While the Man-Thing story at the end stands out as a nifty one-shot, I really enjoyed the general pace of the whole book. The early-career stories do a nice job of bridging the gap between Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1, showing some snapshots of how a young geek became a hero.

It's easy to get caught up in the Ultra-Cosmic World-Shaking Mega-Crossover Event Of The Year, and that sort of saga certainly has its place. However, there's something really nice about seeing the smaller events. Aunt May tracking down a troubled girl, young Peter learning the consequences of his actions, the effect of a front-page photo on an ex-con - these give us a new perspective on Spidey's world, and I'd like to see more.

Just, please...no more stories of Aunt May in the red-and-blue. That's just wrong... ( )

A mostly fine collection of half-a-dozen or so Spider-Man stories that are pretty much stand-alone stories, not really connected with the main storyline. The best are "48 Hours", about Spider-Man's first real episode of heroism in which he learns something about power and responsibility, and "The Punch", another story about Spider-Man's first heroic acts, and his first time to really stand up to Flash Thompson. The others are pretty good, except for "The Final Chapter", which is basically Stan Lee meets "Planet of the Apes". ( )