Comics What happened before Amazing Spider-Man #500?

[ricardolopez]

I'm a newcomer to Spider-Man, and recently bought one of the paperbacks that collect Spider-Man comics, specifically 'The Amazing Spider-Man vol. 6: Happy Birthday'. That's the one when he travels through time to fight all the past villains and such and I liked it. But, something that confused me a little was that the first comic was Amazing Spider-Man #57, then #58, and suddenly it jumps to #500! Later, I checked the Marvel.com archives, and I found that they only dated back to #500, so it's like the other ones never existed. And I wonder... what happened before the #500?

 

[Galactus]

Well, after issue 441 they decided to start all over again with a new number 1, but went back to the original numbers with 500. Check www.samruby.com It's a good site for information

 

[imdaly]

In a stunt to grab new comic buyers, Marvel "rebooted" the Spider-Man titles with a new #1 (volume 2) starting with what would have been Amazing Spider-Man #442. This went on for a while until Marvel realized that the fans hated the fact that the numbers have been reset. So starting with Amazing Spider-Man vol.2 #30, they started putting the issue number of what it WOULD have been, had they not reset the number, below the Vol.2 number.

Like here:

Vol.2 #30, Vol.1 #471

This continued until Marvel realized that the title was going to hit #500 in Vol.1 numbers.

SO, (like they did with Fantastic Four), when #500 came around, the finally ditched the Vol.2 numbering and returned to the Vol.1 numbering, so they could appease the fans, and cash in on the big #500 on the cover.

So in other words, you might have a hard time finding Amazing Spider-Man #442-499 because they were actually listed as Amazing Spider-Man Vol.2 #1-58.

Although many people (including myself) try to ignore the Vol.2 numbering and refer to those issues in the Vol.1 numbering.



Hope that's clear enough, and hope it helps.

Btw, WELCOME TO THE HYPE and WELCOME TO THE SPIDEY-VERSE!!

 

[ben_reilly_s_s]

499 Amazing Spidey issues
2 Amazing Scarlet Spider issues
4 Amazing fantasy issues
Man, im an @$$

 

[ricardolopez]

Well, thanks for all the info on Spidey lore!