Looking back, one of the most impressive things about Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s landmark Amazing Spider-Man run is just how much of the character’s world and cast it cemented. In just the first three issues, Spider-Man faced off against Chameleon, Vulture, the Tinkerer, and Doctor Octopus, and had his place in the larger Marvel Universe cemented by an encounter with the Fantastic Four. But just as important to Lee and Ditko’s stories were Spider-Man’s dual life as Peter Parker: these issues would see him take on a job at the Daily Bugle to help his Aunt May pay rent, spar with bristly publisher J. Jonah Jameson and Midtown High bully Flash Thompson, and pine for cheerleader Liz Allan. In these pages, Lee and Ditko were often introducing key figures in the life of Spider-Man side-by-side with key figures in the life of Peter Parker, many of whom are still instantly recognizable to Spider-Man fans today. Few issues epitomize this better than The Amazing Spider-Man #4, which not introduced only one of Spidey’s best foes, but his first love.
Entitled “Nothing Can Stop … the Sandman,” it’s apparent that Stan Lee (credit for much of these early Spider-Man issues is a matter of fierce debate, but the purple prose of this title is inimitably Lee’s work) knew that the new super-villain would be the bigger selling point to readers in 1963. But to Spider-Man fans today, the debut of J. Jonah Jameson’s secretary Betty Brant, appearing in just three panels, is almost as consequential. Betty (seen in this issue giving Peter Parker the eye) would go on to be Peter’s first girlfriend, and an important friend and confidante throughout decades of stories since. Next weekend, Goldin Auctions is set to sell a copy of this silver age double key for a four figure price, with the bidding already up to $2.6k — driven by its rare CGC (Certified Guarantee Company) 7.5 grade, one of only a couple hundred high-grade samples in existence.
The plot of Amazing Spider-Man #4 follows a fairly standard formula for Lee-Ditko Spider-Man issues. It opens with Spidey foiling street level crime (sort of — he catches a gang of would-be robbers before they’ve done anything criminal, enabling them to accuse him of harassment), then gives us a battle between Spider-Man and his new foe. The wall-crawler is trounced, the middle of the issue cuts between Sandman’s crime spree and Peter’s personal problems, they reconvene and battle again in the story’s latter third. It’s resolved either through Peter’s scientific acumen, or by a truly, deeply silly solution that could only have been approved in the Silver Age of comics.
After Spidey’s initial defeat, Lee and Ditko use an equally Silver Age-y conceit to explain Sandman’s origins to reader: a newscaster recounts them during a TV broadcast, watched by Peter Parker while making repairs to his costume using his most underrated super-power, sewing. Sandman is Flint Marko, a convict who escaped from prison and fled onto a nuclear test site, where “the molecules of his body merged at that radio-active [sic] instant with the molecules of sand under his feet,” turning him into Sandman. As all this is apparently a matter of public record, credibility is slightly strained that none of the already-large and ever-growing roster of Marvel heroes have made any effort to halt Sandman’s criminal activities. This leaves things to Spider-Man, who is given his second chance to battle Sandman quite accidentally: on the run from the law, Sandman literally bursts into a Midtown High classroom during the school day. Holding the principal hostage and demanding to be given a high school diploma, Sandman is confronted again by Spider-Man, who ultimately defeats him by sucking him into a high-powered vacuum cleaner — see what I meant about Silver Age silliness?
Betty’s appearance in the issue is, as mentioned, brief, occurring during the Peter Parker-focused interlude in its middle. Readers see her for the first time in J. Jonah Jameson’s office as Jameson discovers he’s been stuck to his chair with webbing left behind by Peter. He orders her out to get him a new pair of pants, she bustles out into the bullpen, running into Peter on his way out the door. Betty pawns the task of bringing the pants in to Jameson on Peter, then disappears from the issues. Though fleeting, the panels do refer to her by name, helpfully quelling any disputes over whether this is actually her first appearance. Fans are keen to argue over whether a pair of unnamed Midtown High students in Amazing Fantasy #15 that look just like how Steve Ditko would later draw Flash Thompson and Liz Allan are actually Flash and Liz.
It’s worth noting that a third character, certainly unnamed, is considered to have technically made her debut here, courtesy of a retcon: Jessica Jones. In Amazing Spider-Man #601, Brian Michael Bendis establishes that Jessica was in the crowd for Spider-Man’s battle with Sandman at Midtown High. He even picks out a specific face from the crowd that he ascribes to Jessica, part of a larger retcon that puts her just-off-page for nearly all of Peter’s high school-set adventures. As a technicality, this is left off of the CGC’s label for the issue, which lists it as both Betty Brant and Sandman’s debut.
Although identified exclusively with Spider-Man today, for most of the Silver and Bronze Age, Sandman divided his time between menacing the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and even the Hulk. He was a founding member of the “Frightful Four,” a kind of anti-Fantastic Four devised by the Wizard, its classic membership rounded out by the Inhuman Medusa and the glue-slinging Trapster. Following his debut, Sandman battled Spider-Man only thrice more in the Silver Age (Amazing Spider-Man #18-19, Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1), while facing off against the Fantastic Four more than ten times. He would not fight Spider-Man again until 1972, appearing in the inaugural two issues of Marvel Team-Up, which also featured Fantastic Four member the Human Torch. Sandman wouldn’t make an another appearance in Amazing Spider-Man itself until 1976’s #154.
Following her debut, Betty Brant appeared in virtually every issue of Spider-Man until #67 in 1968. After realizing their mutual attraction to one another during an attack on the Daily Bugle by the Vulture, the pair began dating (well, sorta — in that way that teenagers sometimes do, they went out all the time but never actually applied a label to it). The relationship only lasted a few issues, broken up by Betty misconstruing Peter’s constant inattention and serial lateness for disinterest. Shortly later, she began dating Daily Bugle reporter Ned Leeds, though Peter would harbor a crush on her until he started college, likely exacerbated by her sudden unavailability. Over time, the pair became friends, and she remained a regular character through the sixties, returning to prominence during Gerry Conway’s Amazing Spider-Man run in the mid-seventies.
After Conway, writers have used her to varying effectiveness, sometimes as a romantic interest to Peter (and for a little while in the eighties, to Flash Thompson), most often as a friend. She was even a member of Peter and Mary Jane Watson’s wedding party. While Betty’s importance has ebbed and flowed, her place in Peter’s life is assured by her significance in these early silver age issues. In Amazing Spider-Man #142, Conway even had Peter refer to Betty as “the first girl I ever fell in love with,” also making her the first love that Peter lost to his double life. Their relationship helps establish Peter’s character: through it, readers came to understand what he valued and what the people he loves mean to him. Betty Brant was the character Lee and Ditko put at the center of their great experiment with the Spider-Man character: a super-hero whose problems are the same as anyone else’s, whose life stays just as complicated once they take off their costume. Though Sandman could (and would) fight any number of other Marvel heroes, a character like Betty could only debut in the world of The Amazing Spider-Man.
