An objectivist, a Jewish refugee from Eastern Europe, and a liberal progressive all walk into a Spider-Man annual...
The 24th Amazing Spider-Man annual was published in 1990, and had a primary story written by David Michelinie and Gil Kane. The four back-up stories are written by Michelinie, Tom DeFalco, J.M. DeMatteis, and Toby Isabella. The art on the back-up stories was done by Steve Ditko and and Mike Zeck. The main story is Part 1 of a 4 part series, running through the Spider-Man annuals, in which Spider-Man is shrunk down to the size of an ant! For some context on this concept, the previous two years, all of Marvel's annuals had been part of crisis-crossover events, known as The Evolutionary War and Atlantis Attacks!, where a gigantic menace had threatened the world/universe. The problem with this was, the tone of cosmic events had to be shoe-horned into comics where the usual tone was a bit more realistic or fun. And thus, here, we have an "event" that is designed around who Spider-Man is as a character.
To start our central story: Spider-Man, or rather Peter Parker, in his daytime job as a photographer, is covering an industry trade show where exciting new technology, including anti-gravity, is being demonstrated. Ant-Man, (the Scott Lang iteration) is also attending the same show, looking for new products for his civilian job as an electronics expert. Of course, the presence of pricey equipment attracts the attention of a gang of thieves, who attack the electronic show, and run right into our two bug-themed heroes. But in the process, Spider-Man gets a whiff of Ant-Man's shrinking gas and has to fight the hijackers at the size of an actual spider! That being said, he manages to dispatch the mooks as quickly as possible but we are then faced with another problem: Ant-Man is unable to return Spider-Man to normal size! To be continued!
This beginning adventure was vintage Spider-Man: witty banter, technobabble, and a generally cheerful tone with no moral complications as Spider-Man easily defeats a gang of robbers. The art was by Gil Kane, who had been working in the comics industry since 1942 and had been a seminal creator for both DC and Marvel. Gil Kane was never specifically a Spider-Man artist, but he draws the issue with his own style, and it fits the easy feel of this first story.
So it is time for our second story, featuring...Solo, the teleporting mercenary who fights terrorism. In this case, Solo is in Spain, where a group of terrorists from the separatist area of "Cascan" (a combination of Catalan and Basque, apparently, although they speak Spanish in the story) has set off a bomb in Madrid. Solo goes to fight terrorist leader "Mendoza" at his castle fortress of "El Brujo", where he wins a fight, more or less, but is left grappling with the problem of child soldiers being used by terrorist movements. The main story was very light, and this second story, featuring a somewhat obscure member of Spider-Man's backup cast, goes into some very serious territory. It was written by the same writer, David Michelinie, but illustrated by Steve Ditko, who was Spider-Man's original artist, but who also had been semi-retired for years at that point.
In our third story, Spider-Man and general Marvel Universe villain The Sandman is trying to go straight, and attends a hockey game with The Thing. The Sandman reflects on his upbringing and wonders whether a career criminal from a working class background in Brooklyn can ever go straight. Even as we see the Sandman return to the room he rents from a poor family, a jailbreak by his fellow criminal companions casts his desire to stay out of crime in doubt. This story was written by J.M. DeMatteis and drawn by Mike Zeck, who were the artistic team on "Kraven's Last Hunt", widely considered to be one of the best Spider-Man stories ever told. DeMatteis also wrote an autobiographical graphic novel, Brooklyn Dreams, detailing...the conflict between his working-class Brooklyn background and his desire to be an artist.
Our next "story" is a two page schematic of Peter Parker and Mary Jane's loft. Have you ever needed to know how to get to the bathroom in the Parker place? Well, now you are covered.
Our final story is a five page story by Tony Isabela and Steve Ditko, where Ant-Man falls asleep and finds himself facing the menace of an ant who wants to steal his helmet and brainwash humanity using its powers. Then he wakes up! It was all a dream! Or was it?
That was perhaps more detail than I wanted to go into, but once I described one story, I realized I needed to describe the rest of them to put the entire thing in context. And the context here is that behind a feature story that is as light as possible, with Spider-Man fighting gadget based villains, we have stories that deal with more serious issues, such as terrorism and recidivism. And all of this makes me wonder about what the editorial planning for this was like. And for that matter, the legal and commercial editing and censorship. One of the advertisements in here was from the game company LJN, and I am wondering if things like this involved phone calls between Marvel's lawyers and advertiser's lawyers "this issue has a hard-hitting expose of Catalan separatists, but don't worry, we don't call them Catalan!". I wonder if the editor and DeMatteis argued about how many scenes in his story should show The Sandman using his superpowers, versus trudging down the street. And I wonder if they actually enlisted Ditko's help by telling him the villains were communists. More or less.
Which brings me back to my opening sentence. Steve Ditko was an objectivist, a doctrinaire follower of Ayn Rand, and it is well-documented that this did shape his work. Gil Kane was a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, coming over as a young child in the 1920s. I don't know if he was truly a "refugee", but I can't believe that his background didn't shape some of his work. And David Michilinie? I call him a liberal progressive, because that is what I imagine an artist in New York would be. I also have gathered from some of his stories that Michilinie had certain social concerns. Strangely enough, however, given Michilinie's importance to Marvel, as one of the longest running Spider-Man writers, and as the person who reinvented much of the Spider-Man mythos, not much is available about Michilinie's opinions in general. Not that I am expecting him to be writing manifestos, but he sprinkled enough social and political commentary into his run on Spider-Man that there was obviously something going on there. But he is just one of the creators, of diverse ideologies and artistic styles, with decades of experience, all coming together to provide diverse stories of a shared mythology---with advertisements for video games interspersed. At least, in 1990, they were no longer advertising bubble gum.