By [ad_1]
Today, we look at the shockingly long break between the Sinister Six’s first appearance and its second appearance.
This is “I Remember Well,” a brand-new feature spotlighting instances in which writers pull out long-forgotten plots or attributes of comic book characters. I have a similar bit called “I’ve Been Here Before” when writers pull out their own old plots/characters, but this is when different writers do it. I also have a bit called “Provide Some Answers,” when writers resolve long-forgotten plots, but this is when writers don’t resolve anything, they just bring back something that hadn’t been used in a long time.
During the 1970s, film novelizations (which had existed since the 1930s) hit a major boom, a boom that subsided during the 1980s and by today, novelizations still clearly EXIST, but they don’t exist anywhere close to the scale that they used to, where every major movie once had a novelization and here’s the main reason why they stopped (it’s the same reason trading cards based on movies used to be popular and now are not). Before the advent of widespread home video usage (and especially streaming), it was a lot more difficult to watch your favorite movie again. There are plenty of people who enjoy film novelizations as a distinct thing and not just as a way to re-experience a movie that they enjoyed, but for the most part, that is what novelizations (and movie card sets) are for, for people to revisit a movie they loved when they couldn’t just check it out on HBO Max any time they want (as Bo Burnham joked in his recent special, “Could I interest you in everything/All of the time?”).
You might wonder what the heck this has to do with the Sinister Six, but it ties in, I promise, and the way it ties in is the same way that people couldn’t revisit older movies at any time is the same way people couldn’t revisit classic comic books at any time. Back issues obviously existed in the 1960s, but they were very hard to find unless you just happened to live near a place that sold them. So comic book companies would take advantage of the fact to do special reprint issues to let fans revisit classic stories. These would be known as Annuals. They sold very well. The problem for Marvel in the 1960s, though, is that they did not yet really have enough material to warrant doing an annual filled with reprints right away, so Marvel came up with an alternative approach. When the company started doing annuals, the original annuals would be filled with MAJOR stories. The first three Fantastic Four Annuals were Atlantis declaring war on the surface world and invading New York, the origin of Doctor Doom and the wedding of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Girl. Similarly, the only two Amazing Spider-Man Annuals of Steve Ditko’s tenure on the series were a team-up of Ditko’s two most famous heroes (Spider-Man and Doctor Strange) in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2 and in the first Amazing Spider-Man Annual (by Ditko an Stan Lee), six of Spider-Man’s greatest villains teaming up to fight Spider-Man as the Sinister Six!
Amusingly, by the time Spidey got his first annual, Marvel HAD finally done a reprint annual as Marvel Tales #1 and it reprinted the origins of Spider-Man, Hulk, Ant-Man, Thor, Iron Man and Sgt. Fury.
Anyhow, as noted, six of Spidey’s enemies are called together by Doctor Octopus under the theory that six of them working together will be able to finally defeat Spider-Man.
Notice the Thor bit? That was the other shtick in this issue, which is that Ditko and Lee have every Marvel comic book character with a book at the time (set in the same time frame as Spider-Man) make a quick cameo to both plug their book and also celebrate the shared nature of the Marvel Universe.
So the team comes together, and Vulture is absolutely ADORABLE in this bit, as he keeps saying, “Okay, so we’ll all attack him at once, right? Right? All at once. He can’t beat us all at once” and the others just ignore him…
with Kraven not wanting to “sully” his presumed victory by sharing it with someone else and Doctor Octopus instead coming up with a plan where they lure Spider-Man to a location where he HAS to fight them to save Betty Brant, who Doctor Octopus knows that Spider-Man was willing to fight to save in an earlier issue (this is important since Electro’s objection to the “fight him as a team” idea since he thinks Spidey was so fast that he would just run away) and then fight them one at a time.
So Spidey DOES defeat them one by one (with awesome splash pages by Ditko for each of the fights)…
When Spidey is done beating them all, he even rubs it in about how dumb they were to fight him one one one…
Therefore, at the end of the story, all of the members of the team are pissed at Doc Ock, hence them not working together after this…
That was the case for the next TWENTY-SIX YEARS, but finally, in Amazing Spider-Man #334 (by David Michelinie, Erik Larsen and Mike Machlan), Doctor Octopus begins to re-recruit a new Sinister Six, even though Sandman had reformed by this point (so he had to blackmail him into joining)…
By Amazing Spider-Man #337, the team was together, with Hobgoblin replacing the now-deceased Kraven the Hunter…
In Amazing Spider-Man #338, the team finally attacks Spider-Man together and, well, Electro was right, Spider-Man was so fast that he bounced through their attacks and kept them from attacking him all at once…
However, Spider-Man is distracted when their plan seemingly works and they send a chemical into the atmosphere that would make it painful for anyone to use cocaine. He would then sell a cure to people, but ONLY him. Yes, this is why the Sinister Six keep breaking up, because Doctor Octopus is a total dick…
However, now that it was brought back, the Sinister Six has reunited a number of times since, most times led by Doctor Octopus, but sometimes by other villains. It’s still crazy that such a great idea as the Sinister Six went unused for almost three decades!
I’m sure you folks have other ideas for examples for this column, so send them my way at brianc@cbr.com! I’d love to get a month’s worth of them up!
About The Author
[ad_2]
