Preamble.

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This article, will try to pay homage to the best Spider-Man comics (earth 616) ever published. Please notice, that I've written "comics", and not "stories", for a reason. If you perform a quick Internet search, with the keywords "top spiderman comics", you will get as a result, a series of lists that, despite the query, usually deal with storylines. Their scope ranges from a handful to a hundred, and mix together entire runs and single issues. There is some logic behind that, but presented in this fashion, stand-alone issues have more weight than the rest. For example, a 12 issue story arc, occupies a slot on the list, just the same as a half-issue story. My way around this, is to use "comic" as the basic element, that makes up the list. In that respect, a TPB isn't a comic, but a reprint of several ones. Other than that, all formats are acceptable: comicbook, prestige, graphic novel, etc. If you could buy it separately, when it first came out, it's eligible and will take the same "space" in the list. The comics contained in any given TPB, will take their proportionally sized slice of the cake, but will still be given less attention, when writing their part of the article (more on that later).

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What if a comic contains more than one story? If they're of roughly the same size, an average is given. If there's a main story and a few short ones, the main one is chosen. This principle leaves out of the race some short stories that were good enough to qualify, but the point is, when you go to the comic book store, you shouldn't be expected to buy something, because of anything else than the main feature.

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How is the material going to be presented? The most logical way of sorting a comic list, in quality order, seems rather impractical. People would be pointed, in as much as 26 different directions, to assemble all the work from a given creative team. If you like something created by an author, that run should be in one place for easy access. That means that the list, will sort the work in groups, from the same writer/artist team and, of course, in quality order (average). This method will somehow "bury" the best single issues, among the rest of the comics, from that particular creative team, but a compromise was needed. Also, as previously mentioned, the longer the run covered in one part of the article, the less I'll be writing proportionally, because strenghts and weaknesses, will repeat themselves over the course of an author's work, leaving less to be said about each indivdual comic, the longer the run.

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Runs don't have to correspond to the totality of the work done with the character, it can be any assortment of issues meeting the following criteria:

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They must be, at least, of equal (average) quality, to those that didn't make it into the list. (1)

They must tell a complete story. (2) We can't expect the story to be self-contained, but it can't continue, from a comic that isn't on the list (no recap should be required) and needs to have some sort of ending. The fact that it might have some repercussions, being dealt with in subsequent issues, isn't a problem.

They must feature Spider-Man, earth-616. (3) This one's tricky, several issues of Tangled Web are on the list, but the character that gives name to the title, hardly appears. In any case, they are comics in the earth-616 continuity, Spider-Man maintains a presence above cameo status and the starring character, is part of the Spider Family.

They must be "fairly" consecutive. (4) The goal is to prevent completeness, from lowering the average quality and hindering variety. In that respect, missing issues will usually be fill-ins, but they can also be missing, because they pertain to stories, that just aren't good enough.

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Some examples:

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Kraven's Last Hunt or The Death Of Jean DeWolff, don't make it into the list, because their average rating is below the minimum entry point, marked at 6/10 by the comics that did make it. Some individual issues could be on the list, but they can't be read without the rest, so the average is what counts here. It's worth noting, that not a single comic outside the list, gets above 6/10. This is no coincidence, when an author reaches such a high rating as 6.5/10 (yes, that's high on my scale) is highly unlikely, for the quality of his work, to drop so markedly in a short period of time, as to affect the average enough, to keep the run out of the top 100. To sum it up, every comic on the list is 6/10 or above, while all the ones that were left out, are 6/10 or below.

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Spider-Man: With Great Power could be on the list, thanks to its rating, but not being earth-616, it remains out.

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Many Straczynski issues aren't here, despite having sufficient rating. Some aren't actually written by him, although Fiona Avery follows his trail. Some aren't drawn by Romita or Garney. And some stories simply remain flat at 6/10. With so many Straczynski issues already on the list, if you like him, you'll probably seek out the rest anyway, so I prefer to give the chance to other authors, who also reached that level, even if they aren't any better.

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(For the confection of this list, 1300+ Spider-Man comics were read from May 2013 to April 2014. They include every comic published from 1962 to 1989, plus a selection of material from the 90's and almost everything edited in this century.)

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The article will be divided into 15 parts, not counting this preamble. At the end of every part, the comic, storyline, limited series, run or selection of work from the corresponding creative team, will be given a rating using a ten point rating system. Each point will be represented by a colored Spider-Man logo. A partially colored logo will mean that a fraction of a point was achieved. The rating being an average, there will be several decimal places to represent, which will be partially lost in translation. I hope I made them big enough so that a 6.2 can be discerned from (say) a 6.5. As an example, there's a 6 out of 10 below. At the lower right corner, you'll find the navigational button(s).

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