Webspinners was positioned as an anthology that would allow all sorts of people to do short Spidey stories from all over Spider-Man history. So as of cover date January 1999, there were once again 4 Spider-Man books, at least until Chapter One ended. This opening story is by… JM DeMatteis. I can’t escape. The unusual hook here is artist Michael Zulli, who’s rather more of a Vertigo kinda guy than a capes kinda guy. He’s going to give you a very different look at Spider-Man. Add the colors of Christie Scheele, and you’re going to have a cool, unusual looking book. The story opens on the end of ASM 38, Spidey putting an end to his fight with “a guy named Joe,” then going home to Aunt May. All the dialogue is the same and everything. Then we get to a title page:
Almost impossible to find “Tales Of” in the logo at that size, which, as we learned in my graphic design program a thousand years ago, is one of the easiest ways to determine that your logo doesn’t work.
The “old friends” thing is nice, I must admit. Kind of easy, but nice. Zulli is only drawing young Peter in glasses while he works here, don’t worry, they know when this takes place. When is Peter telling it from, tho? Aunt May’s house looks like it’s about to fall down. Web yourself into a cocoon, you say, while being written by JM, hm? We see aunt May come upstairs and see the mess, and worry over Peter, with some genuinely lovely copy from Peter explaining that he eventually came to understand that he was as overprotective of her as she was of him, and how her constant fretting was her way of showing she cared. Meanwhile, Quentin Beck, Mysterio, was having a bad day and decided to go look at the apartment he grew up in, for nostalgia’s sake. This, of course, allows DeMatteis to show us he had an abusive father as a child, because it’s a villain with a childhood being made up by DeMatteis, there was no other way it could be. Ugh. Then, when he left, he ran into someone.
Another sweet bit of business. Why couldn’t we get more like this and less like the abusive fathers and hallucinated misery porn during his runs on the main books? Peter is going to see a restored print of the original King Kong. But first, he hides from Flash, Harry & Gwen walking by, since they’re not friendly yet as of this space between ASM 38 and 39. Guess who else has gone to this movie?
As they split up, we go back to that Betsy lady so we can learn she also had an abusive dad (Seek help, JM), as the narration continues to mention she will later write a book about her youth with Quentin, which allows Peter to know things he shouldn’t as he narrates. Beck is walking in the rain, feeling sorry for himself, when a Daily Bugle inspires him. Elsewhere, Peter Parker is having trouble studying and decides to do what he always does in that situation.
After a pretty great looking page of Spider-Man swinging around philosophizin’ as he tends to do, he winds up at the Bugle to harass JJJ for awhile in typical 60s fashion. JM slips up and has JJJ tell his secretary to call his wife even though he’s not married at this time when Spider-Man webs him to the ceiling, and then goes home. The next morning, he comes downstairs to the news that JJJ is dead. Like on the title page!
So, this is Mysterio’s gag. And he takes it really far, as we go to see JJJ in the afterlife, thinking he’s going to heaven, then going to hell to be tormented by demons, all as a disembodied voice harasses him.
Maybe somebody got all the details next time, but not me. Between the writer and the focus on the past, I tapped right back out after the first issue. It’s been years since a story started on this blog and didn’t finish, but I’m fine with that. Besides, this issue’s an oversized #1 like the others, and the art on its next feature is worth the price of admission.
John Romita, Sr.! Never not a thrill when he shows up. And colored by Christie Scheele, too!
Even as a kid, even as Todd McFarlane fan #1, somehow, when Romita was drawing a book, it felt like the REAL characters had shown up. I guess I’d been seeing his version of Spider-Man, at least, on various lunch boxes and toys and stuff my whole life, so that makes a kind of sense. But even his Peter and Gwen… That’s what they’re supposed to look like. Peter & Gwen went to a movie, and then Gwen wanted to walk in the rain, because it would be romantic, but Peter said they’d just get soaked and called a cab, and she was disappointed. And, guess what, this was their last night together, just so Peter has something else to feel guilty about. Bleh. But look who’s here:
Always, always a treat.
Aw, why bother skipping anymore pages?
In 2001, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale would begin an INCREDIBLY weird series of miniseries named for colors wherein a superhero recounts his history with his dead girlfriend. Daredevil: Yellow. Spider-Man: Blue. Hulk: Gray. I bought the first 2, decided it was insane this was happening and bailed out. The existence of a Captain America: White has always amused me. One assumes it’s about Sharon Carter, but it’s much funnier if it’s about Bucky. Anyway, in the ones I did read, each issue would largely just remake an old comic, same dialogue and all, with new sadsack captions over top as the hero mourned the love his archenemy had murdered in the present. It was so weird. I mean, way to lampshade how often this terrible trope happens while trying to make it sad, for one thing. And I’m just kind of amused that DeMatteis and Romita did Spider-Man: Blue better in 10 pages here than Spider-Man: Blue did it in 6 entire issues, right down to the “don’t worry, fans, I totally love MJ now” coda. How bizarre. What a totally weird business comics is. After this 3-parter, the series meandered around, sometimes set in the past, sometimes the present. It seemed pretty inessential. But I did buy 1 more issue of it, which we’ll see at the appropriate time.