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Amazing Fantasy was a comic that was on its last legs way back in 1962...It wasn't selling as good as its fellow Mystery/ Suspense/ Horror/ Monster Titles like Tales Of Suspense, Tales To Astonish, Journey Into Mystery (Which was soon to be the feature comic of Thor) and Strange Tales (Human Torch solo adventures)...It also went through a couple of changes in its Title to gain newer readers: Amazing Adventures, Amazing Adult Fantasy, and for its planned last issue: Amazing Fantasy. For its last issue, The powers at Marvel at the time which included Stan Lee, decided to "try-out" a character deemed "too scary" for young readers as the publisher, Martin Goodman  thought that "You cant call a book Spider-Man, People hate Spiders!"...Nobody cared about last issues anyway, so Stan Lee decided to get the character out of his system.

  Brought on to design the character was Steve Ditko, a man who even at this point, was one of the greatest  & most unique comic artists ever and he was to define the "look" and "feel" of Spider-Man that exists to even this day, most prominently in John Byrne's controversial Chapter One Series...Now even to this day, it is somewhat a mystery to who gets the credit for the creation of Spider-Man...Was it Stan Lee? Steve Ditko? Jack Kirby? Rob Liefeld? Who knows? I kind of give credit to the first three in that bunch to be fair because I don't think we will ever know for certain who first came up with the idea...Anyway, after Amazing Fantasy #15 arrived on the stands, readers loved what they read...Enough to write letter after letter demanding to see more of this new, different hero named Spider-Man and come March of 1963, the "Amazing" was back & in the form of the newly titled comic Amazing Spiderman #1!

I name this the "Ditko Era" because I feel he doesn't get the credit he deserves in contributing to the creation of the "Spider-Verse" with the many characters & villains that came out during his stint as Artist...Right off the bat in Amazing Spider-Man (Amazing Spiderman) #1, Spider-Man's Origin is again told as we already know of Peter Parker's Aunt May & murdered Uncle Ben, but we also get introduced to J. Jonah Jameson, The publisher of the Daily Bugle, where Peter is employed as a photographer and the Master of Disguise villain, The Chameleon, one of Spidey's greatest and oldest nemesis. On  a side note, Jack Kirby, arguably the greatest Comic Artist ever, drew the covers to both Amazing Fantasy #15 & Amazing Spider-Man #1...It was obvious from the start that Spider-Man was a hit appealing to all young and older readers of Comic Books...But the best was yet to come!

Many readers began to relate to Peter Parker and his realistic teenager problems like peer pressure, girls, and the rest...Spider-Man was easily the most unique hero of his time & has stood the test of time even to today...Some think that a Super-Hero is only as good as his stable of Villains or his Rogues Gallery...If that is true, Spider-Man MUST be the greatest Superhero ever created as he is without challenge for the greatest set of Villains to ever be connected to a certain hero. The Ditko Era was the absolute greatest moment in Comic's History as far as Villain creation is concerned...After The Burglar and The Chameleon Came the Vulture, Terrible Tinkerer,  Doctor Octopus,  Sandman, The Lizard, Electro, and The Enforcers...All in the 1st 10 issues!

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