To kick things off, Byrne spelled out that he and editorial got together and decided ASM 1-18 represented the first year of Spider-Man’s career, and to focus in on that range. Adapting 18 and a half comics into 12 would seem like a tall order, but by skipping issues 4, 7 and 8, maybe it’s not so hard. Yes, that’s what’s happening. Spidey’s rematch with the Vulture? Never happened. The whole Living Brain incident? Nope! We jump right into Electro’s first appearance in ASM 9, skipping Peter beginning to date Betty, who he seemingly hasn’t even met yet, and skipping Peter’s big boxing match with Flash. Will Byrne even bother with either plot point? Who can guess? We open on JJJ at his bank in the middle of the night, having blustered his way in to demand to know if his own finances were impacted by the armored car robbery yesterday. Does… Does JJJ not know how money works?
Yes, anyone would assume a door opening by itself was the work of someone with superpowers, come on.
Why change the color scheme? Just a F- redesign. Electro escapes by climbing a wall, for some reason, which leads to tomorrow’s Bugle headline being “Electro Is Spider-Man.” Peter is very offended. Aunt May actually gets 2 lines of dialogue! But only 2, as Peter goes for a walk so he can flashback to how he resolved the Lizard adventure. Which you could be forgiven for forgetting didn’t end, this far into this issue without mentioning it. This format sucks so bad. Back in FL, Martha explains her husband turned himself into a lizard man, and Spider-Man whips up an antidote, as he should. Spidey runs back into the swamp, a MUCH shorter version of their fight occurs, he gets the antidote in Liz’s mouth, it works. Chapter One’s rushed and disjointed format means Byrne is both skipping anything to do with the supporting cast AND truncating all those great DItko fight scenes. So you’re excising almost everything in Peter’s life to make room for more Spider-Man adventure, but then you’re not giving the Spider-Man adventure any room to be fun. So… what’s left? The teen angst and real world problems that made this character revolutionary are gone, the fabulous fight scenes are gone… this is just illustrated Cliff’s Notes.
Things get absolutely bonkers next page. Peter tells JJJ there’s no Lizard and whatnot in flashback, then returns to the present so we can switch our scene to… Johnny Storm’s house. Byrne has ripped out everything that made the original comics special to make room to adapt Strange Tales Annual 2. I am flabbergasted. Johnny is jealous of all the attention Spider-Man’s getting and flies off to confront him. Meanwhile, Electro is confronting someone who proceeds to tell Electro his own origin. Why does his origin rate being in the actual comic? And that someone is…
Vulture worked with Tinkerer. Chameleon worked with Doom. Now Electro works for Osborn. Sheesh. Seems very unlike Norman, then or now, to let Electro know anything about him.
Once again, Byrne reaches something pretty dopey from the old comics and leaves it in, Johnny making a bunch of “flame doubles” of himself. Of course, they’re not going to team up to fight the Fox this time (So the rematch in SMU 5 didn’t happen, sorry!), this time Spidey’s been framed by Electro. Their fight goes more or less as before. Spidey escapes and makes up a batch of anti-Torch webbing and then hears on the radio that Electro is releasing inmates from a jail, as in ASM 9, and goes to fight him. Torch shows up, of course, and they begin the bullet point version of their 2nd fight from ST Annual 2, complete with the panel that recreated the cover.
Spidey leaves the Torch in his web to go break up the prison break, the rest of ST Annual 2 now no longer canon (Briefly).
Halfway through this trainwreck. I am having an even worse time than I anticipated. Next issue… we jump from ASM 9/ST Annual 2 right into ASM 13!!! I cannot believe this. Just gutting these classic stories. So now we’ll first meet the Enforcers in his remake of ASM 14 and also skip his rematch with Doc Ock, featuring the extremely famous unmasking of Peter. Crazy.