THE SPIDER’S WEB: Plus, a look at the launch of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man… — Welcome to The Spider’s Web — an ongoing feature by novelist and Archie Comics Co-President Alex Segura that looks at Spider-Man’s development since his start in 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15. (Alex has been re-reading from the beginning.) Each installment covers a specific period in Spidey’s history, with Alex giving you a kind of bouncing ball approach, as opposed to an issue-by-issue breakdown. Click here for the complete index of columns. — Dan — By ALEX SEGURA Now, this is where things get a little tricky, web-spinners. Around Issue #164 of The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel decided to launch a second, more Peter Parker-centric book, aptly titled Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man. Now, the initial plan for this reread was to just enjoy the early issues of ASM for as long as I could. I didn’t really envision a time where I’d have to read two books at once. We kind of side-stepped the issue a bit by not really paying attention to the first-ever Spidey spinoff book, Marvel Team-Up. I dipped into the series here and there, but it didn’t stick, so I stayed on ASM. But PPSSM was a solo Spidey book — and decisions had to be made! So, to get even more picayune stuff out of the way, I decided that, yes, I’d have to read Spectacular, but I wasn’t going to alternate issues. It just didn’t work, at least not the way I was reading the Amazing issues (via Marvel Masterworks). The imperfect solution I came up with was to alternate Masterworks. And, so here we are, on a Spider-Man reread that encompasses two ongoing Spider-Man books. We’re currently at Amazing Spider-Man #180, the grand finale of Len Wein’s memorable run as writer and Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #9, the beginning of (for the most part) Bill Mantlo’s seven-year run on the title after some major hiccups out of the gate. We’ll get to those in a sec. First, let’s tackle the closing chapters of Wein’s run as writer on Amazing. As some of you may know, this is a time of great disarray atop the editorial ladder at Marvel, with various writers stepping in at different times to serve as editor-in-chief. A roulette wheel that will, finally, settle...