Unexpectedly this volume of Marvel's Decades series has proven to be my favorite so far. Documenting as it does one of the most elegant aspects of the Marvel Universe, that it is indeed a universe, a mostly coherent environment in which heroes and villains live and fight on a landscape very similar to our actual reality. The linchpin in this tome is Spidey, the teenage hero who was incredibly successful and soon became the "Mickey Mouse" of the Marvel Universe. In Decades - Marvel In The '60s we get to see that happen as Spidey drops in here and there and seemingly everywhere to add his obnoxious observations to the struggles against evil. It's a trope that Marvel heroes always fight when they encounter one another and in these pages we see that's actually mostly true. Even if they are not strangers, they are led into some sort of conflict, which usually lasts a brief time before the real threat is confronted. Spidey for his part had a natural rivalry with the Human Torch from his earliest days and later he finds Daredevil more a man of his liking. The Avengers and Spidey never blended well I always thought and that is showcased as well. These days he's a key part of their success, but when I was reading comics, he was not a pubic hero in such a way as to make assembling a real possibility.
Here are the comics in this volume, a nifty collection which does a surprisingly fine job of showcasing what the Silver Age of Marvel was really like.
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