10 Amazing Comic Book Covers Marvel Wants You To Remember
3. Amazing Spider-Man #50
One of the 'jobs' a comic book cover has it to convey the message of the book in a single image. Often, this can be difficult to accomplish as there are typically 20-25 pages in each book. Choosing an image that sums up those pages can be challenging, but when it works out well, the results can be amazing.
Spider-Man comics have always been able to do this well. The Amazing Spider-Man issues 2 and 129 did this remarkably well with images of the Vulture dangling Spidey over the city, or the Punisher showing him in his sights perfectly depicting what the books contained.
The best example of this, with what many consider to be the most evocative cover from Spidey's Silver Age library, was John Romita's The Amazing Spider-Man #50, which told the story, "Spider-Man No More!"
Not only did this issue tell an amazing story, which included the first appearance of Wilson Fisk, aka The Kingpin, it shows Peter what would happen were he to hang up his tights and quit being Spider-Man. Romita's drawing on the cover captured this in a single image with Peter literally walking away from his responsibilities. It was a bold statement and an even bolder image collectors have been going after for decades.