If you were to compare Steve Ditko's art to most anything you can find in a superhero comic these days, you would find Ditko's simplicity almost naive. Sometimes all you want is an easy-going comic reading experience, free of all the needless drama, dark plots, cumbersome crossovers, and other such detriments, and the Spidey comics here have plenty of that simple charm to suit your needs. Sometimes you just want characters to actually talk to each other to avoid the repeated frustration. Between Spider-Man finding his voice as a wiseass, Stan Lee's unbridled enthusiasm and fourth-wall breaking, and Art Simek's POW! Not every single issue is a knockout, but the truth is that there’s rarely a dud to be found here – there are only a few toward the end, when Ditko is clearly beginning to lose some of his steam.

Still this book represents the creme-de-la-creme - and anyone with the slightest interest in heroes in tights owes it to themselves to check this out. The pressure that caused Peter to hide who he is from people like Jameson also takes its toll on him.After I watched Spider-Man: No Way Home in cinemas last year, I decided to read this omnibus as I wanted to read the original comics to see how the character of Spider-Man started. Also, it’s a two parter that has a really good cliffhanger, even the fact that Spider-Man lost his suit plays into this. I have always known Spider-Man media to have a heavy focus on the teen drama encompassing Peter Parker's life, and the angles explored here proved to be as compelling as they were timeless; the plights of a teenaged Spidey seem not that far off from the adversity which an outsider teenager would face today. I own a number of these Marvel Omnibus editions now, but this is the one I would grab if there was a fire and I could only take one with me.

With so many classic moments and characters, this Omnibus delivers it all with wonderful reproductions and colour work including the letters and design of the original. His epic and sprawling run begins with an alien invasion, a troublesome doppelganger and a shocking new roommate: the villainous Boomerang!I love that you said it's be good for clubbing small animals because that's EXACTLY what I thought about when you mentioned it as your island book. No other comic I've read shows the guy's humor and dramatic perception, his understanding of the media and the skills to tell even the toughest stories so lightheartedly that you can get a huge amount of pleasure from it, more than this one.