Great Story that took thirty-one Years to Resurface in a Trilogy of Novels
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5 (Nov. 1968) with art by Stan Lee’s brother Larry Lieber, is a largely ignored chapter in Spidey’s history. "The Parents Of Peter Parker!" forty-page main story highlights the first appearance of Richard and Mary Parker (Peter Parker’s parents) in flashback form. Peter is helping his Aunt May by moving an old trunk from the attic down to the basement, and when the trunk accidently slips from the hand cart Peter is moving it on he reaches out to grab it to keep it from going down the basement stairs. His fast reflexes and spider-strength cause the catches on the trunk to break, and as he picks up its contents to put them back he sees an old newspaper story saying his parents died in a plane crash and that they were enemy spies. Peter runs upstairs to frantically ask his aunt about it, and she tells him her late husband Ben never believed such things about his brother, and she didn’t, either. She explains that his parents died in Algeria, and Uncle Ben’s repeated letters to a man in that country who supposedly found the Parker’s bodies were never replied to.
Peter can’t bear to go through life not knowing, so later that night he leaves his apartment in his Spidey costume to swing over to the Baxter Building to ask the Fantastic Four if they’ll give him a lift to Algeria. Mr. Fantastic just happens to be testing a super-fast transport for S.H.I.E.L.D., so he chauffeurs Spidey to Algeria as quick as you please. Spider-Man quickly locates the restaurant owner who knew Richard and Mary Parker, and this shady character gives Spidey an address where he can obtain more info. An informant for the mysterious boss of a notorious spy ring overhears Spider-Man’s interrogation of the restaurant owner, so he sets up an ambush halfway to the location Spider-Man is searching for. A knock-down/drag-out fight ensues, and after Spidey barely ducks a bullet and falls into a canal and drags himself out of the water, he comes to hours later. He immediately breaks into the house the restaurant owner gave him the address for, and Spidey discovers to his dismay that his father Richard was working for the evil Nazi, the Red Skull, when he finds a card in a file with his dad’s name on it. (This is Spider-Man’s first encounter with the Red Skull.) The Skull sends one of his big dumb musclemen after Spider-Man and our hero makes short work of the guy. Spider-Man discovers the Skull has escaped and leaves. The Skull immediately sends the Finisher, another of his goons, after Spider-Man by using a torn piece of the hero’s costume to enable the Finisher to use a sophisticated tracker to locate Spider-Man. The Finisher fires two high-tech missiles at our hero, and Spidey slings the first one into the canal with his webbing and lets the second one chase him back to the Finisher’s vehicle. When the missile blows the Finisher’s car up, the driver runs off and Spider-Man drags the dying Finisher out of the burning wreckage. He gets the Finisher to reveal to him that Richard and Mary Parker were actually U.S. double agents pretending to work for the Skull, and the Skull had them killed and set them up to appear to be traitors to the U.S. to get revenge on the Parkers for having the audacity to double-cross him.
Spidey goes charging back into the Skull’s headquarters, and he and the Skull go after each other for awhile until a stray shot from one of the Skull’s weapons sets the place on fire. The Skull escapes to torment Captain America another day, and after Spider-Man safely gets out of the inferno he notices the now-singed card he removed from his father’s file earlier has a split in it. He’s overjoyed to find his dad’s secret U.S. g-o-v-t ID behind the Skull’s logo. He uses this info to clear the names of his parents.
This story of Richard and Mary Parker was used heavily in the "Sinister Six" novel trilogy by Adam-Troy Castro (1999’s Gathering of the Sinister Six, 2000’s Revenge of the Sinister Six and 2000’s Secret of the Sinister Six). In all the issues for Marvel Comics that Stan Lee wrote, he never referenced this storyline ever again.
The back-up story in this Annual (“Here we Go-a-Plotting”) is an entertaining look at Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and John Romita working on Spider-Man plots.