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"The Life and Times of Peter Parker: Teenage Martyr"
(Part One)
Prior to the advent of the Steve Ditko/Stan Lee AMAZING SPIDER- MAN, back in the early 1960's... super-heroes never really suffered much, overall.
True, the Batman obsessed endlessly over the brutal
nighttime slaying of his saintly, beloved dam and sire; and Superman,
every so often, was heard to make moan, re: Being the Sole Survivor of
Poor, Doomed Krypton (not counting, of course, the occasional female cousin;
various and sundry flying animals; an entire city, conveniently shrunken
down to bottle-size; and eighty or ninety residents of The Phantom Zone.
Other than that lot: last of his kind, that guy). 
Still... by and large: in the comics storytelling "play book" of the day, once you (as a continuing "super-hero" character, I mean) had been granted the requisite license to shamelessly indulge in deep-rooted exhibitionist tendencies, via the poncing-about-in-public in brightly- colored foundation undergarments... your daily measures of angst and travail could be (and were) measured and doled out by the thimbleful, at best.
"Suffering," in those days, was having one of your arch-foemen darting about
town and committing various robberies while dolled up in a facsimile of your
own costume. "Heartache" was your inward sigh of glum resignation as your
flighty, fickle girlfriend mooned sappily over an 8"x10" portrait of you in
your fighting-togged persona, while you stood not five feet away
in your True Identity as an Assistant Fry Cook, Second Class. And "anguish,"
of course, was reserved solely for the day when some low-level DC Comics functionary
ushered you into their office, and bluntly informed you that your series had
been unceremoniously axed in favor of a second SWING WITH SCOOTER title.
Characterization there was, aplenty (albeit of a more subtle and nuanced
stripe than the more overblown, faux Wagnerian histrionics finding favor
with the comics readership of today). It simply wasn't of the "woe, woe
betide me" sort, crafted (as it was) for a fandom which didn't necessarily need
to have Every Last Little Thing spelled out for it upon alphabet blocks.
The size of grain silos. I'm just sayin'.
This all changed -- for good and for all -- with the Ditko/Lee consecration
and canonization of one "Peter Parker: Boy Martyr."
None of this, of course, should be (mis)construed as advancement of the notion that it was the incorporation of all-but-visible stigmata wounds, alone, which made the earliest issues of Marvel's SPIDER-MAN so landmark in conceptualization, nor so compelling in overall execution. The series, during its storytelling adolescence, could legitimately boast of any number of other manifest charms, as well.
One of the chiefest of these, of course, was this: other than the justly celebrated collection of rogues and criminals making up The Batman's personal "Hogan's Alley"... the Ditko/Lee-era SPIDER-MAN boasted of the single most fantastic and evocative assembly of super-nemeses ever created for any one comics title.
Doctor Octopus; Kraven the Hunter; The Scorpion; The Sandman; The Green Goblin; The Lizard ; The Vulture; Electro...
... well: the roster is already an impressive
one, and I'm not even decently winded, yet.
Yet another undeniable "strength" of this period in the title's storied history, of course, was the loopy, energetic artistic stylings of the aforementioned Mr. Steven Ditko, his own bad self.
To assert that Ditko's artistic approach was a wholly unique one is
somewhat akin to declaring water to be wet: accurate, but somewhat inadequate.
Ditko brought more than a simple command of craft to the storytelling table (although he undeniably did do precisely that); his work of this period -- his most wildly innovative and enduring, overall -- was hallmarked by a restless, bouncy, hurry-up-and-turn-the-page-already dynamic; with an accompanying narrative pace which refused to flag so much as one solitary iota, whether the scene in question was one of raucous combat or whispered conversation.
Whenever the man was playing at the very peak of his not-inconsiderable "game" -- which, in Ditko's case, translates into: "pretty much always" -- his penciling took on what was (for aall practical intents and purposes) a definably cinema verite-ish vigor and verve. The freighted and the fantastic would (seemingly) become real; and the studiedly staid and ordinary, daubed from the palette of the surreal, in turn.
Still... it was the suffering, more than anything else, which sold
the book.
Peter Parker was the resident "geek" of his local high school. He co-existed, with his cherished Aunt May, in what used to be referenced (in the Deep South childhood of my day) as "genteel poverty." And his "love life," as the series opened, was a "bang" more theoretical than The Big One. [*rimshot*]
Not exactly your standard, Bruce Wayne-ish "Candi,
Cyndi and I will be taking our morning highballs outside by the pool this morning,
Alfred" scenario, in other words.
Of all the vile vicissitudes heaped unceremoniously upon the young Parker's
high, tragic brow, however... none was more dire and awful than this: he worked for J. Jonah Jameson.
Publisher and tyrant-in-residence of a scandal sheet hawked under the somewhat lurid title of The Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson (Jacob Jingleheimer Smith... and his name is myyyyy naaaaaame toooooo -- !) (God, but I'm sorry I surrendered to the urge to do that; why didn't any of you try to stop me, f'chrissakes...?) was a curmudgeonly and embittered old tightwad only slightly less "cuddly" than, say, an unstoppered vial of Ebola extract. His two chiefest pleasures in life were:
a.) engendering feelings of near-homicidal loathing within the tortured psyches of his various wage slaves; and --
b.) attempting to frame Spider-Man for anything and everything, up to and including the Kennedy assassination; the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby; and the untimely television cancellation of CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL.
With a hapless (if mildly bemused) Peter Parker taking it on the fiscal chin one way -- he was not-so-gainfully employed by Jameson as a freelance photographer for the Bugle -- and a frustrated Spider-Man forced to deal with the fallout from Jameson's strident and perpetual anti-vigilante smear campaign, the other...
... well: let's just say that -- by way of comparison
-- a brisk, life-or-death mano y mano versus the likes of, say, Kraven
the Hunter was often the most restful and enjoyable aspect of Peter
Parker's day.
[See cover reproduction, above]
Further observations and reflections upon this most signal of all Marvel Comics characters... on the following page!
The Silver Age SPIDER-MAN: Page
Two
The Silver Age SPIDER-MAN: Page Three
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