Before I read this book, I knew only about the Silver Age of American comics what I had read from second-hand sources. The first comic book I ever owned was a Marvel comic from the Modern Age. I thought that a comic I read as a child which featured merely a fight between Thor and Hulk (in which a train was thrown!) was the pinnacle of Superhero storytelling.

I've discovered that Stan Lee's Silver Age work from 1961 onwards definitely deserves the praise it's been given over the years.

'The Essential Spider-man' is full of simple, exciting, dynamic, satisfying adventure stories. That's it, but that's all I needed. ( )

Volume 5 collects issues 90-113 and opens in the midst of a fight with Doc Ock. If you're only familiar with the Spider-Man movies, you'll find the jumble of half a dozen story lines as originally written by Stan Lee with their original characters (yes, there was a whole love life prior to Mary Jane - more than one even!).

Stan Lee's writing is featured throughout with a few runs from Roy Thomas (Morbius) and a shift at the end towards Gerry Conway where we see a tired, ulcer-ridden Spider-man questioning his own motives begin to take over. Issues 90-113 feature a mix of super-villains, Marvel crossovers and back-stories. Only a few items of fashion and some throwaway lines about Nixon's honesty date the comic (well, and the arc involving Flash's return from Vietnam), but otherwise it's still very readable today. ( )