-Amazing Spider-Man #496-#497

One of Pete's students is searching for her missing brother, Pete soon realises this brother is actually someone he'd caught breaking into a car in an earlier story, and decides to help the young girl. The story touches on the way that Spider-Man can inadvertently affect not only the lives of criminals, but those of their families, and tries to show that behind every faceless penny-ante crook he picks up there is an actual person who may well not be as bad as they first seem. Its a nice story that looks at superheroing from a different perspective.

-Spider-Man Unlimited #3

An in-depth origin story that delves into the character of one of Spidey's most infamous villains, Doctor Octopus. The story covers the character's life from childhood to young adulthood, introducing his overprotective mother and oafish, ignorant father. Its a cleverly written story with a great structure that uses a conversation between two journalists talking about early obituaries as a framing device. Much of the story was reused for the Doctor Octopus Year One miniseries.

-Amazing Spider-Man #678-#679

One of Spidey's colleagues at the Horizons scientific think-tank manages to creates a time machine. Unfortunately just by gaining some knowledge of the next day the future is changed, leading to Pete and his friend seeing a future where New York is now a smoking crater. Spider-Man swings around town desperately trying to work out what it was that he was destined to do differently that day in an effort to change the day's outcome. Its a fun tale, and to be honest I'm kind of a sucker for these types of time-travel stories.

-She-Hulk #4

Madcap humour story from Writer Dan Slott that has She-Hulk help Spidey take J Jonah Jameson to court for libel! Unfortunately, as his two biggest enemies are now in one place the Scorpion decides he's going to crash the party too and things quickly take a turn for the worse. A very funny and memorable offering from certainly one of the most inventive and creative Spider-Man writers out there.

-Amazing Spider-Man #53-#56

Whilst on the trail of Doctor Octopus Spider-Man is hit by a weapon that results in him becoming amnesic. Doc Ock, as opportunistic as ever manages to convince him into believing they're partners in crime! Another imaginative issue from Stan Lee and John Romita, just when you think things might start getting predictable, Lee makes Doc Ock Aunt May's lodger and teams Spider-Man up with his worst enemy!

-Amazing Spider-Man #346-#347

Memorable Venom story from the character's creator. Venom was the combination of disgraced journalist Eddie Brock, a man who had lost his job after botching an article about a serial killer (which was disproven by Spider-Man), and the Alien Symbiote, a creepy organic lifeform that Pete found on another world, and later rejected. Here we have Venom tricking spidey and bringing him to a deserted island where he can hunt him in a cruel game of cat and mouse. The story does a good job of highlighting some of Pete's improvisational skills and has a lot of Venom's usual entertainingly nuts antics.

-Amazing Spider-Man #277

A little girl is kidnapped and bundled into a car during a blizzard, whilst Spider-man is pursuing the crooks the car overturns and he's badly injured, he and the girl storm on through the snow with the crooks (and maybe something even worse) in pursuit. An atmospheric and evocative Spidey story from famous fantasy artist Charles Vess.

-Amazing Spider-Man #240-#241

After twenty years in the dark Spider-Fans finally got the origin story for one of the Wallcrawler's earliest villains in this excellent Vulture issue from Roger Stern, made for the character's 20th anniversary. The story has the Vulture carrying out a vendetta against a company named Bestman Electronics, and through a series of flashbacks we get to see how the Vulture came to be. Great issue that does a lot to flesh out the Vulture and show things from his perspective for once.

-Avengers Annual #7, Marvel Two-in-One #2

Thanos has returned and humanities best hope, the Avengers have been defeated, all that's left is for the totally outclassed Spider-Man and the Thing to band together and try to defeat Thanos all by themselves. An epic, high stakes story that has Spider-Man suffering from a rare, but understandable panic attack as he comes to the conclusion that he is well and truly out of his league, before realising he's the worlds last and only hope, and going forth on a suicide mission, a last ditch effort to rescue the worlds mightiest heroes.

-Amazing Spider-Man #143-#149

The original Clone Saga that started off the whole thing. This famous story had Gwen Stacy mysteriously returning from the dead, and finally revealed the Jackal's identity and motives. As mentioned earlier I'm not really the biggest Gerry Conway fan, I think that the guy came up with some great concepts, but his execution is often lacking. Gwen Stacy's return should've lead to a lot of drama and important character scenes here but... well it goes pretty much unexplored. Anyway, on the plus side we get some nice scenes with Pete and MJ, and the fight between Spider-Man and his clone became somewhat of an iconic event over the years. The art is also great, one memorable panel has Pete sat on his doorstep looking like he's having a total breakdown!