Amazing Spider-Man (Digital) Primer

Prior to the digital edition of Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Comics had spent the past five years or so experimenting with digital comics. At the time, digital comics were only the realm of comic book privacy, where comic book collectors would scan their print comics into a digital format. Some operated under the auspices that they were “digitally preserving” comic books, however — let’s be honest here — that was always a thinly veiled justification for pirating comic books. At any rate, the state of the internet at the time made the prospect of creating, distributing, and making money off digital comics a lot easier said than done. As such, Marvel originally offered their digital comics for free. Most of these comics were published under the title Astonishing Tales and featured less popular and obscure characters that might not have otherwise had stories in print. These included Dominic Fortune, MODOK, Sabra, but also more popular characters such as Iron Man, Spider-Woman and Daredevil.

The change in medium also allowed for story telling methods that would be impossible to pull off in print. It was an interesting gimmick, but honestly nothing can really replace an 8.5 x 11 page full of panels. The Amazing Spider-Man digital book lasted for 17 issues. It was another avenue where Marvel could boost Spider-Man’s new direction during the Brand New Day story arc. Despite this, none of the stories were anything more than just entertaining supplementary material. Don’t expect there to be any game changers on the title.

The first 10 issues were part of a storyline titled The Private Life of Peter Parker which featured Spider-Man teaming up with a bunch of high school girls to stop a new villain named Spectrum who incidentally has the same name as former Vice President, Joe Biden. There was also a subplot involving a reality TV celebrity named Teri Hillman trying to get Spider-Man to go on a date with her for charity. The story by Bob Gale (yes, the guy who co-wrote the Back to the Future movies) and artist Pat Olliffe (of Untold Tales of Spider-Man fame) and it’s definitely a snapshot of what celebrity culture was in the late aughts.

This was followed up by one of Fred Hembeck’s “Petey” stories in issue #11. Hembeck was a favorite of the Marvel folks in the 1980s and his cartoonish artwork graced such vanity projects as Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe. He also did a number of “Petey” stories that were supposedly of Peter Parker before he became Spider-Man. These stories of dubious continuity eventually were delegated to an alternate reality (Earth-7764 if anyone cares). I’ve never been a fan of Hembeck’s artwork or his Petey stories. In fact, I despise the Petey stories because they are pointless tales that - despite being about Peter’s time before becoming Spider-Man - tries to find excuses to include other characters from the Marvel Universe. The entry in issue #11 of this series does in spades by featuring both Victor Von Doom and Curt Connors judging a science fair competition.

From there, the stories become less serialized with Todd Nauck taking on regular art duties. Issue #12 features Spider-Man trying to help save Harry’s failing business, the Coffee Bean written by Joe Caramanga. Issues #13-15 is a three part “Identity Theft” story guest-starring the Thing written by Tom Peter. Issue #16 was another Fred Hembeck offering featuring Spider-Man teaming up with the Human Torch against the Sinister Six. The final issue saw Pat Olliffe working with Tom DeFalco, his regular partner in crime, on yet another Spider-Man/Human Torch team-up, this time against Hammerhead.

As I said, not a lot of game changers here. Most of the stories in this title were reprinted in mid 2010 under the title Peter Parker. It primarily covered the Private Life of Peter Parker story arc as well as Identity Theft. I’m not sure if the rest of the stories were reprinted anywhere.

At any rate, the Amazing Spider-Man digital comic helped prove that digital comics could be a sustainable medium to publish new comics. Marvel continued to publish digital comics fairly consistently in the next decade, re-branding them as Infinite Comics. However, with advances in technology the ability to sell digital comics became easier and there came a point where offering digital comics for free didn’t make much sense since people could buy digital comics easily for a few bucks or subscribe to Marvel Unlimited and get access to a massive catalog of digital reprints.

Still, it’s interesting to go back and see the early forays Marvel took in the world of digital comics. It’s almost quaint by today’s standards.