The Amazing Spider-man Omnibus Vol. 2 Hardcover – Big Book, 26 January 2021

Second volume of 3 essential ones on spider-man.First volume contained all the issues created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. This volume has John Romita take over as the artist, after famous falling out between Lee and Ditko.There is slight change in tone. Everything becomes more "adult" and "serious", and a bit less fun. Ditko's spidey, while being serious and adult enough, always had element of humor, campiness to it. Something off-beat, fun, entertaining.Romita's take on spider-man removes Ditko's traditional visual humor and fun. From what is known from history of comics, Romita was tired of drawing colorful and cheerful romance comicbooks and tried to do darker edgy stories, evidence of which is presented here.Dealing with darker and serious Romita, Stan Lee tries to balance things out with fun dialogue and relationships. And succeeds. It is at this point Peter's daily life gets a makeover. Now he's dating Gwen, deals with flirty Mary-Jane who tries to steal him from blonde every chance she gets. Peter befriends Harry Osborn, and even Flash Tompson is no longer such a bully.Spidey's hero stuff remains intense and full of action. Some new characters are introduced - Rhino, Shocker, Kingpin. And some familiar baddies return as well - such Doc Ock, Vulture, Lizard and more.It's just my educated guess, but... Romita's desire to create darker stories leads to creation of Spectacular Spider-Man series, 2 issues of which are presented here. While art is superb, it's way darker than most of spidey stuff, tone is completely off. Apparently Stan Lee felt the same way and for that reason decided not to include it in the main book, also making sure that events of those stories did not line up with anything in the main story and in no way fit the chronology, giving the reader an option to skip it entirely. Spectacular SM was shut down shortly after, as the publisher didn't like it either.It's nice to have SSM from historic point of view, but if you want pure and untainted spidey experience - just skip these two issues, as if they've never existed.Overall - a great collection with some amazing stories, a must have for any spidey fan.

Excellent read otherwise, art is fantastic you can't beat the OG stuff if you're looking to dive into the depths of Spider-man's history.

El Omni esta bastante bien hecho, la portada principal es la de Humberto Ramos que si bien a algunos no les agrada a mi en lo personal me gusta su arte, los extras son una de mis partes favoritas del Omni e incluye las portadas de los Masterworks que faltaban en el Volumen 1En cuanto a las historias no hay mucho que decir, es Stan Lee y John Romita Sr. y si bien quiza no sean tan memorables como las de Ditko aun asi valen bastante la pena, ademas las paginas con las cartas de los fans de aquella epoca son muy entretenidas

Excellent livre.

Ignore the 2 star rating someone in the USA gave this book because he received it damaged, this is a 5 star publication gathering together some truly classic Stan Lee penned Spider-Man stories with artwork mainly by John Romita Sr.There is an awful lot of explanatory dialogue in these tales which readers of modern comic books may find a bit dated, but otherwise I thoroughly recommend this weighty tome