Amazing Spider-Man #26

July, 1965


Scripted by Stan Lee, Plotted and Illustrated by Steve Ditko

The Man in the Crime Master’s Mask

This one opens up with Peter Parker searching for his lost costume. If we remember correctly, Aunt May confiscated one off him and J. Jonah Jameson took the other when Spider-Man used it as a decoy. Parker has been costumeless for a few days and unable to prowl as Spider-Man. He starts to get anxious and his violent side comes out.

First, he gets in a fight with Betty Brant. She’s pissed because she believes that Peter helped Jameson try to capture Spider-Man in the previous issue. I’m not 100% sure why she is so into Spider-Man since she sort of blamed the web-spinner for the death of her brother, but I suppose Stan Lee is a big supporter of fickle women. Parker says as the end of the fight, “Boy! The only thing worse than a hot-tempered female is a jealous hot-tempered female (Page 6).”

Parker then goes to his high school and endures the normal ribbing from Flash Thompson and his pack of goons. But this time Peter flips out. He charges the whole crowd of students and starts kicking ass until Liz Allan breaks it up.

We’ve seen this in the past. The teenage Peter Parker has some seriously violent tendencies and when he can’t fight criminals as Spider-Man he will start, both physically and verbally, to attack those around him. He finally breaks down and buys a Spider-Man suit from a costume store.

The other story involves the Green Goblin and a new villain called The Crime Master. These two apparently had a plan to take over the mob “racket” and the Crime Master is now cutting the Goblin out of the deal. The Crime Master is able to do this because he has the Goblin’s secret identity locked in a safety deposit box somewhere and if he dies the world finds out.

So, these two are fighting each other as Spider-Man is out of commission. When Spidey finally comes back he gets on the case and is quickly beat up by both villains. The Green Goblin actually succeeds in knocking him unconscious and bringing him to a mob meeting where the Crime Master plans to take over the city. Luckily for Peter, the costume he bought was defective and he needed to web his mask on because it kept stretching out of shape. There will conveniently be no unveiling of a secret identity.

We’re left with a bit of a cliff hanger, so we’ll have to see what happens next issue.