Untold Tales of Spider-Man Primer
In the mid-90s the Spider-Books were a convoluted mess, no thanks — in part — to the ongoing Clone Saga. Naturally, both readers and the Marvel Bullpen longed for a day where Spider-Man stories from a simpler time. This was also when Marvel was celebrating the 30th anniversary of everyone’s favorite wall-crawler. To commemorate this, they revived Amazing Fantasy for three more issues telling stories about Spider-Man between Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1, giving a clearer transition between Spider-Man the television sensation to Spider-Man the crime fighter. It also looked into the mind of a Peter Parker who was still reeling from the recent murder of his Uncle Ben and struggling to decide what to do with the fantastic powers he had been given. The stories were written by Kurt Busiek with art by Paul Lee and the series was a hit.
This was followed up by a brand new Spider-Man title, Untold Tales of Spider-Man, also written by Kurt Busiek but drawn by Pat Olliffe. It is some of Busiek’s best work at Marvel. The series ran for 25 issues and told stories that happen between issues #6 and 24 of Amazing Spider-Man. On the one hand, Busiek had the benefit of 30 years of Spider-Man to draw from, on the other hand, he had to be careful that is work did not stray too far away from the original source material. Thing had to take a back-to-basics approach, but also appeal to new readers. Busiek and Olliffe also had the challenge of presenting an earlier time in the life of Spider-Man without going so retro it was campy, but also not updating Peter’s environment so that these stories couldn’t neatly fit between the early issues of Amazing Spider-Man. It must have been a tough balancing act but god damn did these two guys knock it out of the park.
They were also able to look back at the old Lee/Ditko era of Spider-Man and flesh out ideas and concepts that may not have been explored as fully back then. Let’s be honest for a second, as classic as the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko era was, it wasn’t perfect. For a comic with a large supporting cast as those who appeared in Spider-Man, Stan and Steve underutilized characters and missed many opportunities to round out characters and provide more human drama, which was just as important to Spider-Man stories as fighting super-villains, if not more so.
Busiek took great pains to explore Peter’s relationship with his classmates, a potential plot device that was usually overshadowed by Peter’s romances, Aunt May’s failing health, and getting pictures for the Daily Bugle. In fact, one character you seldom see in this whole run is Peter’s Aunt May, or what’s going on at the Daily Bugle.
The series also expanded on plots that were not as fleshed out as they could have been, using the knowledge of what was going to happen to create scenes that build up to that moment. Like, why Betty Brant started working for the Daily Bugle instead of going to school since she was roughly around the same age as Peter Parker. It also look at Norman Osborn’s evolution into the Green Goblin. It also builds on the Goblin’s early relationship to Crime-Master. To even setting a scene that explains how George Stacy would later know that Peter Parker was Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #90.
It was a fun series with some great talent and it fit in between the original stories so seamlessly. So why was it canceled after 25 issues?
That’s a good question. There are a lot of explanations. The “on the surface” was that Marvel was consolidating titles. There is also rumor that the series was canned because Marvel was trying to court Steve Ditko to come back and do a similar series. I’ve also heard somewhere that it was cancelled in favor for the series Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man, a series that would tell stories from different points in Spider-Man’s history with different creative teams working on each story arc. Too bad Webspinners wasn’t as good a comic as Untold Tales.
Since then, there have been many flashback stories that go back to the early days of Spider-Man (The With Great Power limited series and Dan Slott’s Learning to Crawl story arc being two that immediately come to mind) but there has not been something that went to the same level of detail and scope as Untold Tales of Spider-Man. Although Busiek and Olliffe were brought back to do one more story years later in 2010’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #37 since the annual was featured “classic” stories.
