Saturday night we took the kids to see Spider-Man and Men in Black II. Both of which we wanted to see (myself included) and neither of which we'd gotten around to before they left the theatre. In fact I had already settled in for the wait to rent one or both of them on DVD (which is what now, about three weeks or so?). To my surprise and delight, last weekend both were served up one a one-ticket deal (no doubt to boost the end-of-summer numbers). They weren't too bad, either - not in any way Oscar material, to be sure, but not bad at all for a couple of comic book-turned movie features. And heck, one of them (take your pick) in essence was free. MIBII was typical sequel fare, and Spider-Man played a little fast and loose with the 'original history' (real web shooters on his wrists? Please…), but all in all was pretty cool for an old Spidey fan like me (never mind all the continuity errors we've all heard about - remember this sucker was rushed through post-production since they had to re-shoot half of it after the WTC fell).

With the recent resurgence of interest in Spider-Man, I have found myself once again devoting a lot of time (and money) to comic book shops and (now) the Internet in pursuit of wall-crawling, web-slinging adventure - something I haven't done since I was a young kid in the 1970's. My wife thinks I'm trying to re-live my childhood, which may be partly true because I have been having memories of those early stories. The problem is that the memories have faded significantly since then - for example, from one particular issue I remember reading as a child I could only recall two facts from one scene in the whole story: 1. Spidey had been hallucinating, seeing all his enemies at one timer coming at him from a brick wall, and 2. he had severely damaged his hands in a futile attempt to beat up said wall. I went to my favorite search engine, www.google.com, and searched for "spider-man, brick wall, punching." Among the thousands of results, many of which were ignorable right away as recent movie references, I found www.spiderfan.org, which had a description (including photo) of the issue I wanted - I remembered the cover as soon as I saw it (if you're interested, it was The Amazing Spider-Man, issue #141, February 1975). I jetted over to www.ebay.com, on a whim, and searched for "The Amazing Spider-Man issue #141" and lo and behold, there was one person, with one copy, which I will most likely buy for a few bucks (never mind the fact that I already bought it for a quarter over 25 years ago). I'll probably pay more than I'm paying now for new issues - an astonishing (to me, anyway - I'd been out of the habit for a while) $2.25 - but worth every penny if you're into Spider-Man (and re-living your childhood). Thank goodness for that cool little shop in the Kroger shopping center - you know, the one that used to be squeezed in next to Blimpie's. Even though it's called 'Sports Cards', they have quite the selection of comic books and toys as well. Very cool.

For your further information and entertainment:

• www.spiderfan.org
• www.sony.com/spiderman
• www.movie-mistakes.com/film.php?filmid=2225
• www.ebay.com
• www.google.com