Look I never intended to make my way through all of the Spidey Super Stories (others covered here and here) but that's exactly what happened. I ended up with way too many screencaps. I always do in comics-related posts. Believe it or not the below is the abridged version, and there's still too much. But what to take away?
Long story short, I decided to just jettison these hundred-ish screencaps into cyberspace and be done with it. Have at what you will and skip over what you like; I won't be offended from this side of the screen.
1.
SOME TITLE PAGES
AND SPLASHES
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| Pretty self-explanatory. |
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| Perfectly legit. |
3.
STRANGE VILLAINS
AND DUBIOUS ASSAULTS
Man, SSS had a lot of crazy one-off villains. I'm still tickled by the hypothetical idea of some poor Marvel editor having to corral all of them into one continuity. Someone should do it for the hell of it.
Try to guess the name of this first one just from the panels:
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| If you guessed "Mister Measles" - and no reason why you would have - you got it. |
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| Hard out there for a librarian. |
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| Definitely needs a series. |
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| ... |
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| Is he "The Wall" or "The Wicked Wall?" |
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| These Tickler panels get somewhat uncomfortable. |
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| And it goes on like this. |
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| The Kangaroo. Man, does he hate the Short Circus. |
3.
THIS CLOWN
4.
HE WILL NOT BE MOCKED!
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| I realize it's just a rhyme and all, but I like how it conveys a whole world of the character and why he hates Spider-Man. I don't particularly recall this being an actual thing with the Shocker, but hey why not? Don't freaking mock me, man. Dune buggy race! |
5.
ARACHNID
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| Arachnid. |
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| Arachnid. |
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| The hell! What a weird thing to focus on. And keep getting wrong. |
6.
"THIS IS KANG!
CEASE HOSTILITIES."
CEASE HOSTILITIES."
Kang sure appears a lot in these things. I thought perhaps it was due to only having license to a certain range of characters, but they appear to have had access to Marvel's whole stable of characters, or close enough to it. So Kang's many appearances stand out. To be honest, they do a better job with him in Spidey Super Stories, as batshit as every last one of his schemes is, than they did in the regular Marvel comics of the Bronze Age, and perhaps any other age. I'm not saying the stories are classics, just there's a manic energy to them missing from his canonical appearances.
For the bicentennial issue, Doctor Strange sends Spider-Man and Captain America back to 1776 just so they can hang out and watch the drama unfold. Meanwhile:
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| They keep leaving Kang alone after they subdue him and get back to the original plan, which is admirably single-minded, but it inevitably leads to recurring moments of crisis. |
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| This is 1000% historical rewriting I can get behind. |
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| This is one crazy party. Freaking' Lockjaw! |
7.
LOCKJAW
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| Nice try, Doom. |
8.
SUBTLE
9.
THIS SCRAMBLED MARVELVERSE
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| Like Kang, Medusa appears an inordinate amount. |
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| Do they mean The Bookworm? |
10.
"GOODBYE, SEA PEOPLE!"
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| Well, he did attack everyone in the UN, two or three times. (I love that the UN still has just regular cops working the door.) |
11.
PAUL!
12.
MJ!
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| ... |
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| This chair is huge. |
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| The magic of the joke forced a Tales From the Darkside negative-picture switch. |
13.
RANDOMS
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| ... |
~
All screencaps from Spidey Super Stories 2 - 8, 12, 15 - 19, 24, 27 - 28, 30, 30 - 34, 37 - 38, 40, 43, 47 - 48, 50, and 53.
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| Sorry, Spidey! This is The End. |
(1) I tend to be more of a putter-inner than a taker-outer, so I get your dilemma with posts like these. At a certain point, what you *want* to do is just write a freaking commentary track for every panel, I'd imagine. Finding that line between insanity and over-brevity is difficult. I think you consistently do a great job of it, personally.
ReplyDelete(2) That page for "A TV Rock Group in King Arthur's Court" is just a (pardon the pun) marvel of WTF. I swear to God, based solely on these blog posts, I think Spidey Super Stories *might* now be my favorite Spider-Man comic.
(3) "IMPOSSIBLE AIRPORT 1980" -- Oh wow.
(4) I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to explain how I feel about that Rhino-on-trial splash page, and, like, I'm just not good enough. All I can say and feel confident about is that Rhino crossing his legs really clinches the whole thing for me.
(5) Dare I suggest a trilogy of Queen Bee movies starring a certain B. Knowles?
(6) "Mister Measles"!!! hahahahahahaha
(7) The Thumper immediately fascinates me. I mean, why the Napoleon gitup? What does thumping dudes have to do with not getting a pony? I'm guessing there are no answers to these questions. And if there are, the more sense thy make, the less interested I will be in her.
(8) "...up against THE WALL!" -- That's about as lame as it gets, right there.
(9) Am I wrong, or do certain aspects of the backstory for The Tickler sound a bit like "The Killing Joke"?
(10) That zoom-in on that clown!
(11) Thundra probably also thinks tomatoes are vegetables, the silly cow.
(12) Am I wrong, or is all of Kang's dialogue weird, shitty gold?
(13) I hope the MCU runs long enough that a movie can be made out of this whole 1776 sojourn.
(14) Does Lockjaw always have a goatee or is something exceptionally weird happening here?
(15) That "milk truck" bit made me laugh. I immediately clapped my hands over my mouth like when Linus says "if" in reference to the Great Pumpkin showing up.
(16) I think Thor feels what MJ is putting down, there.
(17) "Mmm, yes, I'll have the spaghetti and the spare ribs with a slice of spice cake, please. Sprite to drink, please."
(1) That's good to hear!
Delete(4) Holy moley, right?
(7) It almost seems like it's based on some schizphrenic lady the author personally observed. Which kind of gives it all a less than savory sheen. But either way: WTF. As WTF as it gets.
(9) You are not wrong!
(10) I can never really tell if my screencap zoom-ins actually work or not. I appreciate the feedback.
(11) It's just so weird. Like, is she offended by insects or something? It's such an aggressively dumb posture to take.
(12) You are not wrong.
(13) I do too! This was literally the greatest of all the comics bicentennial stories.
(16) I don't know how they got that one through, for real.
Thanks for checking these out - glad you enjoyed!
Damn right I did!
Delete(13) It will, obviously, never happen. But just imagine a $250 million movie starring Evans, Holland, and Cumberbatch with, like, Idris Elba or whoever playing Kang. Imagine the extent to which the world would melt down over this movie.
And it WILL never happen, but we live in a climate in which it theoretically COULD happen. Which is incredible.
Oh, if I only ran a studio...!
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