Swing into the World of Spider-Man with The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide
Written: May 02 '07 (Updated Aug 08 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A lot of interesting information on Spider-Man and other characters.
Cons: Organization could have been better.
The Bottom Line: The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide by Tom DeFalco is full of interesting information. Fans of Spider-Man may enjoy the book.
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| dragonfire88's Full Review: Tom Defalco - The Amazing Spider-man: The Ultimate... |
I have enjoyed Spider-Man for years, first in the cartoons I watched as a child and later in the movies Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. There are many things connected to Spider-Man that I don’t know about, mostly related to all the different villains he has had to deal with. Since I really enjoyed Batman: The Ultimate Guide to The Dark Knight, Ghost Rider Visual Guide, Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel, and Ultimate X-Men, I decided to pick up The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide by Tom DeFalco.
The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide was published by Dorling Kindersley, the same company that has published several other books about superheroes. The book was originally published in 2001. An updated version was released in the spring of 2007. I have the updated version. The updates and any new material were provided by Matthew K. Manning. The book is an over sized hardback like all of the others published by Dorling Kindersley that I have or have seen.
The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide didn’t have a plot. Instead it shared information about Spider-Man, the other characters he came into contact with, and some important story lines from the comics. Information about the different subjects was shared over one or two pages. The information was that was included was in short sentences and paragraphs, so there really wasn’t that much information on any one thing. I would have liked it if there had been more in depth information about some of the characters and events.
Most of The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide shared information about the characters that have been in the different Spider-Man comics. Most of the characters had a two-page spread that included several illustrations that looked like they had come from one of the comics. A few looked like they could have been drawn for this book, but I couldn’t find an illustrator listed anywhere. Some of the illustrations had captions that added more information about the characters. Some of the characters that I think weren’t as important were covered on only one page. There was a rather large illustration of the character and certain aspects of their costume or weapons would be pointed out in captions. When another character was mentioned, the page numbers for their entry was included in parentheses after their name.
The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide began with a foreword written by Stan Lee, the man who created the character. Lee explained why he thought that Spider-Man was so popular and appealed to so many people. In doing that, he mentioned how Spider-Man was in the real world in New York City and not in a fictional city like Metropolis or Gotham City. It did seem like he was taking the opportunity to take a pot shot at two of DC Comics biggest characters with that remark. He could have made his point without specifically mentioning those two cities. An introduction followed that I think was written by the author of the book.
The book went right to discussing Peter Parker after the introduction without any sort of transition or section division. His Aunt May and Uncle Ben were discussed next, followed by his friends, girlfriends, and Mary Jane before getting to how Peter became Spider-Man eleven pages later. The next several pages dealt with his spider-sense, wall crawling, web slinging, strength, agility and costumes. Two pages briefly talked about some of the other superheroes that Spider-Man has worked with, like Wolverine. Howard the Duck was even mentioned in the caption of an illustration. This section of the book ended by discussing the Daily Bugle and some of the people that Peter worked with there, including editor J. Jonah Jameson.
The rest of the book was divided into five sections based on each decade since the 1960's when Spider-Man was first introduced. Before the beginning of each section, there was a large illustration of Spider-Man that took up two pages. The next two pages shared a little bit of information related to what happened to Spider-Man during that time period. Covers from some the comics were also shown. I believe the covers that were shared were ones that dealt with some of the more important events in Spider-Man’s history. The last section on Spider-Man 2000 was arranged a little different. After the two page illustration of Spider-Man, several pages covered information, mostly about the relaunch of the comic, before the pages that shared some general information and covers from the period.
Several characters were discussed in each section. A few important story lines were also briefly mentioned in each section. The 1960's section was the longest, mostly because there were more characters. Most of the more well known villains that Spider-Man faced, like the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus, were included in this section. I don’t know what sort of organization was used to put the characters in order for the book. I’m thinking that they were probably arranged based on the order they were introduced in the comics, but I could be wrong about that. I would have liked to know that for sure. Things connected to the stories the characters were involved in were also included on the character pages. For some characters, things that happened years after their introduction were shared. Sometimes those same things were also mentioned again later in the book. That did make it harder to keep track of when things happened.
The last section started by covering a major storyline that had a big impact on Peter. Then the new Ultimate Spider-Man comic book was discussed. That was a new comic that completely updated the characters and changed certain things related to the origin story. When that was done, the first movie hadn’t been released yet. From the information shared about the Ultimate version of Spider-Man, it seemed like several things done for that were included in the movie. Time was taken to talk about a Spider-Man set in the future in the year 2099 as well as some events from an alternate timeline that included a female character that became Spider-Girl. The two pages with the information about the time period and covers of comic books followed that.
The last several pages followed recent developments for the characters. Since I have the updated version of the book, I believe the information in this part was things that have happened in the comics since the book was originally published. The first two pages briefly talked about some well known villains returning for Spider-Man to deal with again. A few new villains were introduced along with the New Avengers group that Spider-Man sometimes worked with. A storyline about Peter getting sick was discussed which lead into talking about a new iron spider costume that was designed for him by Tony Stark/Iron Man. The last storyline that was discussed was one that I had heard a little bit about when it was started even though I don’t read comic books. The storyline, dealing with superheroes disclosing their real identities, has impacted all of the major Marvel characters. The next two pages showed a world map and had a little bit of information on the different places Spider-Man has traveled to deal with villains. Two pages called Gazetteer listed characters and which comic they made their first appearance in.
Over the years, there have been some Spider-Man cartoons and in the last several years, two very successful movies. I even barely remember seeing some kind of Spider-Man movie on television when I was a child as well. The cartoons and movies have helped to introduce a lot of new fans to the world of Spider-Man, so they are important. There was only one very brief mention of the first movie when the Ultimate Spider-Man comic was mentioned. There was no mention of the second movie, the upcoming third movie, or any of the cartoons. I wasn’t expecting in depth coverage of those things, but I do feel like they should have at least been mentioned.
One of the main reasons that I decided to get this book was because even though I do like Spider-Man, there is a lot from the comics that I just don’t know anything about. The first time I had heard of the villain Sandman was when I was reading something a year or two ago related to the third movie. There were a lot of characters that I hadn’t heard of before, so I did learn a lot of things. I also learned about several plots that I hadn’t known about before. I think the plots that were discussed in this book were introduced in chronological order, but I could be wrong about that. It would have been nice if there had been some kind of timeline of major events in the book like has been done with some of the others I have. That would have made it a lot easier for me to keep track of exactly when certain things happened.
With some of the characters, some things were mentioned briefly when the character was discussed. Then later in the book, usually in a later section, the same event would be mentioned again. That did get me a little confused on exactly when some of those events happened. The information could have been organized a little bit better. Even on the pages about specific characters or plots, there wasn’t a lot of organization with how the information was presented. It would just be in the small paragraphs, scattered around the illustrations on the pages. Sometimes I think I ended up reading some of the information out of order. There was also a little bit of repetition with some of the information.
It didn’t take me very long to read The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide since most of the pages really didn’t have that much text on them. The foreword by Stan Lee and the acknowledgments by the author at the end of the book contained more text than any other pages in the book. Since I have other guides to superheroes published by DK, I expected that this one would have the same sort of layout with not a lot of information. I did enjoy the book and learned a lot. I just would have liked it if there had been more in depth information and a detailed timeline included.
I really enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide and am glad that I decided to get it. I know a lot more about the character and important plots now. The book could have been organized a little better, but it is still worth picking up. This would be a good book for fans of Spider-Man.
Spider-Man Reviews
Spider-Man ~ Spider-Man 2 ~ Spider-Man 3 ~
Other Comic Book/Superhero Reviews
Batman ~ Batman Returns ~ Batman Forever ~ Batman & Robin ~ Batman Begins ~ Batman: The Ultimate Guide to The Dark Knight ~ Catwoman ~ Daredevil ~ Elektra ~ Fantastic Four ~ Flash Gordon ~ Ghost Rider ~ Ghost Rider Visual Guide Hellboy ~ The Incredibles ~ The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ~ Lois & Clark: The Complete First Season ~ Lois & Clark: The Complete Second Season ~ Lois & Clark: The Complete Third Season ~ My Super Ex-Girlfriend ~ Sky High ~ Superman Returns ~ Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel ~ X-Men ~ X2: X-Men United ~ X-Men: The Last Stand ~ X-Men: The Legend of Wolverine ~ Ultimate X-Men ~ V for Vendetta ~ Zoom ~
Recommended:
Yes
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