Dog Star Omnibus: Marie Severin

11.25.2018

Spidey Super Stories: The End

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.

SOME TITLE PAGES

AND SPLASHES

Pretty self-explanatory.

Perfectly legit.

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:

If you guessed "Mister Measles" - and no reason why you would have - you got it.

Hard out there for a librarian.

Definitely needs a series.

...

Is he "The Wall" or "The Wicked Wall?"

These Tickler panels get somewhat uncomfortable.

And it goes on like this.

The Kangaroo. Man, does he hate the Short Circus.

THIS CLOWN

HE WILL NOT BE MOCKED!

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!

ARACHNID

Arachnid.

The hell! What a weird thing to focus on. And keep getting wrong.

"THIS IS KANG!
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:

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.