Untold Tales of Spider-Man #1

History

The series grew directly out of Kurt Busiek's meticulous continuity work on Marvels (1994), which had already proven that revisiting Marvel's Silver Age through a careful, research-driven lens could produce critically celebrated results. Editor Tom Brevoort and assistant editor Glenn Greenberg shepherded the title, with Brevoort later writing that Busiek 'was fastidious about finding ways in which our stories could slot in seamlessly among the original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko Spidey adventures,' and that the team used hindsight deliberately—featuring characters like Norman Osborn and Mary Jane Watson 'with an eye towards where they'd eventually end up.' The 99-cent price point was a Marvel editorial mandate aimed at newsstand readers who had been priced out of the market, though Brevoort himself acknowledged that the newsstand trade ultimately didn't embrace the format, and the series' eventual cancellation was tied directly to the unwillingness to raise the cover price to match the rest of Marvel's line. Issue #1 shipped in July 1995 with a September cover date and was packaged as a flip book alongside Fantastic Four: Unplugged #1.

Trivia · 7 facts

• Written by Kurt Busiek and penciled by Pat Olliffe, with inks by Al Vey, colors by Steve Mattsson, and letters by Richard Starkings/Comicraft; edited by Tom Brevoort.
• First appearance of the Scorcher (Steven Hudak), a flame-throwing armored villain created by Busiek and Olliffe, who went on to appear in Dark Reign, Spider-Island, and other modern Marvel storylines.
• First (shadow-only) appearance of Norman Osborn in the series; the mystery figure seen near the Osborn Chemical plant in issue #1 is explicitly revealed to be Osborn in issue #8.
• The issue's story, 'To Serve and Protect?', is set shortly after the events of Amazing Spider-Man #6 (1963), slotting directly into established Lee/Ditko continuity.
• Sally Avril—a background character from Amazing Fantasy #15—appears here as a recurring supporting cast member; Busiek expanded her role across the series into a major subplot that ends in her death.
• Tiny McKeever makes his first appearance in this issue as a Midtown High student.
• The full run has been collected multiple times, including a trade paperback (Spider-Man Visionaries: Kurt Busiek Vol. 1, collecting #1–8), a Complete Collection Vol. 1 (collecting Amazing Fantasy #16–18 and #1–14), and a comprehensive Omnibus collecting the entire series, both annuals, the Strange Encounter one-shot, and material from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #37.

Full credits

Key issues in Untold Tales of Spider-Man

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#2 1st appearance — Batwing

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#8 1st appearance — Headsman