Marvel’s Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular Review

It’s been a rough time for Spider-Man fans. Not long ago Disney and Sony broke up, putting the web slinger’s future in the MCU into question. Then Spider-Man himself saved the day and made the parents make up, bringing Spidey back to the MCU. But now with that out of the way, how about a Spider-Man history lesson?

Insight Editions has a new Spider-Man book on the way titled Marvel’s Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular that celebrates the comic art of the webslinger from his debut in Amazing Fantasy #15 through the latter part of Dan Slott’s run with the Spider-Verse crossover.

This large (11×14) coffee table book is written by Matt Singer and features interviews with many of Spider-Man’s creators over the years including Brian Michael Bendis, Gerry Conway, Tom DeFalco, J.M. Dematteis, David Michelinie, Mark Millar, Alex Ross, Dan Slott, J. Michael Straczynski, Roger Stern, and more.

I’m not going to lie, when I first got my hands on the book I was struck by its size, but the most impressive thing is how gorgeous the comic art looks full page when looking through it:

Some pieces even take up more than one page, and they look incredible. It’s a great book just to flip through, and I had washes of nostalgia come over me seeing some of these old panels I remember from the early 90s era of Spider-Man.

Now, this isn’t a complete Spider-Man encyclopedia, but the book does a great job narrowing into the key moments in the character’s history. You obviously have the Venom history, the clone saga, the introduction of Ultimate Spider-Man, and of course Miles, Spider-Gwen, and the more recent era of Spider-Man.

That’s not to say it brushes over things. Even controversies are detailed, such as Civil War, One More Day, and Brand New Day. The highs and lows of Spider-Man’s history are presented here, and yes the infamous Mephisto scenes from One More Day get their own full page display.

For a Spider-Man fan, having a large coffee table sized book such as this that showcases the comic art so beautifully could just be the gateway book to get a family member or friend interested in comics if they find it sitting on a table.

I was impressed with not only the quality that the comic art was presented, but the interviews and the amount of Spider-Man history that was able to be collected into 184 pages. With so much drama surrounding Spider-Man recently, Marvel’s Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular was a nice trip down memory lane of the history of Marvel’s most popular character.

A copy of Marvel’s Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular was provided for this review by Insight Editions.