I’ve talked before about how Ditko wasn’t into crossovers. He didn’t think his heroes should need help. And by now, he’s doing these books without talking to Stan at all. And yet… this happens. Is it just because these are both his guys, so that’s different? Was he persuaded that an annual needed something special to it? Who knows? Curious. Also curious: this weird cover. Wonder what the thought process was. We’ve previously seen the standing figure as the corner box art from issues 48 through 199. That’s a long time! The splash says “This could be called our ‘Be nice to Stevey Ditko’ issue!” Mm hm. To begin, The Amazing Spider-Man is very bored. Nothing’s happening in the city this evening, and his swinging around looking for trouble to get into has turned up nothing. But that may soon change, as a mysterious figure happens on a bar room brawl.
Yes, it’s Xandu. What a long, strange road it’s been to get to the beginning of this story. We first saw him on the blog in 1982’s Marvel Fanfare 6. Then we saw his 2nd battle with Spidey and Dr. Strange in MTU 21 from 1978. More recently, we saw the thread picked up in Spider-Man/Dr. Strange: The Way To Dusty Death from 1992. And now here we are, back where it started, in 1965. I guess they were all fated to meet once per decade. I doubt that tradition has continued. Kind of a shame. Well, Xandu’s got those 2 guys hypnotized, and then magically powers them up. After testing them by breaking some stuff, he takes them back to his creepy wizard lair, where he reveals to us he’s out for the other half of the fabled Wand of Watoomb, which has featured in all his stories since.
That borscht thing is hilarious. The goons see right through Strange’s illusion and knock him out cold. Then they start smashing into cabinets and such, turning up the other half of the wand with surprising speed. As Xandu commands them to leave Dr. Strange’s house, they chappen to catch the eye of a certain bored webslinger.
Our groggy hero manages to get a tracer on one of the goons’ leg, and then by page 9, Xandu already has the wand. A surprising turn of events!
Xandu starts shooting zaps out of the wand, but Spidey webs his eyes, and he’s really not ready for that. He drops the wand and angrily starts casting a spell to make Spidey vanish. But before he goes, he webs the wand and takes it with him, enraging Xandu. He tells his goons they’re going after him, and then we find Spidey in a Ditko Dimension for the first time. Unless you count that Strange Encounter one-shot, which… I bet most people don’t, no offense to that team.
Strange is on the case, and while Spidey keeps fighting those goons in another dimension, Strange flies around following the trail until it leads him to Xandu. They begin a wizard battle, but Xandu’s nothing compared to Strange, and about to be washed in just a few panels, but then the goons return with Spidey and the wand in tow, Spidey thinking he had to let them get ahold of him so they’d take him home.
Whoever’s coloring this did a great job on panel 4. I’m inclined to guess it’s Marie Severin based on that effect, she had a much more sophisticated touch than almost anybody in her era.
Strange and Spider-Man’s interactions are vague enough to start, but that “starting to feel like old times” bit really does give that Strange Encounter special plenty of wiggle room to justify its existence. I should never have doubted Busiek & Stern.
I guess maybe Ditko could justify this since the heroes only really met for a little over 2 pages. That was a fast-paced one. It’s fitting that I should make it back to the beginning of this surprisingly long history as I get close to the end of the volume 1 era in my read through. After this story, the annual contains the main stories from ASM 1 & 2, then the customary “Gallery of Spider-Man’s Most Famous Foes!” to show off this year’s crop of villains. I assume there was one in ASM Annual 1, as well, but since I read a reprint, I can’t be sure. So you get new Ditko pin-ups of The Circus of Crime, Scorpion, Beetle, “Jonah’s Robot” (Not yet called a Spider Slayer) and Crime-Master.
The rest of the annual is the Dr. Doom story from ASM 5. Back in the era when you couldn’t easily lay hands on back issues and collections didn’t exist, annuals must’ve been a treasure trove for fans who missed the older books.