I’m no mathematician, so I don’t have a clue how Amazing Fantasy reached its 1000th issue this past week when the book hasn’t been in regular publication for 60 years. However, I will say that the comic that launched the Amazing Spider-Man is nicely celebrated in this oversized issue.
For so many readers, Peter Parker/Spider-Man is our guy. While I don’t think any of us can related to having the proportional strength of a spider, we can relate to trying to do the right thing and often messing our lives up in the process. Peter’s had girfriends he’s loved and lost, a marriage that’s been wiped out of existence, and fought an incredbile rogues gallery that’s only just slightly topped by the one belonging to the Dark Knight over that the distinguished competition.
Amazing Fantasy #1000 brings together a group of amazing creators to tell a collection of short Spidey stories in celebration of the character’s 60th anniversary, and all of them are fun, thoughtful reads. I mean, really, you can’t go wrong with a book that features the work Jonathan Hickman, Kurt Busiek, Dan Slot, Steve McNiven, Olivier Coipel, Ryan Stegman and Neil Gaiman, just to name a few. In fact, when you consider that Gaiman’s most notable comic’s work comes with The Sandman, his and McNiven’s ‘With Great Power…” reads especially sweet and poignant; before he was writing Death and Dream, Neil Gaiman loved Peter Parker just as much as the rest of us.
I got my first tattoo back in the spring of 2008. I had only ever planned on one (it didn’t quite work out that way), so I wanted to make sure it was something I knew I would love and be happy to live with for the rest of my life. It didn’t take long to come up with something that was absolutely the right image for me.
On that note, for all the true believers who have ever wished they could spin a web any size, Amazing Fantasy 1000 is a comic for us.
