When Spider-Man co-starred in Strange Tales Annual 2 (Sept. 1963), the fourth issue of his own title appeared alongside it on newsstands.
Even that early in his career, Spidey was clearly a star. And even then, I remember how odd I found it to see Spider-Man drawn by someone other than Steve Ditko. Rarely was an artist more completely identified with a character.
But then this was a Strange Tales Annual, not a Spider-Man Annual, and Jack Kirby often drew the Human Torch feature in Strange Tales. Ditko does ink the story, but it’s the Kirby style that stands out.
“It’s a fun issue that sparks off a nifty Marvel Universe tradition. Spidey and the Torch continue to get on each other’s nerves even after they team up, providing us with some funny banter,” observed Tim DeForest. “It’s the beginning of a mildly adversarial friendship that will be the springboard for many entertaining stories in the years to come. A minor corollary to this is that they meet atop the Statue of Liberty after they decide to join forces —this would become their usual meeting place whenever one of them needed to contact the other.”
“Setting the pace for the two teenage heroes’ competitive relationship that would go on for years (most memorably in Spider-Man 8, where Spidey actually crashes one of the Torch’s parties!), it was filled with the kind of mutual antagonism that was by now familiar between the Torch and the Thing,” noted Pierre Comtois.
“For page after page, even after a misunderstanding between the two heroes was cleared up, readers were allowed to eavesdrop on the cutting banter they continually threw at each other. It was a far cry from the polite meeting between Robin and Superboy that had taken place at the competition only a few years before! By the time of the events in this story, the Torch and Spider-Man have already met informally in Amazing Spider-Man 1 (when Spidey went to the FF looking for a job!). This time, under suspicion for theft, Spidey decides to drop in on the Torch for help in clearing his name.”
And once they teamed up, the Fox — a vulpine-looking mastermind art thief named Reynard Slinker — didn’t really have a chance. The two teens were a study in dramatic contrast — one blond, well-off,f and show-offishly confident, the other dark-haired, financially strapped, and somewhat unsure of himself, despite his superpowers. The uncertainty of Peter Parker’s life, in and out of costume, came through strongly and proved to be a solid reader hook.
I remember that I was also fascinated by another Kirby story in this annual, a reprint from Strange Tales 67 (Feb. 1959). I Was the Invisible Man! is the first-person narrative of scientist Adam Clayton, who creates a device that will accelerate his atomic structure, permitting him to move at invisible super speed and pose as a superhero.
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