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Tomato reads classic Spider-Man comics

Started by Tomato, September 21, 2016, 05:50:51 PM

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daglob

From what I've read, Tangled Webs was a very good series. I like the idea of stories about the people affects by the heroes (finances at the time meant that I had to be VERY particular about what I purchased, and comics were not high up on the list). Marvel has always tried to write their stories as though they were all part of a world, populated by ordinary people, not just inhabited by mutants and supers and inhumans and the random supernatural critter.

Yeah, not believing in heroes is typical Ditko. Usually, the super-villain is just a minor threat to the hero, there to threaten physical harm or loss of pride. What I've been calling the secondary antagonist is the more dangerous, and more evil of the two; often the villain just wants money. The SA tries to convince anyone who will listen that there is something fundamentally twisted and psychologically sick about a person who selflessly opposes corruption and destruction. They have to have some kind of ulterior motive. I mean, how dare they come out here and use their abilities to show how miserable and unimportant the common man is!

The absolutely silliest version of this is the way the crooks in the Killjoy series complain that it's unfair for Killjoy to keep them from exercising their right to commit crimes (where is that in the Bill of Rights, exactly?). Which is poking fun at the people who insist that their criminal activities are the result of a bad childhood or a failure of society to give them their proper due. I don't remember who said, in effect, that if people lived in the world they actually deserved they would NOT be happy.

The earliest Spiderman comic I read off the rack was #9. I had been reading Dell and DC comics for a couple of years. All of you are looking backward, you have no idea what something like this was like at the time.

HarryTrotter

After a search I see there is a tv series,a slasher film and a comic by Gerard Way under a name of Killjoy;so im not sure what are you referencing.
Anyhow,it would all come down to the question of whats more canon,seeing that every writer had his own take on things.Heck,was the spider radioactive or magical?
''Even our origin stories have gone sour.''
Jon Farmer

Tomato

Not to interrupt this discussion (I've actually been really enjoying the different perspectives on JJJ, who I feel gets the shaft by a lot of writers who don't understand him) but I wanted to mention something I came across today that just... hurt. Like... ok, I'm reading the second Scorpion story (Btw, much as I razz on Gobby, the Scorpion is the villain who I feel gets the worst deal in terms of characterization... He takes a magic Scorpion potion which somehow turns him PURE EVIL because the plot says so) and... wow. So the way he broke out of prison was to act crazy until they gave him his outfit back to calm him down.

No, I'm serious. They thought the best way to calm down the person who was apparently Raving was to give him a suit that had a WEAPONIZED TAIL capable of smashing CONCRETE. To the prison guards in the Marvel Universe, this seemed like a perfectly logical plan.

Like... don't get me wrong, I'm coming around to embrace the silver age Spider-Man stories (part of the reason I haven't been talking about them on a per-issue basis is because most of them are genuinely good and I have nothing to comment about.) but then there are times the gaps in logic hurt me. And yeah, this is squarely on Stan Lee's shoulders, because all of that is told to us via thought bubbles.

daglob

Quote from: Spade on October 05, 2016, 06:19:00 PM
After a search I see there is a tv series,a slasher film and a comic by Gerard Way under a name of Killjoy;so im not sure what are you referencing.
Anyhow,it would all come down to the question of whats more canon,seeing that every writer had his own take on things.Heck,was the spider radioactive or magical?

Or both?

And, as we all know, what is canon this week may not be canon next.

Killjoy was a back-up in E-Man #2 and #4. Looks like both stories are posted here:

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2008/11/diggin-ditko-killjoy.html

dudalb

What you have to remember about the Marvel Silver Age stories, is that, as unsophsicated as they seem to nowdays, is that in the early 60's they were revolutionary. Haivng a superhero with personal problems...and money problems...just like all of us..was truly unique. They simply did not happen in the DC Universe. THe Fantastic Four bickering and fighting among themselves was a massive change from DC,where are the Superheros were good buddies all the time.(Unless Supes was under the influence of some variant of Kryponite.) Marvel giving real emotions and problems to their characters would change the comic book world forever.
Look, I enjoy Silver Age DC stories,..the plots were fine...it was just that the characters themselves were pretty bland.  I hope I am not coming off as a Marvel Fanboy, but I think it is just a fact of comic book history that Marvel raised the bar for the whole industry as far as giving their charecters more depth goes. By the end of the decade, DC had to do that to stay competitive.

daglob

While some of the DC stories of the '60s were pretty silly, I believe it was more a way to do something to grab the reader's attention. It would be best that whatever the "something" was, it had either never been done before, or it hadn't been done for a long time. I wonder if they had a "cover idea guy" who came up with ideas (maybe even scribbled a layout) and said "The cover shows a guy with a comet (or Saturn) for a head; what kind of story are we talking here?" or "GL hits this guy and his hand comes off and he's a robot under his skin; why?" or "Superman is in a wheelchair, being chased by a mob; what is going on?"(I know, that last one is '70s). And just look at almost any cover for Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen.

Or maybe it was just Mort Weissinger (and no insult is really intended).

dudalb

Speaking of attention grabbing stunts the DC did, let us pause for a moment of silence for the late, great, Don Rickles. Jack  Kirby bringing him into the DC Universe
during his 1970 run on "Jimmy Olsen" was one of the cleverist stunts ever. And unlike many, it was genuinely funny.