Comic Book / The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1

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The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 is a 72 page issue of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's legendary run on Marvel Comics' The Amazing Spider-Man, marking the first appearance of Spider-Man's personal Legion of Doom: The Sinister Six.

During his most recent stint in prison, Doctor Octopus has managed to be removed from his robotic tentacles. However, it turns out he can remotely control these arms and uses this newfound ability to escape. Afterwards, he summons five other supervillains that have been previously defeated by Spider-Man: Electro, Mysterio, Kraven the Hunter, Sandman, and the Vulture. Together, they form the Sinister Six, and hatch a plan to defeat their shared adversary once and for all. And to incentivize his participation, they kidnap Betty Brant as well as Aunt May (who was at the wrong place at the wrong time) to hold as hostage to force him to fight.

This turn of events couldn't have come at a worse time: as the stresses of being Spider-Man and his past trauma is once again catching up on him, Peter Parker suddenly finds his spider-powers faltering, making him powerless and vulnerable to whatever traps the Six have planned for him. But he has to put on the suit and confront them anyways, in the hopes of rescuing the two most important women in his life.

Along with the extra-length story, the comic also includes special features that give out info about Spider-Man's abilities, equipment, rogues gallery, and supporting cast, as well as some tongue-in-cheek behind-the-scenes looks at how Lee and Ditko go about creating the comic.

The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 includes:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Peter suddenly finds himself powerless and decides this is his chance to quit being Spider-Man. No sooner than he decides this as he skips school, the Sinister Six kidnaps Betty and Aunt May, forcing him to return and regain his powers.
• Affably Evil: While he kidnapped them and are holding them hostage, Doctor Octopus goes out of his way to make sure Betty and May are comfortable. It's enough for May to think Ock is charming and polite despite Betty's insistence that he's an evil supervillain.
• Aloof Ally: Kraven says as much that he refuses to work "in a pack" and that he hunts alone.
• Artistic License – Physics: Spidey grounds himself to make himself immune to Electro's electricity blasts. This actually would make him much more vulnerable to them. This was corrected in at least some reprints, including Marvel Tales.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Once again saddened by memories of Uncle Ben's murder, Peter wishes that he never got his powers and for some reason suddenly gains that wish. Despite feeling relief that he no longer has Spider-Man to worry about, the Sinister Six's abduction of Betty and Aunt May forces him back in the saddle, and he miraculously recovers his powers when he begins facing off against Electro.
• The Cameo: Since this is a milestone issue, several other Marvel heroes make brief appearances:
  • Thor flies past Spider-Man at one point, almost making him fall off the lamppost he was perched on.
  • Doctor Strange was out on an astral projected walk when he comes across Flash trying to antagonize Peter.
  • Giant Man and the Wasp stop a couple of robbers from escaping in a car.
  • Captain America is contacted by Mr. Fantastic for information on Spider-Man's whereabouts, but he admits to not even being acquainted with Spider-Man to have any useful information.
  • The X-Men spot the Human Torch's message for Spidey but ignore it due to being in the middle of training in the Danger Room. Mysterio later uses robot duplicates of Cyclops, the Beast, and the Angel to attack Spidey during his part of the gauntlet.
  • Iron Man appears in the aftermath of Spidey and Electro's fight, as it turns out the plant they fought at belongs to Tony Stark.
• Chekhov's Gun: Doc Ock's suddenly new Technopath abilities come into play when he ambushes Spider-Man by remotely controlling his arms to attack him from behind.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Justified. By forcing him into a gauntlet where he fights each of the Six one-on-one, Doc Ock believes that this will tire Spider-Man out, meaning if he ends up defeating one member, the exhaustion from the fight will give the next combatant a chance of victory. There's also the matter of each of the Six being Glory Hounds that want to be the one to defeat Spider-Man, and Ock was appealing to their egos in order to get them to agree to his strategy. However, Spidey himself points out that just ganging up on him could've also been a viable option for victory.
• Continuity Nod: As part of celebrating the first annual issue, plenty of references to previous issues are included:
  • Spider-Man's Super Hero Origin is recapped when he sees Aunt May mourning over a photograph of Uncle Ben.
  • In general, the Sinister Six are made up of members of Spider-Man's rogues gallery that are still sore about losing to him. Vulture makes mention of how he'd been defeated twice by him.
  • Betty was targeted as a hostage because of the past times Spider-Man went out of his way to rescue her, marking her as someone important to him to the Six.
  • During their battle, Vulture references how Spider-Man's web-shooters were what defeated him the previous two times they crossed paths and demands that he remove them for a fair fight.
• Delayed Reaction: Apparently, Peter thinks Aunt May is so fragile that the shock of realizing she was taken hostage by six dangerous supervillains might kill her, and panics when he hears her shout out in apparent horror in the ending. Turns out she was just mad that she missed The Beverly Hillbillies.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: As a sign that Power Creep hasn't totally settled in with the Marvel Universe yet, the special features declare that Spider-Man is one of the strongest superheroes in the world, rivaled only by Thor, the Hulk, and the Thing, and even boasts that the only reason why he's not stronger is because he's still a teenager developing his body. As the Marvel Universe grows, this claim becomes somewhat ridiculous as Thor and Hulk's powers reach cosmic levels of strength while Spidey doesn't really get any stronger than he already is in this run.
• The Faceless: Weirdly, Stan Lee's face is always obscured in the behind-the-scenes part of the comic, while Ditko freely draws a caricature of himself. Even the pin-up of the two creatives has Stan's face mostly obstructed by the many Marvel characters Ditko drew climbing all over him.
• Fatal Flaw: The ultimate reason why this first incarnation of the Sinister Six failed is because despite teaming up to destroy Spider-Man, they never actually team up to destroy Spider-Man. Each of them were so caught up in getting personal revenge against him that they end up unable to work together, and Doc Ock ends up creating a plan that uses their strengths to their advantage while also satisfying their egos. Spidey even points out how it probably would've saved them a lot of trouble if they had just ganged up on him.
• Foreshadowing: Aunt May's viewing of Doctor Octopus as a perfect gentlemen while he's holding her and Betty prisoner here sets up her romance and near-marriage to Octavius during the Gerry Conway run on the comic.
• Glass Cannon: To be consistent with previous battles, Doc Ock noticeably gets stunned when Spider-Man gives him a good punch to the face: his arms might be powerful, but the Doctor himself is still physically just a normal human.
• Graceful Loser: The Vulture keeps his word when Spider-Man defeats him, willingly telling him where Betty and Aunt May are being held without much fuss.
• Hand Wave: Apparently, the reason why those closest to Peter Parker never notice that Spider-Man sounds an awful lot like him is because his mask muffles his voice just enough to be unrecognizable. Exactly how this wouldn't muffle his voice to be completely incomprehensible is anyone's guess.
• Here We Go Again!: The issue ends with Doc Ock trying to formulate a new plan for the Sinister Six to defeat Spider-Man... only for Electro to preemptively tell him to shut up.
• Heroic BSoD: When his powers suddenly start failing him, Peter becomes worried that his days as Spider-Man are over and enters a bout of depression for about the first quarter of the issue over it.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Sandman's trap for Spider-Man was created to be literally air-tight as a means to prevent any possible escape for the wall-crawler. This however means Sandman is susceptible to running out of air, and Spider-Man ends up simply using his spider strength to hold out until Sandman passes out from near-suffocation.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Aunt May thinks Doc Ock is a gentleman due to him being Affably Evil towards her and Betty. She thinks Spider-Man is a rude brute due to how he hastily smashed open a door in his hurry to find them.
• I Have Your Wife: Remembering that Spider-Man had risked his life for Betty at least twice, the Sinister Six kidnap her to force Spider-Man to fight them.
• I Work Alone:
  • Kraven doesn't like working with a "pack" and only agrees to Ock's plan because it gives him a chance to take down Spider-Man on his own.
  • Despite the Human Torch offering to help, Spider-Man refuses, arguing that It's Personal.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Johnny Storm overhears Jameson calling about Spider-Man, he wonders aloud why people are so fixated on him lately. It's probably because by being a Guest Star in Spider-Man's title, Johnny isn't realizing that the events would naturally revolve more around him than anybody else.
• Legion of Doom: The Sinister Six composes of six of Spider-Man's greatest foes that he's fought so far in the run.
• Let's You and Him Fight: When the Human Torch tries to approach Spider-Man to lend a hand, Spidey initially assumes that he's here for another dick-measuring contest and attacks. The two have a quick fight before Torch clarifies his intentions and Spidey apologizes... though he also declines his offer to help.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • The annual's plot was kicked off by Doctor Octopus suddenly becoming a Technopath that can remotely control his arms.
  • Peter's Spider-Sense was still pretty undefined and malleable to Stan and Steve's whims, so when Mysterio's card is accidentally set on fire, he sprays some webbing on top of it and peels it away in the hopes that the imprinting on the paper transferred to the webbing, which he then uses Spider-Sense on to decipher.
• OOC Is Serious Business: In his depression over his failing powers, Peter skips school to wander the city, something that greatly worries Aunt May because he never played hooky before.
• Rage Against the Author: Ditko's portrait of Stan Lee shows him getting mobbed by miniature versions of all the Marvel heroes he's co-created/writing. Meanwhile, Ditko portrays himself as sleeping on the job while a poster of a very annoyed Doctor Strange casts a spell on him.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Aunt May flip flops between being just reasonably concerned for Peter's well-being to being very obtuse about her surroundings. Despite being kidnapped by supervillains, she never puts it together that her and Betty's "host" is a wanted criminal who is bossing around other wanted criminals and thinks Doc Ock is a gentleman simply because he's being polite about keeping them hostage. By the end of the story, it's implied she's still somehow not aware that she'd just been kidnapped.
• Self-Deprecation: In the behind-the-scenes part, Stan Lee is portrayed as a hack writer who bugs Steve Ditko with random ideas that he freely admits he ripped off from "classics" that he likes. Meanwhile, Ditko draws himself in a pin-up as sleeping on the job while Doctor Strange tries to wake him up, and in his stead a bunch of spiders are drawing a Spider-Man comic for him.
• Shout-Out: In the ending, Aunt May angrily laments that the fiasco with the Sinister Six caused her to miss The Beverly Hillbillies.
• Splash Panel: Each fight with a member of the Sinister Six includes a full page panel of Spider-Man facing off against them.
• Stating the Simple Solution: After defeating the Sinister Six, Spidey tells Doc Ock that if they hadn't been so focused on the glory of being the one to defeat him, all six of them ganging up on him might've actually given them a chance at their shared goal.
  Spider-Man: You practically handed me my victories on a silver platter! If you each hadn't been so anxious to get the credit for beating me alone, and teamed up against me, you might have had a chance!
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Justified. By this early point of the Marvel Universe, there isn't any established superhero community so when Jameson asks around for news on Spider-Man, none of the heroes he contacts or the heroes said heroes contact have anything due to a lack of familiarity with him. When seeing the Human Torch's message for him, Professor X outright tells the X-Men to ignore it because it doesn't concern them.
• Talking Is a Free Action: In-between diving at the false wall Mysterio is hiding behind and smashing through it, Spider-Man and Mysterio have enough time to exchange two whole sentences each.
• Tempting Fate: Remembering his Super Hero Origin, Peter laments indirectly causing Uncle Ben's death and wishes to himself that he never got his spider powers. Immediately after, he loses his balance on the rooftop and almost falls to his death, and realizes to his horror that he's lost his superpowers.
• Villain Ball:
  • Doc Ock decides to feed a Complexity Addiction over simply having six powerful supervillains gang up and beat the crap out of Spider-Man. Spidey even lampshades after defeating him that they might've had a chance if they just properly went at him all at once.
  • Double subverted with Sandman's trap. As Spider-Man mocks him, he could've just remained in sand form and ambushed him when he least expected it but decided he needed to make a dramatic entrance and reveal himself. However, this turns out to be part of the plan: the real trap is Spidey getting stuck in an enclosed space with Sandman when he goes for his card. But then this ends up turning against Sandman, as the trap is so focused on being literally airtight and inescapable that Sandman ends up running out of air and weakening enough for Spider-Man to escape.