movie is a trap – Coke & Comics

Featuring: Spider-Man
Release: April 9, 1964
Cover: July 1964
12 cents
Writen by: Stan Lee (The poor man’s Shakespeare)
Illustrated by: Steve Ditko (The poor man’s Da Vinci)
Lettered by: Art Simek (The poor man’s rich man)
22 pages

There are things to like about this comic. The new villain is pretty goofy, perfect for a one-off issue of frivolity. Bring back the Enforcers and throw in the Hulk, and you have a recipe for a fun time.

But look to this first panel. It’s very interesting. A great panel, actually. You see the villain’s mask in the foreground and the shadowed villain in the background. Spider-Man has had a few unmasking scenes of late. Electro turned out to be someone he’d never heard of. Big Man turned out to be Peter’s colleague, Fred Foswell. This opening panel suggests we will get another dramatic unmasking… except we won’t.

They will save the unmasking for a later issue. Spider-Man actually fails to decisively defeat this goofy villain. Which suggests the Green Goblin will return. A bad idea. The character might be fun for one issue, but not as a recurring villain. Especially when Spider-Man aready has such a robust rogues gallery of far more interesting characters: Chameleon, Vulture, Tinkerer, Dr. Octopus, Sandman, Lizard, Living Brain, Electro, Big Man, Enforcers, and Mysterio.

The second panel is a line that’s rather amusing with the benefit of hindsight. “I made the controls simple enough that there’s no chance of fatal error.” If you’ve read further in Amazing Spider-Man, you know he will redesign his flying device and forget that particular design principle. I had suggested this panel to my friend Brian for his Past Was Close Behind series.

The Green Goblin refers to his device as a “flying broomstick”, keeping to a magic/fairy tale theme.

The End of the Fantastic Four!/Sub-Mariner Gives the Orders!/The Fury of Mr. Fantastic/The Flame of Battle/Vengeace is Ours!
Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: September 4, 1962
Cover: December 1962
12 cents
Script: Stan Lee
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
23 pages

I read this comic in Fantastic Four Omnibus vol. 1.

As with the Thor story which premiered the same day, this features full credits. In fact, the credits are more complete than the Thor story, as they spotlight the lettering of Artie Simek. The coloring of Stan Goldberg is still omitted, and anyways lost in the reproductions I am looking at.

This is a pretty famous story. For decades to come, when people refer to how Stan Lee changed superheroes, they’ll point to things like Spider-Man being unpopular or the Fantastic Four having money problems. But for 8 issues, the FF seemed pretty wealthy. Here, we learn Reed lost all his money in a stock market crash, and the FF are bankrupt and having to sell everything and disband. They even sell the pogo plane!

Tag: movie is a trap

Amazing Spider-Man #14

Fantastic Four #9