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Author:
Title: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 36
Place Published:
Publisher:Marvel [Indicia: Non-Pareil Publishing Group]
Date Published: May, 1966
Description:

CGC certified: VG/Fine (5.0). White pages. Not cleaned and pressed. Cover: Steve Ditko pencils and inks, Stan Goldberg colors. Story: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Art: Steve Ditko (Grand Comics Databse: "As recounted by Roy Thomas, Carl Hubbell redrew the Looter figure, changing him to Spider-Man, page 13, panel 5, at the request of Stan Lee"). Colors: Stan Goldberg? Lettering: Artie Simek. First appearance: The Looter. GPAnalysis: A 5.0 sold for $145 in 3/22.

Ditko salutes Ayn Rand with this ish's lackluster villain, the Looter, whose name references Rand's chief bugaboo: bums and loafers feeding at the public trough.

"Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor." – Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. Random House: 1957, p. 387.

It's worth noting that Rand may have looted the term "looter" from critic H.L. Mencken, with whom she corresponded. Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, whereas Mencken wrote the following in 1956: "[Politics]... always has been a mere struggle between gangs of looters and exploiters." – Mencken, Minority Report. Knopf: 1956, note #222.

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