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Came across a folder with a dozen or so images that number among my top favorites.
Liked a number of them for various reasons.
Wanted to show those images as well as relate some of those reasons.

So ...



Spider-man is probably my favorite superhero. Has been since the moment I discovered there WAS such a character. Must have been around age 7 when I did so. Everything about him just seemed so ... sensible. Superman? Hmm, not sensible. Too ... kiddie. No limits, no realism, no believability. Spider-man, though? Especially Spider-man as he was during the mid-80s and re-tellings of 1960 and 1970s tales?
He was somewhat believable. Really, with the exception of the whole sticking to walls thing, Webs rarely performed above the level of a person on a fabled adrenaline rush. Pickup the rear end of a car?
Read about people under stress doing that. Heard of it as a dinner conversation topic, too. Ever so often you'd hear about such a case in the news, usually a mom lifting a car off her toddler or some such, wondering where she got the strength. So Spider-man picking up the rear of a car? I could buy that.

Leaping 20 feet at a single bound?
This was around 1984.
The Olympics were on TV. People did that regularly.
Actually, if they got a running start, they could go a little farther.
Nothing special here.

Silk webbing?
Avid reader of National Geographic and watcher of nova.
The army was actually looking at developing spider silk into clothing and durable equipment like parachutes precisely because the stuff WAS as strong as it appears in the comics...

The Hulk was actually on re-runs around this same time.

The Hulk was definitely NOT as believable as Spider-man, but he occupied that rarefied space that receives a "pass" owing to history.

His hallmark was doing things slowly and powerfully.
When he appeared ... man it's hard to describe. The whole natural order of things seemed to be put on hold. He was compelling to watch, though for different reasons and for a different length of time.

It was truly a mystery as to what would happen, for the conventional tactics a man could realistically use against an opponent ...
they didn't work so well against Hulk.

He was in a class all by himself.
There was, like, EVERYbody else ... and then there was Hulk.

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Or so I thought.

Until I saw the trade featuring the images you're looking at now.

Spider-man versus the Juggernaut. A character I'd never seen or heard of before then, though, like everything produced by Marvel, a being with an extensive back history and references to comics I never imagined I'd find myself reading. What in the world was an "X-man"? (This was long before the 1990s cartoon put them on the map.) What in the world could any of them supposedly do to an opponent that could shrug off all the stuff I was reading of Spidey trying against this guy? He could walk through walls and pick up BUILDINGS. Guns didn't work, bombs didn't work, police cars, mini-tanks. Five guys and a gal were going to do better than any of THESE things? Really?