Spider-Rama: Amazing Spider-Man #7

Welcome to Spider-Rama! Each Wednesday, Ben and Duy will look at a Spider-Man issue from the very beginning, in chronological order, and answer questions for various categories, inspired in large part by one of our favorite podcasts, The Rewatchables by The Ringer. Our goal is to make it to Amazing Spider-Man #200. Will we make it? Grab your Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus or crank up your tablet to Marvel Unlimited, and then tune in every Wednesday to find out!

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #7

Spider-Man battles the Vulture again, and Peter and Betty Brant get closer.

POINTLESS TRIVIA

BEN: Spider-Man’s first repeat villain is the Vulture, a fact that I had forgotten.

DUY: First time Peter basically says he's Spider-Man (to Betty) and isn't believed. He's joking, but it's gonna happen at least two more times in the next 200 issues.

BEN: First time Spider-Man has had to fight with a busted arm, an eventual trope.

DUY: First time he webs up JJJ's mouth.

BEN: First time Spider-Man fights a villain in the Bugle offices.

DUY: Since we're tracking the evolution of his humor as well, I'll point out that the cover blurb flat-out says that joking is part of what makes him "at his best."

BEN: Second billed before "daring".

FAVORITE PANEL

BEN: Peter sitting on the floor talking to Betty is a scene that’s always stuck with me for whatever reason. It’s something that real people would do, I guess.

DUY: This is when they finally start playing with these close shaves with Aunt May:

WHAT'S AGED THE BEST?

BEN: Spider-Man is in full-on wisecracking mode now. I love it.

DUY: Why do secret identities work? Because if you do it right, the character you're keeping it a secret from wouldn't believe you anyway.

BEN: I prefer the concept that most people wouldn’t even consider that Spider-Man or Superman spend time as anyone else. But that doesn’t come until much much later.

WHAT'S AGED THE WORST?

DUY: The Vulture. Bad joke?

BEN: I'll allow it.

NITPICKS

BEN: It’s probably not a great idea to give a gifted engineer access to the prison machine shop.

DUY: The Vulture gets released for being a model inmate. Can you really become a model inmate in what would be five months at most?


WHO WON THE COMIC?

DUY: Spider-Man, for this one. I love his rhythm by this point and the confidence he's building.

BEN: The Vulture. It's time the elderly got the respect they earned as winged menaces. I’ve been rewatching The Sopranos, tell me Junior Soprano isn’t the real life Adrian Toomes.

DUY: That's it for Spider-Rama this week.

BEN: Thank you, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko—

DUY: —for telling us we aren't the only ones.

Leave us a comment below or on our Facebook page or on Twitter. See you next week!

The Doom Patrol: The True Original X-Men

In the summer of 1963, emerged a team comprised of misfits with special powers. Abilities that make them outcasts in normal society, united by their loss, and led by a wheelchair-bound man with extraordinary mental powers. If you thought I was describing the X-Men, then you were wrong, my friend, because today we’re digging in the back issue bins for the Doom Patrol.

The Doom Patrol: The True Original X-Men

Back Issue Ben

Ben Smith

The Doom Patrol debuted in My Greatest Adventure #80 in June of 1963, created by writers Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, with artist Bruno Premiani. Three months later, the X-Men burst upon the scene. There has been much speculation as to if Marvel copied the concept of the Doom Patrol for the X-Men, or if it was creative coincidence. Three months isn’t a lot of time in the comic publishing world to develop and execute a comic, so I’m going to chalk it up to them tapping into the same artistic hive mind. (Editor's Note: It's possible the Doom Patrol were based on the Fantastic Four.)

Either way, as much as the X-Men have billed themselves as freaks hated by society, the members of the Doom Patrol were much more believable as social rejects than the X-Men ever would be in actuality. The original members of the team consisted of Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, and Robotman, along with The Chief.

Elasti-Girl was former movie star Rita Farr. Rita made the unwise decision to try and outswim a real crocodile while filming her latest movie, for realism’s sake. It didn’t go well for her, so she had to go over a waterfall to escape, bringing her into contact with naturally occurring gas vapors that granted her the ability to enlarge or shrink her entire body.

Larry Trainor was a test pilot flying an experimental rocket plane. The controls failed, taking him into suborbit before crashing down in a dry lake bed. Immediately after the crash, a duplicate of Larry made out of energy emerged from his body, thus was born the Negative Man. The Negative Man is capable of fantastic feats, but can only remain separated from Larry for 60 seconds before it kills them both.

Cliff Steele was a daredevil race car driver before getting into a devastating accident driving a car of his own design. Doctors were able to transplant his human brain into a robot body, making Cliff Steele a literal Robotman.

These three amazing individuals were brought together by the Chief, a man who decided to overcome his physical handicap by “mastering every field of knowledge.” He uses that knowledge to monitor dangers from all across the globe, but until now had no means to intervene when disaster struck.

The Doom Patrol’s first adventure brought them into conflict with General Immortus, who in case you were wondering, is an evil immortal General. He was after a machine that can transmute any material into atomic energy, which was inside a crashed alien ship, obviously.

The adventures that followed were just as insane, with all manner of giant creatures and nazi war criminals. During one mission, Elasti-Girl throws a torpedo at a giant sea monster.

While in another, Robotman’s face melts as he endures extreme heat to save the day.

However, this all pales in comparison to the greatest villainous organization in comic book history, the Brotherhood of Evil.

The Brotherhood consists of The Brain—

—who is, predictably, an actual human brain floating in liquid hooked up to a voice transmitter.

Not to be outdone is Monsieur Mallah, a super intelligent gorilla wielding machine guns.

The Brain’s “assistant” is Madame Rouge, she doesn’t do much in this initial appearance, and The Brotherhood is recruiting a mustached man that operates a giant robot he has named Rog, because of course.

The Doom Patrol defeat the Brotherhood, despite how awesome they are, which is a shame.

The Doom Patrol comics are not the most sophisticated in terms of writing or art, even by Silver Age standards, but they definitely make up for it by being weird or even downright disturbing. And you really can’t beat an evil brain floating in a jar of liquid flanked by an evil French gorilla.

Comics are a glorious thing.

Techniques and Tricks: Depicting Time with R. Crumb and Ramon Perez

In a static medium, one of the challenges is depicting the passage of time. A part of this is because unless you're a manga and you're setting up an establishing scene (which is bits and pieces that would make up a whole establishing shot), each panel is a movement in time. But how much time? There's as much space between any hypothetical two panels as any other hypothetical two panels. A tried and true method of depicting how much time has passed is to have captions that say things like "Later!" or "Meanwhile!", but that can be seen as clumsy or cliche.

Let's look at two alternatives from one silent and one mostly silent comic.

Depicting Time, with Robert Crumb and Ramon Perez

Techniques and Tricks

by Duy

Legendary underground cartoonist Robert Crumb has a minicomic called A Short History of America, and it's literally just this:

Simple enough, right? Each panel shows years, decades passing, but it doesn't need to tell us that time has passed. We see it for ourselves because we aren't changing locations. The key here is repeating visual cues. In panels 1 to 7, such a cue is the tree. It doesn't matter that the tree had changed, just that there were trees there. That's then replaced by the electrical post. By the time we get to the second-to-last panel, when virtually none of the previous visual clues have disappeared, we already very much know that this is the same spot we've seen all throughout, just through sheer repetition.

So that's one way. Just stick to a specific location, via a specific angle, and change most of it if you want, but just have a visual signifier to clue readers into the sameness of location.

Now let's look at Tale of Sand, a surrealist comic drawn by Ramon Perez off of an unmade Jim Henson screenplay. Let's look at this two-page sequence:

There's a lot here we can actually talk about, but let's just focus on the turtle. We know that Mac is trying to hitch a ride. How long has Mac been waiting to get a ride before he decides to walk? Well, we know that right before he crossed the street, he passed a turtle.

And when he decided to walk, the turtle had just crossed the street.

So he waited as long as it would take a turtle to cross a busy street.

So that's another way. Plant a small detail in your panels depicting time, and then just draw the readers' attention to it.

Spider-Rama: Amazing Spider-Man #6

Welcome to Spider-Rama! Each Wednesday, Ben and Duy will look at a Spider-Man issue from the very beginning, in chronological order, and answer questions for various categories, inspired in large part by one of our favorite podcasts, The Rewatchables by The Ringer. Our goal is to make it to Amazing Spider-Man #200. Will we make it? Grab your Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus or crank up your tablet to Marvel Unlimited, and then tune in every Wednesday to find out!

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #6

Spider-Man feels the bite of the Lizard!

POINTLESS TRIVIA

BEN: The first "take a paper by web, leave a coin by web" bit.

DUY: First Curt Connors, Martha Connors, Billy Connors, and Lizard.

BEN: Pretty sure this is the first “my spider sense is tingling.” There had been variations of it before now, but this is the classic line.

BEN: And the first funny quip.

FAVORITE PANEL

DUY: Treating the black/blue part of his costume as black and blending it with the background has always worked for me.

BEN: Even a Lizard can cry.

WHAT'S AGED THE BEST?

BEN: Lots of sarcasm from Peter in this, and some quips as Spider-Man. He actually seems like he’s starting to enjoy his new life a little. It’s a step toward Spider-Man being funny, instead of sad, angry, and poor all the time.

DUY: The quipping, definitely. He's finally getting his stride.

BEN: Also, an army of super-lizards is awesome no matter what year it is.

WHAT'S AGED THE WORST?

DUY:  I don't know how 1960s school systems worked, but can you really have a major in high school?

BEN: In comics “science” means you can do anything. Electronics, engineering, biochemistry.

NITPICKS

BEN: Curt Connors gave his wife a signed photo of himself?

DUY: You have to establish they're married, and you have to establish tht's him in the picture, and okay fine, it's lame.


WHO WON THE COMIC?

BEN: Realistically we could say Peter Parker/Spider-Man in every single issue, but this is the first time his whimsical side started to take shape, so I’m giving it to him this time.

DUY: Peter also starts to be more confident as himself, so yeah, Peter.

INCREDIBLE PARALLELS

DUY: We can draw parallels between the Lizard and the Hulk — both are brilliant scientists trying to do good who get turned into a monster. But once again Spider-Man fights a scientist.

DUY: This is also the first time that Spider-Man fights someone with a personal connection to him, although that personal connection is only established after he meets him, so it's kind of a precursor to the Green Goblin. Spider-Man also once again uses his scientific knowledge to beat an opponent. This is like an integral part of his character at this point.

BEN: It is pretty interesting that they moved away from that aspect of him for so long.  It’s really prevalent in these early comics.

DUY: We're going to have to keep track of when it stops.

BEN: That's it for Spider-Rama this week.

DUY: Thank you, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko—

BEN: —for telling us we aren't the only ones.

Leave us a comment below or on our Facebook page. See you next week!

Comic Book References in Old Movies

In the beforetimes, when superhero movies were not an annual occurrence, a comic book reference in a movie or TV show added an extra element of excitement and enjoyment for a young fan like myself. Sure, we had the occasional Superman or Batman movie, or terrible made-for-TV Marvel movies, and of course the cartoons, but the rest of the pop culture landscape was a barren wasteland, where comic book fans had to search far and wide for the sustenance that was any acknowledgement of their hobby.

The Best Comic Book References Before the Superhero Boom

Back Issue Ben

Ben Smith

A few movies and cartoons may seem like it should have been enough, but remember the internet didn’t exist then either, so the cartoons only counted if you could find a VHS copy at your local video rental store. (That entire paragraph comes to you courtesy of a time capsule from 1988.)

Using Blade as the starting point for today’s superhero movie revolution, here are the best comic book references in pop culture before 1998.

SEINFELD “The Bizarro Jerry”

Jerry Seinfeld was a self-professed big Superman fan and his titular sitcom was full of references to the character. None were more prevalent or integral to the plot than The Bizarro Jerry, where Elaine befriends a group of 3 guys that are similar in appearance to Jerry, George, and Kramer, but behaved as exact opposites, like Superman and Bizarro. Another personal favorite of mine is The Race, where Jerry dates a woman named Lois who works for an old high school rival. Hilarity ensues.

THE SIMPSONS “Radioactive Man”

Comic Book Guy may not be the most flattering portrayal of comic book fandom, but his comic shop provided plenty of fodder for comic book references and plot lines. An early episode had Bart, Milhouse, and Nelson splitting the cost of Radioactive Man #1, which ended predictably badly. My personal favorite reference is a Q&A sequence from the Poochie episode, and is the first thing I think of whenever fandom begins to act annoying and entitled in real life. But the most blatant superhero-centric episode is when the Radioactive Man movie decides to film in Springfield, casting Milhouse as sidekick Fall Out Boy.

CRIMSON TIDE

Two sailors fist fight over an argument about the better Silver Surfer artist, Moebius or Jack Kirby, until Denzel Washington settles the argument with the memorable line, “Everybody that reads comic books knows that Kirby’s Silver Surfer is the only true Silver Surfer.”

BOYZ N THE HOOD

There were a few subtle references to Cuba Gooding Jr’s character being a comic book reader. It was a nice nod to Hip Hop’s relationship with comic books, which shares a history of codenames and bombastic alter egos. Many classic rap songs have references to superheroes in their lyrics.

THE LOST BOYS

The original sparkly vampires meet the Corey’s, directed by the guy that would go on to direct Batman and Robin. Corey Haim meets his vampire-hunting compatriots in a comic shop, complete with references to Lori Lemaris and red kryptonite, before they give him a horror comic (that looks like Tomb of Dracula) as a “survival guide.” The movie gets extra points for the store having basically the same shelf layout as my childhood shop.

THE O.C.

Ryan was the bad boy criminal from the wrong side of town. Seth was the rich kid with no friends that filled the void with comic books and video games. The show overflows with comic book references to Brian Michael Bendis, an upside down Spider-Man kiss, the Watchmen, and most notably, Summer dressing up as Wonder Woman to impress Seth. Later seasons also had Seth creating a comic series for Wildstorm. Allan Heinberg was a writer for the show and eventually transitioned to writing comic books, co-creating the Young Avengers.

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING

Not only is this a classic ‘80s comedy, it has one of the best superhero references on this entire list. Sara is the young girl that needs a babysitter, and is also a huge Thor fan. She wears a replica of his winged helmet, and has a huge mural of the character painted on her bedroom wall. The climatic scene involves a very Thor-like auto-mechanic (played by a young and buff Vincent D’Onofrio) channeling his inner hero to help the kids out of a jam. (Fortunately the internet didn’t exist yet, so annoying fanboys couldn’t complain about “fake geek girl” Sara saying that Thor got his powers from his magic helmet.) (Editor's note: MAGIC HELMEEEEET!)

THE VIEWASKEW UNIVERSE (or The ViewAskewniverse)

Kevin Smith grew up as a comic book fan, even selling his collection to help fund his self-financed film debut, Clerks. As such, every film he made in his loosely connected View Askew universe features tons of superhero references. Mallrats had a scene parodying a famous sequence from Burton’s Batman, and an appearance from Stan Lee himself. Chasing Amy’s main characters, as played by Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, were comic book artists, and the movie opens at a comic book convention. The fake comic book characters in the movie, Bluntman and Chronic, became an actual comic book published by Oni Press. Kevin Smith eventually wrote comics for Marvel and DC, and was at one time considered the most popular writer in the industry. Kevin Smith has carried the flag for comic book fans since the beginning, and continues to do so to this very day. He was ahead of the curve, in that sense.

TRUE ROMANCE

Clarence works in a comic book store, and his romanticized retelling of a Nick Fury story contributes to Alabama falling in love with him during their first night together.  Even though Tarantino fully admits writing Alabama as his idealized fantasy girlfriend, I think most of us older fans could relate to a girl overlooking the surface-level silliness of superhero comics and seeing the emotion and depth that could exist beneath.

Spider-Rama: Amazing Spider-Man #5

Welcome to Spider-Rama! Each Wednesday, Ben and Duy will look at a Spider-Man issue from the very beginning, in chronological order, and answer questions for various categories, inspired in large part by one of our favorite podcasts, The Rewatchables by The Ringer. Our goal is to make it to Amazing Spider-Man #200. Will we make it? Grab your Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus or crank up your tablet to Marvel Unlimited, and then tune in every Wednesday to find out!

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #5

Doctor Doom attempts to recruit Spider-Man, but instead accidentally kidnaps his biggest fan, Flash Thompson.

POINTLESS TRIVIA

DUY: Not the first Betty Brant, but the first time we see feelings developing between them.

BEN: Second use of a “fake” Spider-Man, with the first one being the Chameleon in the first issue.

DUY: First sighting of the iconic half-face, since last issue was a half-face-and-torso.  Apparently the half-mask is also because Stan wanted Spidey to show up as often as possible, so in sequences where Peter is in it too long, he'd add a half-mask when applicable.

WHAT'S AGED THE BEST?

BEN: Flash loving Spider-Man as much as he hates Peter is a great angle. Something they’d later use with a romantic spin with the Black Cat.

DUY: "It was just a Doombot" has its beginnings here, I think.

BEN: No way, really?

DUY: I mean it might be Fantastic Four, but still, this is a really early instance. He talks to Doom for a whole page before realizing it's a robot. They wouldn't use it as a plot device to retcon stuff for a while, but I'm surprised it took a while.

WHAT'S AGED THE WORST?

DUY: So Jameson owns a newspaper, a magazine, and has his own TV show? Also why didn't they just use stock footage of Spider-Man from his entertaining days? It's stuff like this that makes me wonder how much of this was well thought out and how much of the good stuff was accidental.

BEN: Also, in the age of smartphones, there would be hundreds of videos and pictures of him already.

DUY: Also, why does Peter Parker wear a suit and tie to school??

BEN:  I assume that’s how Ditko had dressed since he was 3 years old.

NITPICKS

BEN: Piggybacking off what you noticed, that clearly wasn’t the first footage of Spider-Man. He was a TV sensation.

DUY: Spider-wave transmitter? I think Dr. Doom has had better inventions.

FAVORITE PANEL

DUY: The telephone company having a gigantic telephone display makes me laugh.

BEN: Flash hiding behind the fence like a Looney Tunes character is what has stuck with me from this one.

WHO WON THE COMIC?

BEN: I guess I have to go with Flash Thompson. I know he’s a bully and we’re supposed to hate him, but he’s such a dumbass.

DUY: Yeah, it's Flash. I want to give it to Doom, but this is way too low-key for Doom. And this is also where I think Marvel really starts differentiating itself from DC. DC's top guys in their universe are the same top guys in real life. Marvel's top guy in real life is Spider-Man, and he's small potatoes in this universe.

BEN: My favorite hero against my favorite villain, and yet it seems so...average. Doom must have been really bored that week.

SPIDER-MAN'S MOTIVATIONS

BEN: Judging by the letters page, it seems like #3 is where most fans thought the comic hit another level of greatness.

DUY: That was probably the best one so far, but it's still a far way from being complete. Again here, Spider-Man at least considers not saving Flash Thompson. He basically ends up saving him because he can't live with himself if he doesn't. Still no mention of Uncle Ben.

BEN:  I know the money is a consequence of Ben dying and they probably assumed we remember he died, but it still seems so strange since later on in the series it gets rehashed in every issue. I don't even think he's mentioned Ben's name the entire series.

DUY: He did in issue 1, and something about how he wasn't able to save him, which isn't the same as being able to prevent it.  And that's weird they would assume we remember he died though, or how... it's not like comics were constantly reprinted or available just about everywhere. And didn't Marvel's distribution affect where they could be seen back then?

BEN: A fan in the letters column even asks if they could provide the on sale info, and Stan basically says "there’s no way to tell."

DUY: That's it for Spider-Rama this week.

BEN: Thank you, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko—

DUY: —for telling us we aren't the only ones.

Leave us a comment below or on our Facebook page. See you next week!