SPIDER-MAN (UK) COVER GALLERY...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

Spider-Man's UK mag started life as Spider-Man Comics Weekly and underwent several name changes over the course of its life to accommodate the merger of poorer selling titles - both before and after the issues you see in this post.  (For a full list, click here.)  For some reason I now forget, I started buying the comic again with the above ish (probably because it contained the first part of an adaptation of the 2nd Indiana Jones movie), and kept it up for a 32 issue run.  Or at least, it would've been 32 if I hadn't somehow missed a few, which I eventually managed to acquire nearly 35 years after they first came out.  I rounded the number up to 33 with #622 in order to complete the storylines continued from #621, then rested from my labours.  It may have taken a while, but I got there in the end.

What I find surprising (even though I shouldn't) is just how much I remember about certain issues and the days I bought them, the associations with times and places every bit as crystal clear as they were back then.  Every single cover reminds me of the room and the house in which I lived at the time, and it's almost as though I'm back there and never flitted to return to my current home.  (Regular readers will understand, so I won't go over old ground and risk boring everyone to death.)  Take #594 as an example.  I remember buying this from a newsagent's in the Old Village quarter of my town and leaning against a wall around a large old building which served as a bank as I browsed through its pages.  It was a sunny Saturday in July and it only seems like last week to me - if even as long as that.

As I type, whenever I glance up from my keyboard, I almost see my old room around me and the view from my window across the playfields outside.  That's one of the good things about comics - they have the uncanny ability to transport you back to an earlier period of your life, practically in the blink of an eye.  Looking at these covers now, I'm aware that I have the original US issues of two or three of them, but the UK versions are just as memorable as their counterparts, each one having its own distinct set of memories, neither one 'pulling rank' on the other.  Anyway, if you bought any of these mags back in the day, I'm sure you'll have your own reminiscences about them, so feel free to share them with your fellow Crivvies.  And if you have a favourite cover (or covers), be sure to mention that too.  Excelsior! 

Posted in: Cartoons