40 Years Of The Amazing Spider-Man Win-Mac Description:

40 Years Of The Amazing Spider-Man Win/Mac review:
5 stars (A Great Collection) - This is definitely a step in the right direction for Marvel Comics; I would definitely like to see more Marvel comic titles reprinted on cd-rom. It is nice to have a cost-effective option to go back and re-read all of these great classic stories, and then to also see all of the retro advertisements and even better, the Marvel Bullpens reprinted to! The only downside to this collection is that actual copies of the comics were used for the scans, and many of the older issues have tears or stains on them. It would be better to use the printer proofs for the comic portion of the issues (as is done for the Masterworks collections) and then to have inserted the scanned advertisements and bullpens from the comics. All-in-all, this is an outstanding product!
5 stars (Any Spider-Man fan must own this collection!) - 40 Years Of The Amazing Spider-Man.



INTRODUCTION:

Over the years, Spider-Man has consistently been one of the most popular comic book superheroes of all. It's hard to believe that the character Stan Lee created so many decades ago has remained so popular for so long, and that the concept succeeded despite so many people's initial doubts! Unfortunately over the years, many of Spider-Man's classic comic book stories have been long out of print. But on the good side, the success of the recent live-action Spider-Man films have caused a massive resurgence in the popularity of the series. And thus, many of the old stories have been given new life in many ways. One of these ways is the new CD ROM set, Forty Years Of The Amazing Spider-Man. Read on, and see if this set does Spidey's legacy justice!



OVERVIEW:

Forty Years Of The Amazing Spider-Man is, essentially, a collection of over five hundred Spider-Man comics spanning the era from 1962-2003. The package consists of eleven CDs, compatible with PCs and MACs alike, and it retails anywhere from thirty to fifty dollars.



REVIEW:

I love Spider-Man, as anyone who has read any of my reviews will surely already know. And this package more than does Spidey's comic book legacy justice. The obvious good point of this set is its sheer value. For one fairly low price, you get OVER FIVE HUNDRED Spidey comics, in all their original uncut glory. Hell, these even have all the old ads! The Marvel Masterworks reprints may feature improved picture/color quality, but you only get usually nine to eleven comics, and the less-expensive paperback versions of those books are only available at Barnes And Noble (a huge problem if you don't have one of those stores nearby.) Not to mention the Masterworks representation of Spidey only covers roughly the first fifty to sixty volumes. Back to the matter at hand. With the exception of the picture quality, this set beats the Marvel Masterworks reprints on every level. I do have a few minor complaints about the set, though, and they're basically the ones you hear from everyone else. The annuals aren't included (yearly issues that were longer and more elaborate than the normal comics), and because of that you miss out on many important events, including Peter Parker's marriage! Another flaw is that this only covers The Amazing Spider-Man, and nothing else. That means you don't get any issues from other Spider-Man series (Marvel Team-Up, Spectacular Spider-Man, etc.), or stories from other Marvel comic books in which Spidey cameoed. And as other reviewers suggested, a searchable index would have been nice, as would have the discs being on the DVD format, which can contain a good deal more data than CDs. But these flaws are miniscule compared to the big picture. If you want to get Spider-Man's classic comic book stories, GET THIS SET. Don't bother with the Masterworks Spidey collections unless you want them for the improved picture quality. There are many representations of the classic Spidey stories being reissued out there these days, but this is by far the ultimate collection. No Spidey fan should be without it!



EDITION NOTES:

This package is a fairly recent release. Accordingly, it is readily available in most stores that deal in computer software. If you're a Spidey fan who wants this set, it's safe to say you won't have to look too hard for this.



OVERALL:

Despite the ultimately-neglectable flaws, Forty Years Of The Amazing Spider-Man is a collection that belongs in the home of every Spidey fan out there. Many reissues of the classic Spidey stories have been done over the years, but this is by far the ultimate one, and the best value. Final verdict? HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Five stars.
3 stars (Walk down amnesia lane) - The product, "40 Years of The Amazing Spider-Man" is a great idea, but an imperfect implementation. To have an extensive library of a pop-culture icon available on just a few CDs is a great use of computer technology and a dream come true for comic fans who could never afford even a fraction of all those back issues; but the package had a few flaws:



(1) The library was large, but not exhaustive -- for example the larger-sized Annuals were not included on the CDs. Also, some of the best Spider-Man stories were in his other magazines -- Marvel Team-Up and Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spiderman -- which are not included in the collection.



(2) No searchable index was given listing story title, writer, artist, etc. for each issue -- this would have been a nice feature when trying to find a particular issue, and would not have been very time-consuming to compile.



(3) The quality of the images is decent, but not enhanced at all, as it typically is in trade-paperback reprints. Obviously color-enhancing 500 comic books would have taken time and money, but it seems that it would have been worth the effort, particularly for such an extensive and "definitive" project as this was, or could have been.



(4) The Adobe Acrobat format is very popular, but it leaves a bit to be desired from the reader's perspective. On smaller monitors, the reader who values his eyesight will want to zoom in and view one page of the comic book at a time, and scroll or page down to the next page; but the files are scanned and arranged so that two comic book pages correspond to one Acrobat page, which makes scrolling on a small screen difficult (down, up-right, down...). (Unless I'm missing something about how to use Acrobat Reader!)



(5) There were many CDs, but I think the data could have fit on one double-sided DVD -- a much better choice these days.



Still, when I think how ecstatic I would have been as a boy to have 500 Spider-Man comics to read, I have to evaluate the product as good. But, unfortunately and ironically, in my view, it's not suitable for children, because as the years went on, the material in the books became more and more adult -- too dark and too sexually explicit for children, or really for anybody. But that's symptomatic of American pop culture generally, I'm afraid -- if I had children, they'd never be allowed to see most PG-13 movies made today.