The 1978 2017 2023 Amazing Spider-Man Mighty Marvel Comics Calendar: January Jinx

This is an expanded and updated version of a post originally published January 1, 2017.

January! It's a month of white sales, exercise machine blow-outs, and half-price calendars! That's why I never buy a wall calendar until they're marked down the day after Christmas. Granted, you might get stuck with a Taylor Swift calendar, but...I'm sorry, I can't think of an immediate drawback to that one.

in 2017, I snagged The Vintage Marvel Comics 2017 Calendar!, which also works in this year of 2023! It's bigger than me!


Each month features a larger-than-life, full-color repro of a Marvel Comic cover, performated so you can remove them for fine-art-type framing!


With twelve oversized prints to hang on my walls, I won't even need wallpaper this year!


But what I really wanted to show you was another great comic book 1978 calendar that you can use again in 2023 because, as Professor S. Miller has taught us, time keeps on slippin slippin slippin into the future. It's the Amazing Spider-Man Mighty Marvel Comics Calendar 1978!


Check out the nifty back-cover full-color flashback mural!


Who better to star in the calendar's introduction than our star of last year's 366 Days with J. Jonah Jameson, J...uh, Jonah Jameson!

None other than a guy I really respect, Matt D. Wilson, has written one of the definitive appreciations of JJJ in his "Threat or Menace: Celebrating the Brilliance of J. Jonah Jameson" on ComicsAlliance, a piece I took a lot of inspiration from when putting together 366 little salutes to Jameson. But I've just noticed that Matt sez

(The classic headline "Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?" really encapsulates the rhetoric, though it can’t be attributed to Lee. It first appears in relation to Spider-Man in 1981’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15, by Denny O'Neil and Frank Miller. Lee usually stuck to the more simple "Spider-Man: Menace.")

I believe I've found a definitive earlier use of the "Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?" headline here in this 1978 calendar. Matt's right, though; it's not by Lee. The text for this calendar was written by David Anthony Kraft and Jim Salicrup. Looks like I'd better update the Wikipedia article!


There's even a quick spotlight on how Spidey affects "random decent citizens," including a guy named Peter Parker. Hey, no dropping ash on Aunt May's sofa, Jonah!


Each calendar spread features a big twelve-by-twelve full-color pic illustrating Spider-Man and Peter Parker through the years, and I'll be showing them all to you at the beginning of every month throughout this year of 1978 2017 2023! First up: an Amazing Fantasy #15 flashback!


"January: A Time for Beginnings" in The Amazing Spider-Man Mighty Marvel Comics Calendar 1978 (Marvel, 1977), art by Al Milgrom ("in tribute to the one-and-only Steve Ditko")
And here you can see the January calendar itself. Check out the insane amount of detail; there's a big delight in every bite day!

(Click picture to '78 Ford LTD Landau Coupe-size)
So not only are you getting the 1978 DC Calendar, but the 1978 Marvel Calendar, all this year! Until their lawyers come down on me, so you'd better look fast. Excelsior!