Closing in on Amazing Spider-Man

So, in case you have missed much of what I’ve been posting about her for the past couple of years. I’m something of a Spider-Man fan. Yeah, I know, that was something of a surprise announcement. Anyway, I sort of have this hole in my collection (from like the end of 1995 to the beginning of 2001). I’ve been filling it in over the years since I returned to the industry (in ‘01), and well, needless to say, while I’ve been attempting to fill in all of the various Spider-Titles I missed during my absence, I’ve been concentrating on the Amazing Spider-Man title (the main title).

Well, this past weekend I scored a couple of more books in that run, bringing my total missing in that run to just 10 books. Now I know what you are thinking, these are probably the first 10 books, but, no, that’s not true. They are all from the ‘95–‘01 time frame (yep, I own Amazing Fantasy #15 & Amazing Spider-Man #1). As of this writing, the ASM titles I’m missing are ASM #431, ASM V2 #s 11, 16, 19-22, 24, 25, and ASM Annual 1999.

Not bad, eh?

Truth to tell, I’m having a tough time filling in these numbers because this was during the time period that Marvel was (quite literally) printing exactly as many copies of each issues as were ordered (“Oh, 1,000 copies were ordered? print 1,001.”), so while these issues aren’t particular valuable (or memorable), they are (apparently) exceedingly, rare.

I’m not at all concerned, as I know that they are out there, and I do intend to find them all. Then I’m going after all of the missing issues of the rest of the (non-reprint) Spidey comics, and then all of the various Spidey guest appearances in other comics. Yes, I know that is something of a chore, but you see, I actually own most of those comics already. I’m currently doing a count of what I’m missing, but I believe that it is probably around 100 or so issues. Not too shabby when you consider the 47-year publishing history of the character.