Why my love of Spider-Man means I can never show my face in Manhattan.

Peter Parker's just found out that not everyone
loves Ross Andru's artwork.

Even though I grew up loving American comics, there's one thing makes me glad I'm not American. It's what'd happen if, as I roamed the streets of my hometown, someone asked me, "Steve, what's your favourite Spider-Man era?"

If I was American, I of course would reply, "I don't know. Maybe they once drew him with two left feet or something."

To which they'd reply, "Not error, you buffoon. Era. It has no R on the end of it."

To which I'd reply, "The letter R means nothing to me unless it's in the middle of a word."

Thus shall I have made a complete and total fool of myself.

Fortunately, being English, everyone around me pronounces it, "Eera," meaning I need never fear making such a mistake every time I leave the house.

I do of course have to fear contracting pneumonia from the icy rain that constantly lashes my home town, every time I leave the house, but at least I shall die unembarrassed.

Mary Jane's boobs make a very strange noise
whenever Peter Parker sticks his head between them.

So, to answer the question no one asked, my favourite Spider-Man era's the Ross Andru/Gerry Conway one. Thanks to the wonders of Mighty World of Marvel and Spider-Man Comics Weekly, as a child I was familiar with the Steve Ditko era, the John Romita era and the Gil Kane era - not to mention the mini-eras of the likes of Don Heck, Jim Mooney and John Buscema - and I took the view that each was better than the one that preceded it till the Ross Andru era topped them all.

In my blithe ignorance, I'd always assumed this was the consensus. After all, how could anyone not concur with such an indisputable sentiment?

Nope. Can't think of a witty caption.

And so, it was a bit of a shock when I finally got access to the Internet and discovered that, among some Spider-fans, there's not necessarily as much love for the Ross Andru years as there might be.

I have to say it baffles me. I thought it was undeniably the strongest in the wall-crawler's history. We had the aftermath of the death of Gwen Stacy, with Peter Parker and Mary Jane growing ever-closer. We got the return of old foes like the Scorpion and the Molten Man, new incarnations of old foes like the Vulture and Mysterio, and a bunch of new opponents like the Grizzly, the Tarantula and the Punisher.

Most of all we got the wicked machinations of the Jackal. Admittedly the revelation that the Jackal was Professor Warren was as stupid a denouement as has ever been inflicted on any readership but, if you were willing to turn a blind eye to that then it was still great stuff as the flappy-eared felon worked his evil plans.

We also got the "return" of Gwen Stacy which thankfully turned out not to be her return, the real return of  Liz Allen, and even the sight of Peter Parker becoming Flash Thompson's room mate. Granted the seeds of a whole bunch of terrible future wrong-turnings for the strip - such as the Clone Saga, and Peter Parker being married to MJ - were laid in these issues but Conway and Andru can't be blamed for the incompetence of later creators.

But it seems the problem some people have with the Ross Andru era is Ross Andru. It's something that's always baffled me. I've always thought he was perfect for the strip. In his use of wild angles, perspective and layouts, he echoed Gil Kane's approach to capturing the web-slinger's action sequences but, conversely he also had the ability to perfectly capture the more everyday aspects of Peter Parker's life. No, his characters didn't look like real people but something about Andru's story-telling meant that, for me, Peter Parker and his cast never seemed more alive nor more real than when he drew them, and that's why he has always been and I suspect always will be my favourite Spider-Man artist.