I'm a Marvel fanboy...even though I don't actually own a single comic book of theirs, no where round here does Marvel comics...or so I thought.

So whilst having a 3 hours to kill in college the other day I ventured up town and walked into WHSmith to see some Marvel comic books, Spiderman, Iron Man, Ghost Rider and X-Men.

Now, years and years ago I used the internet to research Marvel and learn all the big storylines, villians, etc - especially for Spiderman.

I took a look in this Spiderman comic and it said it was a new story-arc with some old villians returning. But in the contents it had different stories and then "Originally published in blahblah Spiderman Issue #blah" (or summit like that) underneath each story title, and they were totally different issue numbers, I think one was like 124 whilst another would be a story from issue 60-odd and the third from another way out number.

So this confused my tiny little learning-in-progess brain - are they new stories or just old ones republished in smaller parts so that I'm reading 3 different classic storylines in one issue?

Thanks in advance