Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #5
Cover Date: Oct 63
Title: "Marked for Destruction by Dr. Doom!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Steve Ditko - Penciler
Steve Ditko - Inker

Review/plot: After getting harassed by his schoolmates for saying Spider-Man might be a criminal, Parker is contacted by Dr. Doom via his Spider-Sense and offered to Team-Up.

Spidey declines, and they fight (Doombot alert!)...

...with Spidey getting his butt kicked before Doom explodes the building and escapes. Peter sells some pictures of the fire to JJ and notices that Betty Brant is kinda cute and is sticking up for Spider-Man. Doom tracks Parker down using his Spider-Sense but Flash Thomspon is dressed up like Spider-Man as a way to scare Parker, so Doom grabs him by mistake. Doom broadcasts a message saying that he will kill "Spider-Man" if the Fantastic Four do not disband. Peter engages in an elaborate ruse to trick his poor aunt into letting him leave the house, and then he goes and fights Doom. He gets his butt handed to him again...

...but Doom flees when he sees that the FF have found his lair and are about to arrive. The FF show up and rescue Flash as Peter rushes home to his aunt.

The next day, Flash brags about chasing away Dr. Doom.

I believe this is the first time a villain from one character's rogue gallery was used in another.

Super-compressed, corny dialogue, but otherwise good.

The opening splash for this issue provides a first name for Betty Brant and a last name for Liz Allan for the first time.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 10 - Formative Spider-Man story. First villain cross-pollination.

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• No footnote, but a flashback shows Doom jumping out of his spaceship to escape the FF, from Fantastic Four #17. While the caption is the same as that issue, this time the art shows Doom jet-packing away in the final panel.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

The drawing of Doom in the first panel of the flashback is horrible and cartoonish, but you have to love the flying karate kick aimed at apparently nothing in the final panel.

^Doom has to entertain himself somehow on the long way down. :D Thanks for today's best laugh.

I placed this one along with #4 before Strange Tales Annual#2

Actually, no, this isn't the first time a hero's villain went to another hero's mag to battle him. Even ignoring the Lex Luthor and Joker teamups against Batman and Superman in World's Finest, Luthor already had made a guest appearance in a Batman comic in 1960, without Superman.

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Batman_Vol_1_130

I admit it should be a first time for Marvel, however.

Even earlier, Fawcett had the Bulletman villain the Weeper (or at least his son) turn up fighting Mary Marvel. And the arc that introduced of Captain Marvel Junior and Captain Nazi were a no-kidding crossover that went across tiles so both Bulletman and Captain Marvel, uh, Senior cold get in on the fray.

And of course some of the old Justice Society stories had villain crossover, like Solomon Grundy,a Green Lantern enemy, fighting the whole team at once, or the second Injustice Society including villains like Wildcat's foe the Huntress when Wildcat wasn't appearing in JSA stories anymore. The Grundy story even starts by explaining how Grundy came back after his last appearance fighting GL as a solo hero.

That said, these were rare exceptions, not business as usual, and that the World's Finest "crossovers" were generally held to that book alone. When Luthor turned up fighting Batman, no one even mentioned Superman, for example. What Stan Lee did was to foreground the continuity and create a true "shared universe" where those elements were always int he background to some extent.

And, of course, you get things like Doom basically kicking Spidey's butt in this story, and only leaving because her doesn't want to fight the FF on top of Spider-Man. And the FF, unlike DC heroes, don't all get along with each other, and don't think much of Spider-Man either. When Luthor showed up to oppose Batman, it wasn't played as anything special: he's just one more mad scientist.