Saturday Splash Page #42

 

"Explosive Finale," Web of Spider-Man (vol. 1) #68, Gerry Conway (writer), Alex Saviuk (penciler), Keith Williams (inker), Bob Sharen (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer)

What'd we discuss last week, about selling books by slapping Popular Character on them? Well, here we are again. Amazing Spider-Man is always the primary Spidey book. Spectacular is usually #2, although I've never been able to tell if there's a real difference in the stories the tell. Maybe that Amazing tends towards bigger stories and Spectacular's to smaller-scale, more personal stories. But that might have been simply the difference between David Michelinie and J.M. DeMatteis, the authors on those books back in my youth.

I have no idea what niche Web of Spider-Man filled. Focus on organized crime rather than costumed villains? A lot of the issues I have heavily involve the Kingpin or some other mob boss types jockeying for position. Chameleon trying to sucker the second-raters that went after Spidey in Acts of Vengeance into killing Kingpin for him. The Lobo Brothers, Hammerhead, Tombstone. Again though, maybe that's because most of those issues were written by Gerry Conway.

Possibly also "redemption" as a theme. Conway, between this book and his stint on Spectacular prior to DeMatteis taking over, regularly used characters that had been enemies of Spidey's but were now allies, if not always easy ones. Rocket Racer, Puma, Prowler, the Sandman, even Will O' the Wisp on a couple of occasions. Harry Osborn took a couple of turns as the Green Goblin, trying to redeem his father's name (though DeMatteis then sent Harry into the downward spiral that ultimately killed him.)

Conway was the writer from #50 to #70. Before and after that, the book cycles through writers, nobody sticking around much longer than one storyarc until Terry Kavanaugh, who writes the book for most of its last three years. Saviuk hung on as the regular penciler until almost the final year of the book, dropping off right about when the Clone Saga got going. I'd say it was just in the nick of time, but he'd already drawn Kavanaugh's "Who is FACADE?" story that I've never read, but heard nothing but bad things aboout, so maybe he was still too late.

Saviuk's style feels like it rests halfway in between Sal Buscema and John Romita Sr. Little rougher around the edges than Romita, but with thinner linework and not so squared off as Buscema. Either way, Saviuk always makes sure you've got all the information you need on the page, and that you can follow what's happening. Nothing flashy in panel or page layouts, just solid, straightforward storytelling. Characters are easy to distinguish, like Saviuk could do a guide to how the characters are going to look. Or maybe I just think that because I saw his art in so many comics when I was younger.

31 Days of Scans - Day 23

Favorite Costume. There are a lot of different costumes I like. Spoiler's outfit, Storm's sort of punk leather jacket with the Mohawk look, at least a few of the Iron Man armors (although those depend on who is drawing it), the Scarlet Spider outfit, the Batman Beyond costume.

But for the purposes of this post, I'm going to pick the black-and-white Spider-Man outfit. I probably still like his classic red-and-blue duds more, but I talked about them when I did the Favorite Character post on Spidey. Besides, the symbiont costume was a heck of a lot easier for a little kid enamored with Spider-Man to draw.

The look's a little more limited than his original costume. It lends itself to stories where Spider-Man can lurk in shadows, the eyes and spider emblem shining out of them. You can do similar things with his original costume - Spidey's no stranger to surprising people from the rafters in that get-up - but the black-and white costume rarely seems to get used in more light-hearted or silly stories. It can be - like the one where Peter's landlord's husband spikes the punch at Pete and MJ's moving out party, and Spidey ends up fighting Hobgoblin while drunk - but it's not the norm. It feels like the black costume gets a lot of stories where Peter has to deal with a serious loss or psychological trauma (though he has his fair share in the classic costume, too), but the red-and-blue duds get the stories where it's mostly just Spidey having a less-than-stellar day. The ones where he's more the butt of the universe's joke than anything else.

So the black-and-white outfit is mostly associated with dark, frequently angry Spider-Man stories, and I'm hardly a huge fan of those. But in small doses - and most critically, done well - they can be good. And frankly, I like to see Spider-Man get fed up and stop fooling around with bad guys every so often. I like the jokes, I like the humor, the focus on protecting innocents first, but every once in awhile I just want Spider-Man to wreck a super-villain's face. So when the costume is shorthand for "Spidey's about to remind everyone how he's survived this long", I'm on board with that.

Besides, it's a really cool look. It's very simple, but it works at grabbing attention. It plays up the "spider" in "Spider-Man" a bit more. Despite the lack of web design, it makes him look more spooky, more alien. Big white eyes, framed by darkness, staring from out of shadows, like they're just hovering. The spider emblem much bigger, front and center, you can't miss it. It's playing up that fear some people have of spiders, lurking in the shadows, making traps, watching with their multiple eyes. The original costume is certainly odd in its own way, and if someone dropped down on me in the middle of a mugging wearing it, I'd probably be a little freaked out. But I'd know that was a person in there, just from the all the colors and the look of it. The black-and-white one, I'm not so sure, especially talking about something moving as fast as Spider-Man can. What would that even look like to the naked eye? A dark blur, leaping around, tossing full-grown humans like they're rag dolls, shooting webbing. Spidey's constant chatter would break the illusion a bit, but like I said, in a lot of stories where he wears that suit, he's not very talkative.

And, as demonstrated in the above picture of Eddie Brock, and the one before that of Kraven, just about anybody can look good in it. There were a lot of things I didn't like about Venom, but the look of him wasn't it. Mayday had her own variant for awhile, which wasn't too shabby (although Ron Frenz had altered his art style and not for the better, which hurt it a bit).

Spider-Man enjoys the miracle of a suit that heals you without asking for you to provide proof of insurance first in Ultimate Spider-Man #35, by Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Mark Bagley (penciler), Art Thibert (inker), Transparency Digital (colorist), and Chris Eliopoulos (letterer). Spider-Man shows he's no drunken master in Web of Spider-Man #38, by Fabian Nicieza (writer), Alex Saviuk (penciler), Keith Williams and Mike Espositio (inkers), Janet Jackson (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer). The Kingpin really needs a better plan than, "fistfight pissed-off Spider-Man" in Amazing Spider-Man #542, by J. Michael Straczynski (writer), Ron Garney (penciler), Bill Reinhold (inker), Matt Milla (colorist), and Cory Petit (letterer). Kraven experiences that awkward moment when he meets the person he's cosplaying as in Web of Spider-Man #32, by J.M. DeMatteis (writer), Mike Zeck (penciler and colorist?), Bob McLeod (inker), Ian Tetrault (colorist), and Rick Parker (letterer). Eddie Brock rocks that symbiont jacket like a boss in Amazing Spider-Man #375, by David Micheline (writer), Bagley (penciler), Randy Emberlin (inker), Bob Sharen (colorist), Richard Starking and Rick Parker (letterers).