Issue(s): Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #1
Cover Date: Dec 76
Title: "Twice stings the Tarantula!"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Sal Buscema - Penciler
Mike Esposito - Inker

Review/plot:
Marvel kicks off a third on-going series about Spider-Man (after Amazing and Marvel Team-Up)(plus Marvel Tales reprints and Spidey Super Stories and various other things). In an attempt to head off complaints from fans, a text piece in this issue tries to make the case that Spider-Man is actually under exposed, because there isn't much room for character development in Marvel Team-Up and even in Amazing thanks to reduced page counts due to printing costs. And besides, don't other characters like Captain America and the Hulk have their solo books and also appear in team books and reprint titles? It's not a great argument. But clearly Spidey was a money maker so this kind of thing was going to happen.

The text piece also promises a "carefully structured ballet" between Amazing and Peter Parker, after some expected growing pains. The idea is that between the two books there will be more room for subplots and character development, and also a tight continuity. I've always understood that the distinction between the two books was intended to be that Amazing was more action oriented and Peter Parker was more soap opera focused, but reading the text piece here i think what they really meant is that by doubling the amount of Spider-Man that is out every month ("instead of two regular SPIDER-MAN comics, you're going to have one double-sized comic"), there will be more room for character moments between the two books. Which makes more sense, because Peter Parker never really feels like a more character oriented book. Just looking at these initial three issues demonstrates that.

The story here is that the Tarantula kidnaps Edward Lansky, the vice-chancellor of Peter Parker's university.

Spider-Man is on the scene, getting pictures of Lansky's speech against budget cuts at the school (of course, Peter's camera breaks), but he fails to stop the Tarantula. Peter is already a little suspicious of Lansky, although he isn't able to pinpoint why.

Later, Spidey successfully successfully stops the Tarantula from killing the mayor.

That's basically it for the plot. It's just a set-up for the remaining two issues of this arc. I have those issues in separate entries thanks to the "carefully structured ballet", which annoyingly has issues of Amazing and Spectacular taking place concurrently.

Since the plot is kind of sparse, you might think that there is a lot more room for downtime scenes, but there isn't really much..

Generally speaking, quality wise, this isn't very different than an issue of Marvel Team-Up.

The Tarantula says here that he was "trained to be my country's Captain America", which makes you wonder why he's always in the US committing crimes.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first issue of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, and, more generally, the first time a (Marvel) character is featured in two separate solo books at the same time.

Chronological Placement Considerations: This takes place during Amazing Spider-Man #163.

References:

• The Tarantula most recently appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #148, and appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #134-135 before that.
  
• Peter thanks Glory Grant for the party she threw for him in Amazing Spider-Man #163.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

According to Bob Kennedy, one of the reasons why Spectacular Spider-Man was created was because it was tradition that the Editor-in-Chief write a couple of the company's flagship books. Unfortunately, most of the other writers had contracts (except Englehart on Avengers and Gerber on Defenders). So Spectacular Spider-Man was started up (and Englehart and Gerber were fired) so that Conway could write some of the flagship titles.

Michael,

No - not so.

Jack, do you know of any interviews that contradict these claims?

In the mid-1990s, this book was considered by some to be a potential hot collector's book. This didn't actually happen for 3 basic reasons:1)It was decried as an attempt to artificially inflate prices for no genuine reason, 2)the book wasn't anything close to scarce, and 3)claims by some folks of excessive garage-door mouthing by Sal Buscema. Sal tended to be a whipping boy for fans back then, but a lot of those folks also loved the Image look...

"The text piece also promises a "carefully structured ballet" between Amazing and Peter Parker, after some expected growing pains. The idea is that between the two books there will be more room for subplots and character development, and also a tight continuity. I've always understood that the distinction between the two books was intended to be that Amazing was more action oriented and Peter Parker was more soap opera focused, but reading the text piece here i think what they really meant is that by doubling the amount of Spider-Man that is out every month ("instead of two regular SPIDER-MAN comics, you're going to have one double-sized comic"), there will be more room for character moments between the two books. Which makes more sense, because Peter Parker never really feels like a more character oriented book."

On the other hand, the idea of the two books having different focuses makes more sense. This is what pisses me off about how the Spider-Man and Superman books were treated in the 90s when they had longer story arcs (disclaimer: I wasn't a comic fan then). If the idea is to have "one double-sized comic" instead of "two regular comics", why not just make Amazing biweekly instead of telling the same stories alternating between two different titles? Because the two books have different creative teams? Seems like a flimsy justification if there otherwise isn't any difference. (Again, this will become more relevant in the 90s, especially during the Clone Saga for Spidey when FOUR different titles basically just take turns telling parts of a single story, in turn meaning any individual voices the creative teams might have had, which would be an actual reason to have separate titles and probably why the titles already existed by this point, gets ground to dust by editorial fiat, but you can see the roots of it being planted in this text piece.)

This storyline is also very topical: the mayor is clearly meant to be Abe Beame, and the plot revolves around New York City's fiscal crisis and Beame's extreme budget cuts. Of course, in continuity terms, this just means that at some point NYC had another fiscal crisis as seen in stories like this and Fantastic Four #177.

It's kind of strange to think that the Lightmaster started out as a "relevant" character, given where he ends up.

"first time a character is featured in two separate solo books at the same time" - shouldn't the Historical Significance Rating be a litle higher for this?

I think a 3 is pretty high for a very meta (i.e. non-story) milestone like that. I've also added a clarification that it's the first time for a *Marvel* solo character.