of the first masked superheroes of comic land to suffer the tortures of REAL LIFE and old Petey has always gone through the sort of problems that we all face - unrequited love, depression, self doubt and loathing, shyness. He's irredeemably HUMAN and yet the comic strip has always featured some of the finest action and adventure of any of the genre.

For those that don't know, Peter Parker was a student who got bitten by a spider which had taken on a hefty dose of radiation and the nasty little beast's bite secreted into our soon to be hero the characteristics of his kind - the ability to climb walls, superhuman strength, enormous agility and a sixth sense which warns him of danger. Parker was quick to see the advantages of his new found self and rigged up a rinky dink costume and some neat web spinning devices and started treading the boards as a circus freak.

Unfortunately while he was on one of his money making jaunts, his Uncle Ben was killed by a robber, leaving his Aunt May, with whom he lived, a widow. Spidey had had the chance to stop the burglar before the fell deed, but he had been too busy with showbiz and let the baddie go. Thus he was wracked with guilt and soon vowed to use his gifts in the cause of good. The death continued to torture him in the years that followed.

Parker got a job as a freelance photographer with the local newspaper and its manic editor J Jonah Jamieson, the first flat top in recorded history. JJJ hates Spiderman with a morbid intensity and it's a source of some ironic amusement that he's financing the lifestyle of his nemesis. Parker of course is able to get the snaps that no one else can as he leaves his camera rolling while he battles with a host of the most fearsome evildoers known to man. Among them are the Lizard, the Vulture, Dr Octopus, Electro, Mysterio, the Chameleon, the Sandman, the Kingpin and the Green Goblin, and this comic strip has always been of the very highest standard.

The cartoon version was relatively faithful to the original strip and brought many of the stories to life, though it went a little OUT THERE in later episodes.

Spiderman is a wonderful comic, with great artwork and stories and there is a marvellous depth to the characters here, something which is not quite so evident in others. I used to have piles and piles of the original comics way back in the Sixties when I was a kid and spent literally hours poring through them - amazing times!