Easily one of the thematically heavier issues, the Amazing Spider-Man #9 is structured much like earlier similarly character-oriented issues such as #4 and #5 in that the villain isn’t really what the story is about. The introduction on the splash page even makes a point about how the human element is at the center of Spider-Man, and that is definitely how this story is positioned. The issue explores the hard, messy question of moral integrity, and the breaking point at which we compromise our principles for what we consider to be more important.
The Amazing Spider-Man #9:
"The Man Called Electro!"
- Writers: Stan Lee
- Artists: Steve Ditko
- Editor: Stan Lee
- Publication Date: November 12, 1963
- Cover Date: February 1964
The story opens with a sequence of Spider-Man urgently swinging through town, only to reveal he was racing to Aunt May with a prescription of medicine. We learn that May is very ill and needs to be hospitalized, soon to undergo surgery. Unlike many stories where this part of the narrative would be a background layer, here it’s without a doubt the main story, which is somewhat obvious from just how every other story component ties into it and interacts with Peter’s situation regarding May.
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| Art by Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
We’re introduced to Electro, who robs an armored vehicle with ease using his ability to discharge electric shocks from his body. In a somewhat absurd leap of logic, J. Jonah Jameson concludes that because Electro can climb walls using his powers to cling to metal, he must in fact be Spider-Man.
This plot thread isn’t awful, and it is sort of vital to the broader narrative composition of this issue. But much like how Mr. Doll made no sense as the villain that inspires Tony Stark to revise his armor design, Electro doesn’t make much sense either as someone who could also be Spider-Man. For this purpose, we could have maybe come up with a better villain, whose power set wouldn’t make the Spider-Man connection feel quite so ridiculous.
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| Art by Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
In the story’s defense, most people are skeptical of the claims of the hard-headed newspaper man, who proceeds to offer significant money for anyone who proves him right. This is also an interesting character moment in that it involves Jameson letting his fixation on discrediting Spider-Man get out of hand – he’s always been vocal about his distaste for the wall-crawler, but as a veteran media professional, he very well knows the importance of validated information and reliable sources, which he completely ignores here in his fervor to prove his conjecture.
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| Art by Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
May’s hospital bills are piling up and the Parkers can’t afford them, so Peter races out to catch Electro and collect a reward that has been set for bringing in the electric antagonist. He confronts Electro, who beats the hero almost without trying, just by the power of the electric charge in his body. Having failed to earn the money he needed for May, Peter resorts to his only other option and fakes the pictures of Spider-Man being Electro.
This is a hard-hitting moment that places Peter in a worse emotional position than he’s been in any other story so far, and this is also where the theme of the story crystallizes: he not only sacrifices the reputation of Spider-Man in order to save May, but also his personal integrity. It’s an indication of Peter’s priorities, as for the first time we clearly establish Aunt May being the most important part of Peter’s life. But it's not a moment of noble sacrifice or a heroic rise to the occasion, but a kind of somber breach of innocence and admission of not being good enough. It's a dirty, underhanded solution to a situation where doing his best just doesn’t suffice – not fast enough anyway.
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| Art by Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
There’s a second moment of similar internal conflict, when Peter prepares to go after Electro just as May’s operation is about to take place. May needs Peter to stay with her, afraid as she is, and Peter agrees to do so – again choosing May’s well-being over hunting down the bad guy. It’s an emotionally tense moment on an unusual scale, achieved by letting the story breathe and making it pause rather than having everything conveniently click into place as soon as the previous story moment ends. There's no significant fallout from the resulting delay, but it still works as an emotionally charged moment.
Electro as a character works as a sort of thematic mirror to Peter: in his brief backstory, he’s portrayed as someone who has no internal moral imperative, and will only help others if paid. It’s a skillful and somewhat understated inverse of Peter selling out his principles and reputation to save someone he cares about. This is the kind of symbolic symmetry we saw with Doctor Octopus in issue #3, and it works equally well here. Even though the story isn't about Electro, that doesn't mean the villain is under-used or under-utilized -- in fact, he's used very effectively to provide both narrative resistance and thematic weight, without crowding in on the part of the plot that matters more in the broader context.
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| Art by Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
Spider-Man confronts Electro and his newly recruited goons in a prison the villain has taken over. The henchmen are easy pickings for the web-slinger, but Electro provides a proper fight. In a sequence rooted in grounded (pun intended) logic reminiscent of the Sandman fight from #4, Spider-Man counters the shock from Electro’s skin by wearing rubber shoes and gloves. This feels satisfying and smart, partly also because it’s Peter reacting to why he lost in the first place, but mostly because it’s a real-life solution to an existing, understandable challenge.
The fight is a good one, and starting with Spidey dispatching Electro’s goons, artist Steve Ditko does some great work with Spider-Man’s action poses in particular. We get some clever moments of prop usage from both the hero and the villain, with the latter using electric cables as a whip, and the former utilizing metal bearings to throw his opponent’s bolts off-course. The fight ends in a simple but satisfying logical solution: Spider-Man douses Electro with water, causing him to short-circuit and lose consciousness.
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| Art by Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
Peter sells pictures of this fight to Jameson, forcing him to admit he was wrong. There’s no conclusive resolution to Peter faking the earlier pictures though, which is the one glaring plot hole in this story – we’re expected to accept that the real pictures somehow cancel out counterfeiting news photos and selling them as real, which doesn’t feel right. This was a story problem that Steve Ditko and Stan Lee seemed to be aware of, based on the characters hand-waving it in dialogue, but didn’t know how to solve. Still, the benefit of introducing that moral dilemma as a story element was probably worth it, because this was one of the emotionally heaviest issues yet, largely specifically due to the fake pictures.
This issue also features more Betty Brant than ever before, and we’re now explicitly setting her up as a romantic interest. The story hints at something troubling in her past, but is careful not to reveal what it is -- setting up something like this without revealing it in the same issue is an unusual writing trick that evokes curiosity for future issues.
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| Art by Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
Issue #9 attempts and mostly succeeds at a more complex story than before in this series, and deepens Peter’s character in a way that feels consistent with what we’ve learned so far. Electro as a villain is fun and engaging even in this first appearance, which gives the issue a feel of balance between the super-hero component and the personal life of Peter Parker. It gets a little bit tangled in its own cleverness, resulting in a story that’s not quite as clean as issue #3 or the following couple of issues, but it still ranks among the better stories in early Amazing Spider-Man.
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| Art by Steve Ditko. © Marvel Comics. |
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