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"The Life and Times of Peter Parker: Teenage Martyr"
(Part Two)
I'm going to begin this middle section of my SPIDER-MAN
overview by ooohing and aahhhing over one of my two all-time favorite
Spidey tales; and I'm going to wrap up the third and final page of same by gushing
just as shamelessly over the other one. Fair warning. 
Steve Ditko and Stan Lee pulled out all the storytelling stops and then some the day they (finally) got around to showcasing the web-spinner in his first ever King-Size Annual. To this day, said effort -- "The Sinister Six" -- remains the Spider-saga which, for me, serves as first, best exemplar of everything that made those early, definitive years for the series so primal and (to this very day) such massively influential ones.
Banding together in order that they might succeed, collectively, where they had previously (and repeatedly) failed on an individual basis, Electro; Mysterio; Doctor Octopus; The Vulture; The Sandman; and Kraven the Hunter [see panel reproduction, below] kidnapped both Peter Parker's frail Aunt May AND his (sometimes) girlfriend Betty Brant, in an attempt to force him to run their deadly, six-man gauntlet.
The story showcases the Lee/Ditko duo at the absolute peak of their collaborative storytelling prowess, and is replete with madcap riffings on each and every textbook Silver Age Marvel "bit" you've ever seen or heard of... including a host of cute, "throwaway" guest-stars parading obliviously throughout the proceedings at regular, lunatic intervals.
Steve Ditko's artwork, quite simply, never shone with more sheer, palpable luminescence than it did right here, in this single effort. The individual battles between Spider-Man and his six arch-nemeses -- to quote from the vernacular -- "rocked the house" in their thunderinng, unrelenting immediacy. None of it was "deep," or "meaningful" in any sense whatsoever; it was --quite simply -- the sort of joyous, unnbridled fun-for-its-own-sake slug-o-rama that all too many of today's writers -- as resolutely (and bone-headedly) disdainful of their predecessors as would be a street corner graffito artist of the works of Vermeer -- have long since lost the essential "knack" of replicating with anything like similar verve or authenticity.
The end result was (and remains) a self-contained story as marvelously rousing and (ultimately) as satisfying as anything to be found in the medium entire; the four-color adventure equivalent of (say) THE SEVEN SAMURAI, or THE FRENCH CONNECTION.
Mention must also be made, naturally, of the other indisputably classic SPIDER-MAN tale of this period: the still-seminal "Master Planner" saga of comic book lore and legend.
Trapped beneath (literally) tons of ruined machinery in a room mere moments from being flooded by an onrushing tsunami of river water (courtesy, once again, of the ruthless and imperturbable Doctor Octopus), a defeated and demoralized Spider-Man struggles (in the story's pivotal scene) to dredge up the requisite spiritual wherewithal to overcome the feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing which threaten to crush him as surely as does the tonweight bearing downward upon him in the more physical plane.
Many Spider-fans point to this story as the ne plus ultra of the Lee/Ditko canon on this title... and I, for one, am by no means certain that they're at all wrong, in so doing.
When, unfortunately, a dispute between Lee and Ditko, re: the ultimate resolution of the long-running "Who Is the Green Goblin?" sub-plot resulted in the latter gentleman resigning from the title in disgust and outrage, the next artist to step into the storytelling breach was long-time Marvel Comics stalwart John Romita. [See cover reproduction, below]
This era of the ongoing SPIDER-MAN chronicles merits
more than a simple nod of the head in acknowledgment, in turn... and will receive
as much, within the final installment of this entry, immediately following.
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