Art For Art’s Sake #166: Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man At 60

by Richard Bruton

Art For Art’s Sake celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Amazing Spider-Man...

Spider-Man made his debut in August 1962 and has been thrilling us all since then. So, with August 1st (the official date of the first appearance) being Spider-Man day, I figured it was time to do a Spidey special here at Art For Art’s Sake…

Steve Ditko – the very first time we saw the friendly neighbourhood (and Amazing) Spider-Man – Amazing Fantasy #15… created by Ditko and Stan Lee.

One thing I’ve always loved about Spidey is how different artists can come up with spectacularly different versions of the character. And some of them are incredible divisive… one of my old friends from working at Nostalgia & Comics Birmingham back in the day was a huge Spidey fan but seeing Ted McKeever’s art on the character was just too much for poor old Roy…

So, a few weird and wonderful versions now, beginning with that Ted McKeever version…

Eric Canete

David Lafuente

Marcos Martin –

Javier Pulido

Mike Allred

Lee Weeks 

Darwyn Cooke

Duncan Fegredo 

Sean Phillips

Paul Pope

Tim Sale

John Romita Jr

Jim Mahfood

Eduardo Risso 

Mark Buckingham

Chris Bachalo

Mark Bagley

Brendan McCarthy

Humberto Ramos

Paolo Rivera

Dusty Abell – 60th Anniversary of Amazing Spider-Man: Rogues Homage fan art (2022)

Todd McFarlane

Erik Larsen –

Ross Andru

Ernie Chan – Marvel Treasury Edition #18

Charles Vess – Spectacular Spider-Man #189

Alex Ross –

And now, perhaps the two greatest Spider-Man artists…

John Romita –

The Amazing Spider-Man #63 – John Romita –

Steve Ditko – The Amazing Spider-Man #18

The Amazing Spider-Man #3 pg. 24 by Steve Ditko

And to end. What else? More Ditko and the classic The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #33 (1965), script by Stan Lee, art by Steve Ditko, colours by Stan Goldberg, and letters by Artie Simek.