Have you ever accidentally collected something? As collectors, we often find ourselves caught up in our own self-driven hype over a new discovery and that often leads to us collecting strange and unusual things. But something completely different to that happened to me and my collection over the last few years: I accidentally collected a run; I didn't intend to.

I am a Spider-man collector. Most notably, The Amazing Spider-man. Between the years of 2018 to 2021, I was looking to complete a full run from 1963 to present day - a goal I am proud to say I achieved (Well, all minus issue number one!)

In order to complete this Amazing Spider-man run, I had to be BIG and BOLD with my spending. I bought lots of comic books from various collectors at a time and picked out the Amazing Spider-man keys that lay within. This led me to accumulate a vast number of books from other titles, including but not limited to Spider-man.

One such title I acquired a lot of books for was Web of Spider-man. After seeing the HUGE pile stack up, I soon realized I had an almost complete set! I had inadvertently collected issues 001-100, along with many duplicates.

Incredible Cover Painting by artist Charles Vess.

Web of Spider-Man is the name of a  monthly comic book series starring Spider-Man that was published by Marvel Comics back in 1985. This first volume ran between 1985 and 1995 and lasted for 129 issues.

A second volume, which only ran for 12 issues, was published between 2009 and 2010.

The first volume of Web of Spider-Man, published by Marvel Comics, replaced Marvel Team-Up as the third major Spider-Man title of the time. Released in April 1985, the series featured the return of Spider-Man's black (alien) costume, which attempted to re-bond with Peter Parker in the first issue.Fortunately, Peter manages to rid himself of the costume again using the church bells, and the alien was presumed to have died after that.

Retconned Appearance of Eddie Brock (Venom)

In issue #18 (September 1986), Peter Parker is seen being pushed in front of an oncoming train. He thinks to himself that this should not have happened, as his spider sense should have warned him of the danger.

As you can see from the image, this hand-pushing Peter is quite obviously female but as mentioned above, has been retconned to be Eddie Brock. This was because, at the time of first developing the character that would become Venom, it had been planned to be a female host.

That's right! Venom was originally intended to be female!

The original host for the Venom symbiote after it was separated from Peter Parker was supposed to be a pregnant woman who was in labor and en route to a hospital with her husband. During the journey, Spider-Man swung by and distracted a taxi driver, who slammed into the couple on the street, killing the husband and injuring the woman, which would cause her to have a miscarriage at the hospital.

This event would have driven the woman insane and developed a hatred for Spider-Man. She would have become the symbiote's new host after Spider-Man rejected it and would have become the original Venom.

This series gave us so much, including but in no way limited to many first appearances of reasonably well-known characters, Tombstone, most notably.

We had tie-ins with popular Spidey Stories such as Kraven's Last Hunt and The Clone Saga, a one-shot with Wolverine, and cameos by characters like the Hulk and Ghostrider!

As briefly mentioned already above, The "Clone Saga" storyline began in issue #117 (October 1994), where Ben Reilly became the Scarlet Spider.After issue #129 in October 1995, the title was renamed to Web of Scarlet Spider and started again from issue number #1.After four issues, however, the series was cancelled to make way for the new The Sensational Spider-Man title.

Web of Spider-man has always been downplayed amongst collectors, and so has always been a very affordable series to collect. This was the only Spidey book I could afford as a kid. As back then, I was priced out of Amazing Spider-Man. Sadly, I never kept any of my childhood books from this series.

Are you a fan of the series? Let us know in the comments!