Schedules in Schools

This was something I wrote for a paper in my education masters. At the time, I was doing observations in two middle schools.

Before I entered the classroom for my final day of observations, I sat in the school’s office for about ten minutes and witnessed an interaction that crystallized something for me. A boy came in, looking for a missing backpack. It was described as green, the color of money. An administrator was with him, speaking on a walkie-talkie. The women at the office asked around to see if a missing backpack had been dropped off. No one at the office knew anything about this. A guard was asked, and didn’t know either. The secretaries asked the boy what had happened, and he said that he had left his backpack behind in the cafeteria.

There was an announcement on the PA, to the effect of that if anyone had mistakenly taken a backpack from the cafeteria, they should bring it to the main office. A few minutes later, another boy came with a backpack that had the iconography of a dollar bill. He was directed to where he should leave it. He was later asked what had happened, and explained (somewhat haltingly, not as if he was nervous, but he wasn’t very articulate, in a way that is often the case with children) that he saw that the backpack had been left behind in the cafeteria, and took it to the next classroom.

My main takeaway was that several people working at the school spent time on one child’s briefly missing backpack. This included the first student, the student who came to the office, several administrators, one of the security guards, and anyone who paused one of their classes to hear an announcement. It wasn’t the result of anyone behaving inappropriately. It’s a typical thing that happens in schools, and it’s illustrative of how a small thing can end up being a distraction. I noticed other examples in my observations, some which were different because at least one person had acted inappropriately, or neglected an existing policy.

It highlights a difficulty of detailed lesson-planning in the schools, as these types of things will happen and throw off schedules. So, teachers don’t accomplish as much as they intended, which means they’ll have to try again at a later date. Of course teachers have other limitations, including directives from the top-down and constant assessments.

Roger Ebert and African-American Directors

This has been an interesting time for African-American directors. Despite #Oscarssowhite, Ava DuVarney had tremendous acclaim with Selma. Denzel Washington got a best picture nomination for his Fences adaptation, while getting Viola Davis a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress award. Barry Jenkins became the first African-American director responsible for a Best Picture winner. Three years earlier, British Steve McQueen was the first black man to direct a Best Picture winner with 12 Years a Slave.

I was oddly distracted by the idea of what Roger Ebert would think of all this. He championed films that could be seen as dealing with race or the struggles of African Americans, including several of his favorite movies of the year: The Color Purple (1985), Mississippi Burning (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Malcolm X (1992), Hoop Dreams (1994, also his favorite film of the 1990s), Monster’s Ball (2001) and Crash (2005.) He was also a Chicago liberal, very happy with the election of Obama. In the documentary Life Itself, Ava DuVarney said his marriage to a black woman made him an honorary brother.

Looking at his earlier articles, he had championed the directors in their earlier films.

He gave Denzel Washington’s debut Antwone Fisher three and a half stars.

Washington’s follow-up The Great Debaters merited four stars.

He wrote about communications he had with Ava Duvernay over her early film. This was at a time when she was a relatively obscure figure, and not directing blockbuster fantasy films for Disney. He gave her relatively obscure debut I Will Follow three and half stars.

Ebert gave Steve McQueen’s debut Hunger three and a half stars. Shame got four stars. The first of those films was about an IRA prisoner’s hunger strike, and the second was about a New York City executive’s sex addiction. Neither dealt with race or with black characters, although I doubt this was something Ebert would have considered a negative.

Barry Jenkins’ debut Medicine for Melancholy made less than $100,000. He gave it three and a half stars.

The main reason I think about Ebert in this context is that I’m familiar with his work. I’m sure there are plenty of other film critics, to say nothing of writers, directors and actors excited by new developments, and constant additions to the black film canon.

Warren Ellis on Comics Writing and Reading

A while back, Warren Ellis gave some good advice on comics writing and reading in his newsletter Oribtal Operations.

You learn to write from reading books, and living your life, and investigating the inside of your own head. Next, you learn how to write comics by pulling them apart and studying their innards to see how they work. This is how you end up as a 24/7 comics writer and also a terrifying shut-in who will eventually go nuts in a very public way and conclude your career as a figure in a newspaper photo captioned FOREST CREATURE SUBDUED BY POLICE TASERS. But I’m serious. You are going to learn how to do this – learn your own way to manage the difference in pacing between eight pages and twenty-two pages and one hundred and twenty pages, learn how to achieve effects in timing and drama and emotional nuance, learn when to talk and when to shut up – by studying the best comics you can find, and tearing them apart and seeing how they do things and then stealing the tools you can use and adapting them into your own style. You are going to want to read broadly. Make yourself read things you wouldn’t ordinarily look at. If superheroes are your favourite, then make yourself read Carla Speed McNeil or Dan Clowes or Marjane Satrapi. If you only read science fiction comics, then force yourself to look at Hugo Pratt and Eddie Campbell and Svetlana Chmakova.

Growing up, my favourite comics writer was Alan Moore. But I learned just as much, if not more, from studying Eddie Campbell, Philippe Druillet, Bryan Talbot, Glenn Dakin, Carol Swain, Will Eisner and a hundred other people.

Read comics. All comics. And then cut them open to steal their power.

My tastes are eclectic enough that this isn’t advice I need, but it’s worth remembering in any creative field. And he lists some good leads.

Will Samuel L Jackson Ever Get An Oscar?

Mike Fleming of Deadline made an interesting claim a while back. He viewed Samuel L Jackson as one of the actors almost certain to get an Oscar at some point.

There are three actors I consider to be inevitable Oscar winners. Robert Downey Jr and Leonardo DiCaprio are two, and Jackson is the third. This doesn’t sound like the role that gets him there, but he follows by starring for Quentin Tarantino in The Hateful Eight early next year. Those who heard a staged reading for charity of the first draft of Tarantino’s scriptsaid that Jackson has a tour de force role. He somehow flew under the radar for his work alongside DiCaprio in Django Unchained even though the movie became way more interesting when he entered it, playing one of the most loathsome characters in recent memory; let’s not even get started on getting beaten by Ed Wood‘s Martin Landau for Jackson’s turn as Scripture-spouting hit man Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction. It would be most appropriate if Jackson finally raised his trophy in a film by Tarantino, who has provided so many signature lines for the actor.

He did end up being correct on DiCaprio, so it’s interesting to consider the odds of the next guys.

With DiCaprio, there was precedent for actors with four nominations winning Oscars in later go-arounds, with Al Pacino, Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson, Gregory Peck and a few others. He was able to follow in the footsteps of all the actors who won Oscars in their 40s. 28 winners of the Best Supporting Oscar were in their 40s, as were 38 winners of the Lead award. It’s the most Oscar-friendly decade for actors, as they’ve been in the industry for a while but still get leading man roles. Downey’s in his fifties, although plenty of people have won at that age, and he has certainly maintained his leading man status.

There’s less precedent for Jackson. There has been speculation that Jackson pissed off voters by being ungracious when Martin Landau beat him in 1994, and he’s older than Landau was then. Henry Fonda is the only man to win Best Actor at an older age, although there have been a few elderly best supporting actor winners.

Things are a bit different now, though. Jackson seems to be in better shape than John Wayne was in 1969 when he essentially got a lifetime achievement award for True Grit at age 62, the oldest lead winner until Henry Fonda a decade later.

It is also difficult to calculate the effects of popularity.  Jackson is in-demand enough that it wouldn’t surprise anyone if he gets a role as Oscar friendly as Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, or John Gleguld in Arthur. One thing these roles have in common is that it features a mentor (or patriarch) who dies, so you’ll know he wants an Oscar when he starts taking those roles.

Middle School is Different

This was something I wrote for one of the classes in my Education masters program, for a class dealing with middle school education. It was a response to an article on I-Searches, a form of paper in which students consistently analyze their search process, and there were references to a book on the middle school movement.

I was unaware of the history of the Middle School as something independent from elementary school and high school. It provides more understanding on policies that affect students and teachers. For example, I’m going for a 7-12 certification which fits the Junior High model but not the 6-8 Middle School model that’s been the norm since before I was born. It might be difficult to find a better example of bureaucratic sclerosis.

From my own experiences, I can certainly agree with Lounsbury’s conclusion that middle schools aren’t the best way to teach students in an important age group. I was already aware of the implications of this particular cognitive stage of the students, although I hadn’t considered the moral aspects of reaching students at this particular point in their development.

Lounsbury’s piece suggests the flaws in the standard practice, but doesn’t provide an alternative, aside from the implication that it’s better when schools are free to experiment. This raises a lot of questions, as there are incentives for a degree of homogeneity. Students and teachers move, and high schools often consist of students from multiple middle schools, so some standards may be necessary so that high school freshmen would have similar levels of background knowledge.

The course text provides more concrete solutions. The emphasis on exploration is welcome, since this is a time when students learn how to do independent research. I think it would be excellent to have this as an important part of the process. Part of the book might be a response to other attitudes so prevalent that they don’t require any kind of explanation or justification in a document meant for educators, but flexibility isn’t the only priority. There are some things all students should learn, suggesting a time and place for assessments.

I remember doing I-searches in Middle School, although some of the specifics differed. I don’t know if my I-searches were split into the four sections mentioned in the piece. The thing I notice immediately is that it serves many purposes. It allows students a chance to explore topics that are of interest to them, but also helps prepare them for the essays they’ll need to write in High School, and maybe college.

Grading is a little bit different for these, but in a sensible way. I thought of describing it as less rigorous, since students get credit for research, even if there are no significant results. But it’s not entirely accurate to say that it’s easier, since the students still have to do a fair amount of writing and explaining. Whereas high school papers typically require students finding something about their subject, the purpose here is to teach students how to research, so allowing them an opportunity to explain why they weren’t able to learn specific information is still useful. It prepares them for high school with slightly less pressure to get results. Frustrations and setbacks can be educational, and it’s a good way to teach students that.

There are many variations of the I-chart, which makes it a versatile tool for Middle School Literacy teachers. I’m sure I’d do quite a few of these as teacher. If I had to search information about Middle School level teaching for an I-Search, it would be the pros and cons of teaching as a moral enterprise, and how to handle the so-called grey areas.

Oops

This was the panel from Amazing Spider-Man #121.

And this is the one I’m used to.

In the original comic, the script called for the Washington Bridge, but artist Gil Kane drew the Brooklyn Bridge. When the text was corrected, the joke had to be removed, which might have been for the best given the nasty thing that happens a few pages later.

George Eliot on slang

Every now and then, I come across an argument in a centuries old book that still feels fresha and relevant.

From George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

“Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?” said Rosamond, with mild gravity.

“Only the wrong sort. All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.”

“There is correct English: that is not slang.”

“I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.”

“You will say anything, Fred, to gain your point.”

“Well, tell me whether it is slang or poetry to call an ox a leg-plaiter.”

“Of course you can call it poetry if you like.”

“Aha, Miss Rosy, you don’t know Homer from slang. I shall invent a new game; I shall write bits of slang and poetry on slips, and give them to you to separate.”

“Dear me, how amusing it is to hear young people talk!” said Mrs. Vincy, with cheerful admiration.

Technically, the scene was excerpted in Michael Schmidt’s The Novel: A Biography.

Movies Watched In 2017 Part 2

Continuing my list…

I’m listing some attributes of films for my own benefit. I’m curious how many movies I’ll end up seeing this year in a specific genre or dealing with a particular subject matter. New movie just means a film I haven’t seen before. For the last month or so, I’ve focused exclusively on those.

Movie #26/ New Movie #24/ 1930s Movie #3/ Science Fiction Movie #5/ Movie About Politics #6/ Criterion Edition #6: Things To Come
This is a weird film, a vision of the future circa 1935. It’s often, preachy and didactic, although quite interesting in the hints of the flaws of the coming utopia (towards the end, the mob attacking the scientist’s house has a good point). The special effects are fascinating, and the set designs are incredible.
7/10

Movie #27/ New Movie #25/ Russian Movie #1/ Criterion Edition #7 1970s Movie #5/ Science Fiction Movie #6: Solaris
This was a strange mix of genre and director, with an arthouse Russian depicting weirdness on board a space station. The central mystery leads to some interesting questions, as scientists communicate with a strange species. The visuals are stunning and it takes some interesting turns.
9/10

Movie #28/ New Movie #26/ Silent Movie Era #3/ Criterion Edition #8/ German Film #1: Pandora’s Box
This was a silent film about a fallen woman that takes some weird turns, especially with the ending, and a surprisingly sympathetic take on Jack the Ripper. The most appealing part of the film is the magnetic lead performance of Louise Brooks.
9/10

Movie #29/ New Movie #27/ 2010s Movie #6/ Criterion Edition #9/ German Film #2: Phoenix
Essentially a Holocaust noir, as a concentration camp survivor tries to figure out if her husband sold her out to German officials, after having had just enough plastic surgery for her husband to think she looks enough like his dead wife to help get his hands on her inheritance. The ending is stunning.
8/10

Movie #30/ New Movie #28/ Japanese Movie #2/ Criterion Edition #10/ 1970s Movie #6/ Comic Book Movie #2: Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx
The narrative’s a bit episodic and unfocused, although that’s the norm for the series. It’s more of an excuse for compelling set pieces, some of them straight out of the manga. The highlight is an encounter on a burning ship. It does raise some interesting moral questions, including whether the lead is on the right side. The film acknowledges that he could very easily be the antagonist, showing the perspectives of his various enemies.
8/10

Movie #31/ New Movie #29/ 1960s Movie #3: Hud
This is the second film I’ve seen this year in which Melvyn Douglas won an Oscar for playing a dying patriarch. It’s an interesting take on messed up family dynamics, as a kid comes to realize that his uncle is a bit of a douchebag. The uncle’s played by Paul Newman in the 60s, so the audience liked him a lot more than they should have. Patricia O’Neal gave a tremendous performance as the harried housekeeper.
9/10

Movie #32/ New Movie #30/ 2010s Movie #7/ Science Fiction Movie #7/ Comic Book Movie #3: Logan
It’s arguably the best of the X-Men films, and I’ve liked most of them. It’s remarkable for how dark the fates of the characters are, but then there’s a new take on X-23. I heard an argument on a podcast that the focus on Logan and Professor X stripped the X-Men  films to their essence for a story about loss, regret and making a difference. This is likely the most satisfying finale to a cinematic superhero saga.
9/10

Movie #33/ New Movie #31/ 2010s Movie #8/ Black Cinema #2: Moonlight
Yeah, this film deserved to win Best Picture, and I quite liked La La Land. Mahersala Ali was tremendous as a conflicted drug dealer with a potential motive for helping out a kid. He disappears, but there is a very clever way of making sure his presence is felt in the other chapters. The format of looking at three episodes in Chiron’s life works really well. Naomi Harris is quite good as the deeply flawed mom, the one character seen in all three portions, who has several compelling transformations. The score is great, and the film has a tremendous sense of color. The central love story is handled very delicately.
10/10

Movie #34/ New Movie #32/ 2010s Movie #9: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
It’s not terrible, but it may be the worst movie I’ve seen so far this year. It’s a derivative comedy about hedonistic twenty-somethings and weddings, with some decent gags and a winning performance by Audrey Plaza.
6/10

Movie #35/ New Movie #33/ 1930s Movie #4: Baby Face
This pre-Code shortish film had some similarities to Pandora’s Box, and material that seems really out of place for early Hollywood (after the death of her father/ pimp, a young woman sleeps her way to the top). It’s entertaining, and borderline corrupt.
7/10

Movie #36/ New Movie #34/ 1960s Movie #4/ Criterion Edition #11/ Theatrical Adaptation #3: The Chimes at Midnight
Orson Welles, the greatest actor-director, depicts one of Shakespeare’s greatest characters. It had to be good, and it is, although the merging of multiple plays into one story results in some moments that are quite unfocused. It’s all worth it for Welles as the self-indulgent but always compelling Falstaff.
8/10

Movie #37/ New Movie #35/ 1970s Movie #7: The Great Waldo Pepper
I was interested in this ever since I read about it in William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade. The story of a barnbusting pilot in the days before regulation suffers a bit from abrupt tonal shifts. Characters die without the weirdness being sufficiently acknowledged. With Robert Redford as the lead, you see why Waldo Pepper gets away with so much.
7/10

Movie #38/ New Movie #36/ 1980s Movie #3: Arthur
An odd romance about a middle aged alcoholic boor pissed off about how he has to get married. In the inevitable scene where he breaks off his engagement, I appreciate the ways they keep the audience on his side. John Gieguld might have been the best version of a particular type (the droll butler who loves his patron, but wishes he would grow the hell up) in film.
8/10

Movie #39/ New Movie #37/ 2000s Movie #2/ Movie About Politics #7: Recount
I’ve been slacking when it comes to movies from the early 2000s; not sure why. It may be that at this point, I’ve seen most of the highlights of that particular decade, so there’s not as much to catch up on. I had some temporary subscriptions to HBO Now and Filmstruck, which may also be biased towards earlier movies (with Filmstruck’s Criterion collection) and the last few years (with HBO).

This was a great ensemble piece about the behind the scenes fighting during the 2000 Florida recount. For the most part, it was fair to the two sides, mixing the legal strategy and consequences, with some additional chaos (especially with Laura Dern’s Katherine Harris.)
8/10

Movie #40/ New Movie #38/ 1960s Movie #5/ Science Fiction Movie #8: These are the Damned
The film has quite a few balancing acts, starting out as a teen gang story in which a young woman decides to leave her brother’s group with the help of an older guy she helped them mug. There’s a slow build to the inevitable scene where they are forced into a secret army experiment, encountering weird children who still act like kids but pose a threat to the public. This raises some questions that are tough to resolve. It’s essential viewing for Kubrick fans due to the influence on A Clockwork Orange and Dr. Strangelove.
9/10

Movie #41/ New Movie #39/ 1960s Movie #6: Never Take Candy From a Stranger
This is not what I expected to be the subject matter of a 1960s film. The first two-thirds feature a family’s efforts to sue a powerful local for sexually harassing their daughter, and it makes for a compelling legal drama. There’s a mismatch with the final act, in which an old pervert is transformed into something else.
8/10

Movie #42/ New Movie #40/ 1980s Movie #3: Angel Heart
This is a weird horror-noir. It has a fantastic score, and sense of location, especially as the lead’s journey takes him to New Orleans in 1955. But it goes into some messed up territory.
8/10

Movie #43/ New Movie #41/ 2000s Movie #3/ Criterion Edition #12: In the Mood For Love
Interesting beautifully shot film with a slightly disorienting narrative as jilted spouses struggle with their own feelings, and their need to understand why they were cheated on, as well as the morality of what they’re doing by essentially falling into an emotional affair they don’t quite want to acknowledge.
9/10

Movie #44/ New Movie #42/ 1970s Movie #8/ Black Cinema #3: Killer of Sheep
This was mentioned in a “Best of” book I was given as a present years ago (The National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films where it had a writeup by the now disgraced Armond White) so I’ve been aware of it for a while without seeing it. It’s a strange but compelling film, a literal MFA thesis which adopts the Italian Neorealism style for the Watts neighborhood of California in the 1970s, showing vignettes in the life of a family struggling to find dignity in the ghetto. The soundtrack (which kept the film from finding wider release) is excellent.
9/10

Howard Gardner and Education Literature

Once again, this part of something I wrote when going for my Masters. This was on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.

There can be two very different responses to older articles on education. Sometimes a piece that seems somewhat recent can be hopelessly outdated, especially when it comes to the implementation of technology. Other times something written decades ago is very pertinent to the current environment. That’s certainly been the case in this class, where I sometimes read about a problem from years ago, and wonder why it hasn’t been fixed yet, when someone has already described it so well.

Given my interest in culture, Howard Gardner’s “Multiple Intelligences: Implications for Art and Creativity” was going to appeal to me. He raised a point on the shortcomings of something that only measures old knowledge, and suggested “fashioning a product” (17) as an alternative, something that can give more students a chance to shine.

Gardner noted how some of the most skilled human beings ever alive, from Gandhi to Virginia Woolf, had immensely different talents. Gardner also discussed unusual individuals like idiot savants. (17) This gets to a question for education policy. Is the aim of the education system to result in more humans like Picasso or Freud, when the vast majority will never have that level of influence? Or is it to help the majority? It’s also worth noting that some of the intelligences aren’t necessarily marketable, and some talents may be redundant, so there may not be an advantage to every school in the United States producing one Sigmund Freud each year. The counterargument is that we should aim for a society in which everyone is able to reach their full potential, so that there will be hundreds of Gandhis advocating for change, and that every subculture will have a Virginia Woolf to write about their experiences and understanding of the world.

Garnder’s assumption that “not all people have the same mind (22)” has major implications for teaching and assessment. It’s horrifying when he described “a child who at the age of six is already classified as a scholastic loser.” (24) His conclusion wasn’t that assessments were bad, but that they were performed was ineffective. He felt that process was important than results, hence the article he wrote with Rieneke Zessoules, “Authentic Assessment: Beyond the Buzzword and Into the Classroom.” The authors complained of days when “each American child takes as many as three such standardized tests every school year (48)” and I’m sure many teachers long for the days when it was that rare. These experts saw the problem decades ago, and I saw the effect at a time when students received three examinations in a three week period.

Gardner and Zessoules described efforts of teachers to have their students create new products, which is the most cognitively difficult step on Bloom’s taxonomy, and arguably the most effective way to learn something. However, a problem is that it’s difficult to assess by traditional standardized means. The English teacher Jerry Halpern described his struggle determining why students make particular changes in drafts of their stories (67) even though there must be a clear reason as far as the student is concerned, and the process demonstrates that the children possess a deeper understand than they previously had. The article cites the “hills and valleys of (the) development of a young writer” (64) to highlight another facet. Maturation can be bumpy, but students are often expected to progress in a clear path.

Another task that is effective is getting students to make reflections, which ties to metacogniton and self-regulation, two of the most important attributes for a learner, and two things that are difficult to measure on a test. Gardner and Zessoules prefer process-folios over measuring what kids know. A disadvantage is that the latter allows the initially more advanced students to coast, as they have less incentives to grow, or to push themselves.

Eleanor Duckworth’s “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” provided strong insights into how children learn. Some of the wonderful ideas would be the types of things adults take for granted, and that can be dismissed if we expect children to be like little adults who just need to be told the things that adults already know. It is often difficult for many of us to appreciate how children come to understand the world in the way we do, which requires them figuring out the things we’ve already figured out.

The piece ends with the observation that students “will some day happen upon wonderful ideas that no one else has ever happened upon before.” (14) This expectation that students will come up with something new seems contrary to getting adults to appreciate what’s going on in the mind of a child. I wonder if it’s reasonable to expect all students to be truly creative, although I don’t recall any of the students I co-taught not being inventive in some way, so it may come down to a difference in definitions and frames of reference.

Best Spider-Man Stories By Decade

This was something I did for a message board a while back. The challenge was to list the best Spider-Man stories by decade. It’s obviously very subjective, although it was a useful exercise in considering what made the character tic, and in getting a variety of approaches to the character.

1960s…
1. The Master Planner Saga- Amazing Spider-Man #31-33
2. Spider-Man- Amazing Fantasy #15
3. Disaster- Amazing Spider-Man #53-59
4. Spider-Man No More!- Amazing Spider-Man #50-52
5. Madness Is All In The Mind- Amazing Spider-Man #24
6. Spider-Man and the Green Goblin-Both Unmasked- Amazing Spider-Man #39-40
7. Horns of the Rhino- Amazing Spider-Man #41-43
8. The End of Spider-Man- Amazing Spider-Man #17-19
9. The Sinister Six- Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1
10 (Tie). Bring Back My Goblin To Me (Amazing Spider-Man #26-27) and The Goblin Lives! (Spectacular Spider-Man Magazine #2)

The 60s marked the one decade dominated by one writer, Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee. I have heard arguments for counting the Lee/ Ditko collaborations as a separate writer due to Ditko’s contributions to the plots, which would give the decade a 50/50 split.

1970s…
1. The Night Gwen Stacy Died (Amazing Spider-Man #121-122)
2. Return of the Burglar (Amazing Spider-Man #193-200)
3. Enter…Morbius (Amazing Spider-Man #100-102)
4. The Punisher (Amazing Spider-Man #129)
5. The Longest Hundred Yards (Amazing Spider-Man #153)
6. Spider-Man…Murderer (Amazing Spider-Man #89-90)
7. A Matter of Love…and Death (Marvel Team-Up #59-60)
8. And Then Came Electro (Amazing Spider-Man #82)
9. The Green Goblin Lives Again! (Amazing Spider-Man #136-137)
10. At Kraven’s Command (Marvel Team-Up #67)

In contrast to other decades, it took me a long time to come up with ten worthy stories for the 70s, although it was interesting how much of what we’d think of as 1960s or 1980s Spider-Man came from these years, with the end of Stan Lee’s Spider-Man, and Chris Claremont/ John Byrne’s Marvel Team-Up.

1980s…
1. The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man (Amazing Spider-Man #248)
2. Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut (Amazing Spider-Man #229-230)
3. Kraven’s Last Hunt
4. Spider-Man VS Wolverine
5. The Death of Jean Dewolfe (Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man #107-110)
6. The Hobgoblin Saga (Amazing Spider-Man #238-239, 244-245, 247-251)
7. Venom (Amazing Spider-Man #300)
8. The Owl-Octopus War (Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man #72-79)
9. The Commuter (Amazing Spider-Man #267)
10. Hyde…In Plain Sight (Amazing Spider-Man #231-232)

Honorable mentions are too many to name. Tom Defalco would likely have made the top ten in any other decade with the Alien Costume saga, and the return of Crusher Hogan.

1990s…
1. Best Enemies (Spectacular Spider-Man #178-200)
2. The Gift (Amazing Spider-Man #400)
3. Amazing Fantasy #16-18
4. Arachnomorphosis (What If? #89)
5. Torment (Spider-Man #1-5)
6. Spidey Battles Hawkeye the Marksman (Untold Tales of Spider-Man #17)
7. Revelations Part 4 (Spider-Man #75)
8. Spider-Man/ Spider-Man 2099
10. Ye Gods (Spider-Man 2099 #17)

 

Even compared to the 70s, it was tough to come up with enough good stories for this decade. Though I guess I could have split the Harry Osborn saga into multiple stories. This was probably the decade with my most unconventional choices (Todd McFarlane’s writing debut, and a really obscure dark What If? issue in the top five.)

2000s….
1. Learning Curve (Ultimate Spider-Man #8-13)
2. Down Among the Dead Men (Marvel Knights Spider-Man #1-12)
3. One Small Break (Peter Parker Spider-Man #30-32)
4. Spider-Man Blue
5. Unscheduled Stop (Amazing Spider-Man #578-579)
6. Spider-Man/ Human Torch: I’m With Stupid
7. Coming Home (Amazing Spider-Man Volume 2 #30-35, 37, 38)
8. Field of Dream (Peter Parker Spider-Man #27-28)
9. The Ultimate Clone Saga (Ultimate Spider-Man #97-105)
10. Behind the Mustache (Tangled Web #20)

This ended up being another really good decade for the Spider-Man comics.

2010s….
1. Superior Spider-Man #1-10
2. Matters of Life & Death (Amazing Spider-Man #655-656)
3. Shed (Amazing Spider-Man #630-633))
4. Gauntlet: The Rhino (Amazing Spider-Man #617, 625)
5. Spider Island (Amazing Spider-Man #666-673/ Venom #6-9)
6. Superior Foes of Spider-Man Volume 1
7. Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #1-5
8. Death of Spider-Man (Ultimate Spider-Man #156-160)
9. Dying Wish (Amazing Spider-Man #698-700)
10. Spider-Gwen (Edge of Spider-Verse #2)

I’ve decided to chunk the first ten issues of Superior Spider-Man as one story since there is a beginning, middle and end (even if it functions well as part of a larger story.) The decade’s not over yet, but this marks a respectable showing (although for this decade, I’ve read almost every comic, while it’s possible that there are some obscure 1970s and 1990s comics that are quite good, but I’ve never managed to read.)