Created By Stan Lee And Steve Ditko

When Marvel became part of Disney, Spider-Man (and some of the other Marvel heroes, such as Captain America) began appearing in Little Golden Books. Below is The Amazing Spider-Man, the first one starring Spidey—there have been two more. Spider-Man has long been my favorite superhero. Created to be "the superhero with real problems," Spider-Man was more than a character that was developed to appeal to comic-book readers—Peter Parker is in a sense is a comic book readers, or at least like some comic fans. In a word, a geek, a nerd, a reject, an outsider. (Okay, that was more than a word.) A comic-book reader who actually becomes a superhero. Over at the excellent Dial B For Blog blog, Robby Reed has an extensive "giant-sized" article(s) about the "secret origin" of the web-crawler, including a special in-depth report on artist Steve Ditko's role in the creation of the character. Swing by and take a look—it's an amazing (to choose a very Spidey adjective) work of comic-book history. Don't miss it, true believer!