Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 16

Reprints Amazing Spider-Man #156-168, Amazing Spider-Man Annual #10
Written by Len Wein and Bill Mantlo.
Penciled by Ross Andru and Gil Kane.
Inked by Mike Esposito and Frank Giacoia.

Summary:
It's an exciting day for Peter Parker. His friend (and first girlfriend) Betty Brant is marrying Daily Bugle reporter Ned Leeds. Many of Peter's friends and family members are in attendance at the wedding.

 
However, the nuptials are interrupted when a gang of armed gunmen crashes the wedding with intentions of robbing the guests. They're led by a villain named Mirage who can seemingly disappear at will.

With just about all his family and friends in the room, how can Peter change into his Spider-Man suit and save the wedding party from Mirage?

Subsequently, Peter pays a visit to his Aunt May's home. He's surprised to see that she has a house guest: none other than Spidey's arch foe (and May's ex-fiance) Doctor Octopus!

The villain was presumed dead after a recent fight with the gangster Hammerhead. While Doc Ock is explaining how he survived, their conversation is interrupted by what appears to be the ghost of Hammerhead!

After changing into Spider-Man, Peter battles Hammerhead's ghost and Doc Ock. But when Ock accidentally restores Hammerhead to his corporeal form, Spidey is forced to form an alliance with Doctor Octopus. Can this unlikely duo defeat Hammerhead?

Following that battle, J. Jonah Jameson meets with a scientist named Harlan Stillwell and asks him to create a new super-powered being to fight Spider-Man. A petty thug named Rick Deacon is shot and stumbles on Stillwell's lab. Deacon asks Stillwell to save his life, the scientist does this by imprinting the genetic coding of a fly onto Deacon, turning him into a Human Fly!

When Deacon kills Stillwell and takes Jameson hostage, Spider-Man is the only hope for defeating the Fly and rescuing JJJ!

Sometime later, Spider-Man is attacked by his car, the super-powered Spidermobile. It turns out to be the work of his old villain, the Terrible Tinkerer. Can Spidey defeat a car that has powers that are similar to his own?
 

Next, the X-Man known as Nightcrawler learns that his old friend Eric Hoffman has been murdered in New York City. He visits Coney Island to investigate. Nightcrawler witnesses a shooting and winds up holding the rifle. Spider-Man finds Nightcrawler with the gun and presumes the mutant to be the shooter.

They battle until they find themselves in the crosshairs of the vigilante known as the Punisher. He believes one of the heroes killed Hoffman, but the real killer is the criminal who calls himself Jigsaw! Even though they disagree with his methods, Nightcrawler and Spider-Man are forced to team up with the Punisher to bring Jigsaw to justice.

Following that adventure, the Kingpin of crime sets his sites on capturing Spider-Man. After a brutal battle, Spider-Man is gassed into unconsciousness, so the Kingpin can transfer the webslinger's life energy into the body of his comatose son Richard. How will Spidey regain his strength and defeat Kingpin?

As Christmas approaches, Spider-Man sees someone break into a SHIELD facility. It turns out to be the work of Stegron, the dinosaur man! He visits the home of his former mentor Dr. Curt Connors. Stegron takes Connors' young son Billy as a hostage and orders Connors to help him complete his master plan.

The dinosaur man breaks into the American Museum Of Natural History. He uses his retro-generation ray (made with equipment he stole from SHIELD) to reanimate the museum's collection of dinosaur skeletons! Stegron needs Connors' help to make this reanimation permanent.

When Spider-Man goes after Stegron, their battle is joined by Connors, who has transformed into the Lizard, one of Spidey's oldest foes! Can Spider-Man stop Stegron and the Lizard while simultaneously rescuing Billy Connors?

Finally, J. Jonah Jameson has a new Spider-Slayer robot. Electro-biologist Dr. Marla Madison has created a slayer that she and Jonah believe will finally stop Spider-Man once and for all.

In the midst of dealing with the Spider-Slayer, Spidey encounters a new foe in the form of Will 'O The Wisp! He's not evil. Will O' The Wisp is being forced to commit crimes for Jonas Harrow. If the Wisp disobeys, a bomb in his head will explode and kill him.

Spider-Man and Will 'O The Wisp's fight takes them to the ice rink at Rockefeller Center, where they're joined by Jameson's Spider-Slayer! Can the webhead survive a battle with both the Slayer and the Wisp?

Review:
Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 16 contains material that is consistently entertaining, even if its contents aren't exactly Bronze Age classics. While I credit the writers for bringing in several new villains, most of these antagonists aren't very interesting.


Story:
Len Wein wrote all but one story here and and most of these tales are okay. The book gets off to a weak start with the introduction of Mirage. He's a rather bland, generic villain who didn't appear again until seven years after this story (he was brought back only once after this, then was killed by Scourge).

The follow-up with Doc Ock and Hammerhead is an improvement. Turning Hammerhead into a "ghost" is an interesting change for Spider-Man villains. In fact, Wein seems fascinated by characters who can disappear or become intangible, since Hammerhead, Mirage and Will O' The Wisp all do this in these stories.

In addition to Mirage, there are other problems with these tales. For instance, during the Punisher/Nightcrawler/Jigsaw story, Spider-Man is easily knocked out and captured by two of Jigsaw's thugs, who have no superpowers. This is something that should never happen. I should mention that as far as villains go, Jigsaw, despite his memorable facial scaring, is basically just a bad guy with a gun and only a slight improvement over Mirage.

The Human Fly, introduced in a story co-written by Wein and Bill Mantlo is another new mediocre villain. He's sort of tragic since he becomes a monster in exchange for his powers, but his cold blooded murder of Stillwell makes him even less sympathetic than Scorpion, another supercriminal whose creation was funded by Jameson. I guess Marvel thought it would be "cool" to have their spider character have a "fly" to battle, but it's not a great story.

Most fans roll their eyes at the Spider-Mobile today. As a child, I thought it was cool and I'll always have a place for it in my heart.  o I enjoyed the story where the Tinkerer turns it against Spidey.

However, the book ends with three enjoyable stories. Spider-Man's battle with the Kingpin shows that the crime boss was a force to be reckoned with long before Frank Miller made him one of Daredevil's deadliest adversaries. Spider-Man is left near death after dueling with Wilson Fisk.

The Stegron story has long been a favorite of mine. As a kid I loved dinosaurs, so how could I not love a "dinosaur man?" The presence of the Lizard, one of Spidey's oldest foes, makes this tale even better. Since this story takes place at Christmas, it's one I've read many times over the years during the holiday season. So I'm happy to see it get the Masterworks treatment. This page below brings a smile to my face when I re-read it every December.

The (then) New X-Men make an early guest appearance in the Jigsaw tale. If you're keeping score, this story was on the spinner racks the same month as X-Men #101, the first appearance of Phoenix. The portrayal of Wolverine here may seem a bit out of character today. However, Wein co-created Logan, so he had every right to depict him in this manner. Plus, very little was known about Wolverine when this story was was first published, so I don't have a problem with it.

Reading Nightcrawler's guest appearance is interesting, since Wein co-created Nightcrawler and wrote the first New X-Men stories. It makes me wonder if the X-Men's series would've focused more on Kurt Wagner if Wein hadn't left the series. 

Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 16 closes with the Spider-Slayer/Will O' The Wisp adventure. The Wisp is introduced with a lot of fanfare but never amounted to much. However, I've always enjoyed this story and it features a good battle with two very different adversaries.

Wein gives us plenty of scenes with Peter's friends and work colleagues, who were one of the best supporting casts in comic book history. A highlight is Glory Grant organizing Parker's friends to help furnish Peter's apartment.

Another positive in these stories is how Aunt May is written. She'd been around for about fifteen years and spent most of that time either being near death or overly protective of Peter. Wein turns May into an activist for rights of the elderly and it's a major improvement. It's nice to see May have interests of her own besides her nephew.

Wein also adds some humorous moments, such us Spider-Man's encounter with his landlord, Mrs. Muggins:

Art:
Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 16 features great art by Ross Andru. As I've mentioned in earlier reviews, Andru drew Spider-Man and others in some of their coolest poses of all time. While scanning the pages of this book, I sometimes had trouble figuring out if I had the book right-side-up or not!  These pages are a good example of what I'm talking about. Wolverine and Nightcrawler almost appear to be three-dimensional!:

Here's another great example of Andru's great Spidey poses seen in this book!:

And I love this page of the Doc Ock/Hammerhead story:

While most Marvel characters are based in New York City, Spider-Man is the most NY-centric of all heroes. Andru excelled at penciling realistic depictions of the city. Look at Andru's rendition of the world famous Nathan's Hot Dog stand:

Great work by Andru. I should mention that Mike Esposito does a fine job embellishing Andru's pencils.

Stegron also looks pretty cool penciled by Andru.

The Human Fly tale is penciled by Gil Kane with Esposito providing the inks. While Kane is one of the best artists of all time, I don't think Esposito was a good match. Their work looks kind of hurried and it's the worst art in the book.

How Does It Look?:
Here's a scan from a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #164:

This is how the same pages appear in Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 16:

Extras:
Veteran comic book writer J.M. DeMatteis penned a new introduction for this book and tells some very nice stories about his old friend and mentor Len Wein.  The book closes with three pages of original art. 

Rating:
Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 16 features some excellent art by Ross Andru and the glossy paper makes Anru's work look better than ever. But the inconsistent stories and less-than-compelling villains makes for a book that 's not exactly essential. However, the Stegron Christmas story is great, plus the Doc Ock/Hammerhead battle are enough for me to give it a favorable review.

J.A. Morris' rating:

3 Sals.

  

Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1

Reprints  X-Men #94-100 and Giant-Size X-Men #1
Written by Chris Claremont, Len Wein and Bill Mantlo.
Penciled by Dave Cockrum.
Inked by Sam Grainger, Bob McLeod, Frank Chiaramonte and Dave Cockrum.

(Note:This review contains a few more SPOILERS than usual, albeit 40-year-old spoilers!)

Summary:
The mutant superheroes known as the X-Men fly to the island of Krakoa in search of a very powerful mutant. Unfortunately, they're captured and imprisoned on the island by an unseen foe. Cyclops makes it back to the X-Mansion and discovers that his mutant power, shooting optic blasts, has disappeared.  When Professor Xavier hears Cyclops' story, he decides to recruit a new team of X-Men to rescue the old one.

Xavier travels all over the world to recruit a new team, which consists of:
Nightcrawler: Kurt Wagner, a German circus acrobat, who is gifted with super-agility and the power of teleportation!

Wolverine: Logan, a Canadian intelligence agent, gifted with an amazing ability to heal and a skeleton laced with unbreakable adamantium steel!

Storm: Ororo Munroe from Kenya, she possesses the power to fly and control the weather!
Sunfire: Shiro Yashida, from Osaka, Japan, who is able to fly and generate nuclear firebolts from his fingertips!

Colossus: Peter Rasputin from the Soviet Union, who can transform his skin to "organic steel" armor!

Thunderbird: John Proudstar, who hails from an Apache reservation, a skilled tracker who also possesses super-strength!

Banshee: Sean Cassidy, originally from Ireland, master of the "Sonic Scream"!

The All-New, All-Different X-Men are born!

They are brought to Xavier's mansion headquarters and given costumes made of unstable molecules.  Cyclops (who has regained his optic blasts) briefs them on their mission. They will fly to Krakoa and free the other X-Men.

But when they arrive at Krokoa, the new X-men are shocked when they learn the identity of the being that captured the old X-men.

Can the new X-men learn to operate like a team and rescue their predecessors? And what is the mystery of the mutant that lives on the island of Krakoa?

When the team returns to the mansion, there are now thirteen members of the X-Men! Sunfire walks out immediately. Jean Grey says that she and the other original X-Men were kids when they arrived at Xavier's school, but they are now grown up. She says they have their own lives to lead and will be leaving the team. Cyclops loves Jean, but he's not sure if he's ready to quit the X-Men.

The next day he decides to stay, while Jean and the others depart. Scott loves Jean, but he doesn't feel that his optic blasts allow him to lead a "normal" life.

For the next several weeks, Cyclops puts the new team through a rigorous training regimen in the Danger Room. He wants them to function as a team when they're in battle. The new X-Men are all loners from different cultures, but Scott is determined to get them to act as a unit. Thunderbird feels Cyclops has been pushing him harder than the others and even threatens to punch Scott at one point. 

Across the country, in Colorado's Mount Valhalla, the X-Men's old foe Count Nefaria leads an attack on the headquarters of North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Nefaria leads a team of super-villains called the Ani-Men, who take out any resistance in their way.

Nefaria wants ransom money from all the nations of the world. If he doesn't receive the ransom money within three hours, Nefaria will activate NORAD's Doomsmith Command System, which will launch the U.S. military's entire inventory of nuclear missiles.

The military tries to contact the Avengers, but they're not available, so it's up to the New X-Men to save the world!

The X-Men succeed in defeating Nefaria and the Ani-Men, but it costs Thunderbird his life in the process. The team is crushed and Cyclops is wracked with guilt. During a walk in the woods, he shoots his optic blasts in anger and accidentally opens a cairn that releases a demon into the world.

The demon attacks the X-Men and tells them he is Kierrok The Damned, of the N'Garai. The X-Men are able to subdue Kierrok and Wolverine slices the demon to ribbons, believing he has killed Kierrok. But appearances are deceiving as Kierrok recovers and the battle continues.

Cyclops deduces that the only way to stop the demon is to close the cairn. Xavier sends Storm to close up the cairn, but if Ororo wants to defeat Kierrok, she will first need to defeat some of her own personal demons.

While the new team struggles to coalesce, their leader Prof. Xavier is haunted by bizarre recurring dreams of battles in outer space, which causes many sleepless nights.

When Xavier decides to fly away for a vacation to help him deal with these nightmares, the X-Men see him off at JFK airport. As the team is leaving the airport, they're attacked by Cyclop's brother Alex, AKA Havok, and his girlfriend Lorna Dane, who has taken on the code name Polaris, Mistress of Magnetism!

The X-Men are shocked that their friends would attack them. They learn that Alex and Lorna are being mind-controlled by a mysterious new villain named Eric The Red. Cyclops is especially confused, since Eric the Red was an alias he once used.

What is the mystery behind Eric The Red, and why did he attack the X-Men?

Sometime later, all of the X-Men are celebrating Christmas Eve in New York. Scott and Jean break off from the others for a romantic dinner at Rockefeller Center.

 As soon as Jean and Scott sit down for dinner, they're attacked by the mutant-hunting robots known as the Sentinels! Jean is captured and Cyclops is left hanging on for dear life at the top of 30 Rock. Thankfully, Storm, Wolverine, and Banshee arrive and save Scott from the Sentinels. After a brief fight, the Sentinels fly away with Banshee and Wolverine.

At the same time, Prof. Xavier is vacationing on a boat owned by his friend Dr. Peter Corbeau. The boat is destroyed by a Sentinel and Professor X is captured.

We learn that the Sentinels took their captive mutants to their secret base. The robots are being controlled by Dr. Steven Lang, who plans to wipe out all mutants. Wolverine breaks loose and frees Jean and Banshee. The heroes think they're home free, but they're shocked to learn that the Sentinels' base is actually a space station!

Back on Earth, Peter Corbeau contacts the other X-Men and tells them that he can fly them to the Sentinel's space base in a space shuttle. When the heroes arrive, they have little trouble disposing of the Sentinels. The X-Men wonder why the killer robots were so easy to defeat.

When victory seems in sight, the New X-Men are attacked by...the Old X-Men? They're actually X-Sentinels, created by Steven Lang to destroy the X-Men once and for all.

Can the X-Men defeat the X-Sentinels? Even if they do, they will have to go through extremely dangerous solar storms in order to get back to Earth!

Review:
The All-New, All-Different X-Men featured some of the best stories and most popular characters of the Bronze Age. The team's early adventures show that they were interesting from the beginning.

Story:
Len Wein wrote the opening tale that reprints Giant-Size X-Men #1 and it's a great "origin story" for the New X-Men. Xavier's globetrotting and the fight with Krakoa are very entertaining. While the characters were still evolving, it's interesting to see them interact with one another. They're a bit hostile to each other at times, especially Wolverine.

Chris Claremont takes over writing with the Nefaria/Ani-Men story. Thunderbird's death is sad, even though he's not around long enough for us to invest in him emotionally. Claremont does a good job showing how such a death would impact Proudstar's teammates, especially Cyclops.

While re-reading these stories, it's interesting to see how often Claremont is planting bits and hints that take a few issues (or in this case a few issues worth of reprinted pages) to amount to anything. For instance, we see Steven Lang talking about his plans for wiping out mutants 36 pages before the Sentinels attack the X-Men. Eric The Red's identity isn't revealed in the tales reprinted in this volume. This truly makes these stories feel like a "graphic novel" in every sense of the term.

Claremont slowly gives us more information about these new X-Men. During the battle with Kierrok, we see two panels of Storm flashing back to her childhood.  When Wolverine's claws pop out of his bare knuckles, Banshee is shocked to learn the claws are part of him. It's a clever way of slowly revealing their backstories.

These stories also feature Claremont's trademark narrative captions. Sometimes Claremont's narrator seems to be yelling at the X-Men. And sometimes, the X-Men even talk back to this narrator, as we see in these pages from the Kierrok story:

I love it!

We also get the beginnings of a supporting cast for the X-Men. Moira MacTaggert and Peter Corbeau (who was co-created by Claremont in a Hulk story) would be recurring characters for years to come. Moira makes quite an impression during the Kierrok fight when she attacks the demon with a machine gun!

There are a few "WTH" moments in these stories. When Eric The Red takes off with Havok and Polaris, Cyclops let's them go rather than blasting them. Not very super-heroic of the X-Men's leader. When Nefaria realizes the X-Men are in the plane approaching Valhalla, he refers to them as his "greatest foes." It's a bit odd, since he only battled the X-Men once, after debuting in an Avengers story and facing Iron Man twice. When Banshee and Wolverine are captured by Sentinels, it happens off panel. That shouldn't happen in a visual medium

The other problem is that the villains the X-Men face aren't very interesting. Kierrok is a generic monster adversary. Nefaria would later gain superpowers, but at this point he's a B-grade megalomaniac, and his Ani-Men were C-grade baddies (even if they were given superpowers by Nefaria). Eric The Red is...well, we don't find out who he is in these tales. Things improve when the Sentinels, classic X-Men villains from the Silver Age, battle the X-Men in the three-parter that finishes the book.

In spite of these issues, the stories featured in Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 are still mostly very good.

Art:
Dave Cockrum pencils every page and provides great art the whole time. He gives us lots of memorable images, such as Krakoa revealing its true self. These stories contain some of Cockrum's finest work. Throughout Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1, he pencils lots of two-page spreads, such as this space battle that haunts Xavier's dreams:

Cockrum also draws plenty of great fight scenes, like this one below:

And Cockrum ends the book with this great image on the last page reprinted in Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1:

Great work from Cockrum. I should mention that he's embellished by several inkers in these stories. He served as his own inker in the first and last issues (Giant-Size X-Men #1 and X-Men #100), which contain the best art in the book.

How does it look?:
Here's are two pages 2 and 3 of Giant-Size X-Men #1:

This is how the same pages look in Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1:

Extras:
Claremont wrote an introduction for a 1993 edition of Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 and it's included here. We also get several pages of Cockrum's original art and character design sheets.

Rating:
Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 contains stories that are historically significant in comics history and the book features excellent art. It's recommended, but the story criticisms I mentioned earlier keep me from giving it my highest rating.

J.A. Morris' rating:

.5

3 and a half Sals.