Spider-Rama: Amazing Spider-Man #86

Welcome to Spider-Rama! Every day until the end of April, Ben and Duy will look at a Spider-Man issue from the very beginning, in chronological order, and answer questions for various categories, inspired in large part by one of our favorite podcasts, The Rewatchables by The Ringer. Our goal is to make it to Amazing Spider-Man #200. Will we make it? Grab your Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus or crank up your tablet to Marvel Unlimited, and then tune in every Wednesday to find out!

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #86
Spider-Rama
by Stan Lee, John Romita Sr., and Jim Mooney

The Black Widow is here! And she debuts her classic costume!

POINTLESS TRIVIA

BEN: I cannot say with certainty I’ve ever read any of the comics between the Stone Tablet Saga and this one.

DUY: First appearance of Black Widow's skintight leather catsuit costume, which would be her classic, iconic costume.

DUY: Which must have been inspired by Emma Peel's costume from the TV show Avengers:

WHAT'S AGED THE BEST?

DUY: A Woody Allen reference has, surprisingly, both aged pretty well in terms of recognition, and aged pretty badly given everything we now know about Woody Allen.

BEN: Stan wasn't joking about this.

DUY: Obviously Natasha's costume has aged really well, considering that they've tried changing it a few times and they keep going back to it, and it is a major improvement over her previous costumes.

WHAT'S AGED THE WORST?

DUY: Stop calling them "Females", Peter! Stop it!

BEN: Ignoring the sexist first part, the second part is a really weird thing to say. Ugh:

DUY: "She feels you're keeping something from her!" Well, yeah. You are.

BEN: Argh!

BEN: Please Peter, give up your only source of income:

DUY: She isn't wrong though, he could literally work anywhere else.

NITPICKS

DUY: So is Anna Watson, like, May's maid now?

BEN: What could Anna possibly be getting out of that friendship?

DUY: A brand-spanking new maid uniform, that's what.

FAVORITE PANEL

BEN: Mine:

BEN: Too pervy? Fine, this one:

DUY: Look at Marvel back in the 70s, blatantly putting women in protagonist positions, and blatantly saying the guest appearances are a cash grab:

WHO WON THE COMIC?

DUY: This entire comic was a preview of Natasha's new featuring in Amazing Tales, so the Black Widow wins.

BEN: Or do we win?

DUY: Also, it's Amazing Adventures, so either some renaming happened, Stan forgot the title of something. Again.

BEN: Hey, he was older then than I am now, and I can’t even remember why I went to the kitchen sometimes.

DOES GEORGE STACY KNOW?

BEN: Yes, yes he does.

DUY: You know exactly why he's looking at you that way.

BEN: That's it for Spider-Rama this week.

DUY: Thank you, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko—

BEN: —for telling us we aren't the only ones.

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