Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 5 - To Become an Avenger

John Romita Sr. joins Stan Lee to take the wallcrawler from strength to strength in some of the best Spidey stories ever told!

Face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot! Artist John Romita Sr. makes his AMAZING SPIDER-MAN debut, and oh, what a debut it is! With his identity uncovered by the Green Goblin, Spider-Man finds himself fighting for his life -- only to discover that the Goblin is none other than Norman Osborn! It’s a story that reset the stakes for super heroes, and the historic moments don’t stop there! This volume also features the first appearance of Mary Jane Watson, Spidey’s attempt to join the Avengers, and the debuts of the Rhino and the Shocker! Peter Parker’s personal life also gets an upgrade when he moves out of Aunt May’s house and gets his first apartment...not to mention his first pair of wheels!

COLLECTING: Amazing Spider-Man (1963) 39-46, Amazing Spider-Man Annual (1964) 3

Writer/editor Stan Lee (1922-2018) made comic-book history together with Jack Kirby in 1961 with Fantastic Four #1. The monumental popularity of its new style inspired Lee to develop similarly themed characters -- including the Hulk and X-Men with Kirby, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange with Steve Ditko, and Daredevil with Bill Everett. After shepherding his creations through dozens of issues -- in some cases a hundred or more -- Lee allowed other writers to take over, but he maintained steady editorial control. Eventually, he helped expand Marvel into a multimedia empire. In recent years, his frequent cameo appearances in Marvel’s films established Lee as one of the world’s most famous faces.

John Romita was born in 1930 and drew for Atlas Era Marvel Comics across many genres. By the time Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were defining the look and feel of the Marvel Age of Comics during the 1960s, Romita had made the move to DC Comics, where he was working exclusively behind the boards of the company’s many romance comics. It wasn’t until 1966 that he returned to Marvel Comics and the super-hero genre, drawing Daredevil before taking over from Ditko on what was fast becoming Marvel’s most important book, Amazing Spider-Man. Romita’s slick, clean craftsmanship would be a hallmark of his tenure, and his years of drawing beautiful women in DC’s romance books paid off with iconic renderings of Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson and the other women in Peter Parker’s life.