I was fully prepared to put the book down after that, but something made me keep going, and, sure enough, I was hooked all over again. There's some nice art along the way, by legendary figures such as Marie Severin, John Byrne, and, of all people, Jim Shooter, so that made things a bit easier to get through. He picks up some steam towards the end of the SPECTACULAR run, but never really enough to fully engage me. I eagerly dug into the SPECTACULAR issues, and found them to be a bit of a tough go.Stern was clearly still finding his footing on the character, and being relegated to a second-tier book, where nothing of any real consequence was ever allowed to happen, didn't help matters much. I was primarily interested in Stern's run on PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, which I had only read bits and pieces of when the issues were originally released, thanks to the vagaries of newsstand distribution back in the '80's.įirst off, SPIDER-MAN BY ROGER STERN OMNIBUS collects a whopping 52 issues, including PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #'s 43-61 and 85, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #'s 206, 224-252, and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #16. I was planning to only read the first portion of this collection (Everything before Stern's run on THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN beginning with issue #224).I had read Stern's AMAZING run a little over two years ago (Reviews HERE and HERE), and had no interest in revisiting stories that were still so fresh in my mind.

The second-greatest SPIDER-MAN run ever, collected in one massive hardcover? Yes, please.

Spider man stern omnibus