On more than one occasion, when I’ve used Chasing Amazing as a soap box and stand on to yell about some of the undesirable qualities of the comic book industry – its overuse of “special edition” issues marking new characters, deaths, variant covers, gimmick covers, etc. – I’ve had

Read More...

Part of what keeps me coming back to Spider-Man years after opening up my first Amazing Spider-Man comic book is his long-standing hopefulness. What makes this hopefulness so effective is the fact that it’s contrasted by a character who’s backstory is predominantly cynical. Peter Parker/Spider-Man is an orphan, who’s

Read More...

There’s not a lot in my life that’s managed to remain apolitical, but I would like to think my love of comic books and Spider-Man is one of last things that has more or less remained untainted by the cesspool that is Washington, DC, and the media punditocracy that

Read More...

Amazing Spider-Man #219 was published in August 1981, which means this month this issue is celebrating a milestone 30th anniversary. I know this because, in addition to knowing basic math, today is my 30th birthday. So, happy birthday to ASM #219 and me. There’s no significant story behind my

Read More...

Peter Parker/Spider-Man has been a staple in the Marvel superhero universe for nearly 50 years. During this time, numerous heroes and villains have been introduced, killed off, retired, married, etc. But there’s never been a world without Peter Parker as Spider-Man. In the six-part miniseries Ultimate Fallout:Spider-Man No More,

Read More...

The Haul: ASM #35 (Good plus) ASM #27 (Good/Very Good) ASM #22 (Good plus) Final Tally: 16 issues to complete the run. Let me preface this post by saying that every issue of Amazing Spider-Man I pick up that moves me closer to collecting every issue in the entire

Read More...

As Chasing Amazing concludes its first ever theme week, I’ve been asking myself why am I still drawn to Venom more than 20 years after seeing him in a comic book for the first time. You would think that my goodwill towards the character would have been destroyed years

Read More...

One of the biggest changes involving the Venom character since his inception in the late 1980s is the changing of the guard of-sorts involving who is actually wearing the black alien symbiote. Eddie Brock, the original Venom, has separated himself from the symbiote and his superpowered alter-ego is known

Read More...

In yesterday’s post, I talked about Venom/Eddie Brock’s warped sense of honor and duty where he valued the lives of “innocents” but only if they cooperated with him in his quest to kill Spider-Man. Since Venom/Brock first debuted in the late 80s, both the alien suit and Brock himself

Read More...

I thought we’d get a bit thematic here at Chasing Amazing and spend the week talking about one of Spider-Man’s most polarizing villains, Venom. In recent years, I’ve found that Venom has become a “love him or hate him” character in the Marvel universe, which makes sense given how

Read More...