Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #13 [1996] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #13 [1996]

This book was part of a small line of 99¢ books Marvel did in the mid-1990s, back when most of their line was averaging $2 an issue. Most of those titles were pretty unappealing to me, as was most of the regular Spider-Man line at the time, but this book mostly worked for me, and I picked for the entire 25 issue run, plus two annuals and some other related books. In fact, I think this might be the last Marvel comic I bought brand new off the rack for more than a year of consecutive issues (there are a few later ones I bought as back issues following good word-of-mouth).

The basic concept of the title is that it tells stories that occur between issues, sometimes between panels, of the original Spider-Man comics done by his creator, Steve Ditko, back in the 1960s. It starts around the original AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #6 and runs to about AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #24. It uses the existing characters (sometimes using information that wouldn't be revealed about them for years, like a Mary Jane Watson story which takes place before she met Peter Parker), and also creates some new characters. A few new villains, a few new classmates for Peter Parker (at least some of them, I think, based on unnamed background characters Ditko drew in the original comics). The implanted stories aren't quite seamless with the original comics (more on that later) but are occasionally pretty clever.

This issue is by the regular creative team for most of the run: Kurt Busiek story, Pat Olliffe pencils, Al Vey & Pam Eklund inks. The story this time revolves around one of the original characters, Sally Avril, a classmate of Peter Parker who has taken up a super-hero identity of her own, Bluebird. As we've found out over the last little while, she's pretty reckless, much to Spider-Man's chagrin, and that ultimately leads her to (spoiler alert, but there's a gravestone of the cover) die in this issue.

On its own, this is a pretty decent comic, but you can see why it doesn't work at all as a continuity implant. There is no way that Spider-Man, midway through the Ditko run, had a classmate who played at being a super-hero and died as a consequence. That's a bit harder to accept than some goofball new villain or an extra battle or two with Electro.

But, ignoring that, it's a pretty decent comic. It evokes the feel of the original comics while still in most ways being what passes for modern in the mid-1990s, but not in those regrettable ways you usually think of when people mention mid-1990s Marvel comics.