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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

New Stan Lee Spider-Man




Putting Stan Lee together with Marcos Martin to do some Spider-Man stories was just a really, really good idea. Hats off to the person who made this happen. This comic (weighing in at 36 story pages) is a lot of fun from start to finish. If you might have thought that Stan the Man might have lost something in the last, oh, thirty years, this book might leave you thinking otherwise.

That is, if you give it a chance. The Amazing Spider-Man Spidey Sunday Spectacular (whew!) has a couple of things in it. Without checking out the indicia I wouldn’t have known that the contents are reprinted material of things that ran as backup stories throughout Amazing Spidey #634-645. So what we have here is not only the 12 part story the book was named after, but also another story entitled “Identity Crisis.” Stan Lee put together a couple of nice metafictional stories here, and if you can read them without getting upset about that kind of writing you’ll probably really enjoy it. Or you could just go the other route and ignore all of the words that are written on the pages. That would probably be pretty easy…comics art just doesn’t get much prettier than the work of Mr. Martin.

So the way that the first story works is that every installment is told across a two-page spread. So Marcos can go crazy with the layout and Stan can leave his witty banter all throughout. It must have been fun to read this episode-by-episode as it was originally published, but this way works great too. Just like they wanted, like the book is a reprint of a Sunday newspaper strip.

The story concerns a couple of dastardly villains named Brain and Bull. So yeah, we already know a lot about them: one’s the smart guy and the other is dumb and strong. As the narration reads, “Their nicknames are “Brain” and “Bull.” If you can’t tell why, you shouldn’t be reading comics!” The big plan that Brain comes up with to escape punishment for crimes he has committed in the “real world” is this crazy device called (rather obviously) a Digitized, Algorithmic Nano-Collider. Now what the hell can you do with one of those things? Well, Brain came up with the plan because it will allow him and his dimwitted assistant to “escape into the dimension of comics,” duh!

So of course they do so. The jump into comics land takes them to what appears to be early Marvel Universe New York City. Brain finds Spidey with the Fantastic Four and wants to follow him because he really, really wants to know the webbed guy’s secret identity. They watch him go into his apartment and see as Spider-Man enters the bedroom and Peter Parker walks out. “Look! Parker must be Spider-Man!” says Bull. Brain won’t hear any of that stupidity though, of course. There’s no way he could be onto anything at all with that observation…

Brain finds out that Pete is working on a time machine in his apartment. Hmm. This wacky device appears to be made out of a blender, a microwave, and a VCR, but let’s not ask too many questions. The story ends with Brain getting his hands on the device and traveling back in time to August 15, 1962 (no significance whatsoever to that date…). Apparently, as Peter explains it, when you travel back in time you get younger. So Brain is trapped in 1962 by story’s end, a goo-goo-ga-ga baby. The end.

The story is tailored at all times to give Marcos Martin wonderful things to draw. The Green Goblin, the Hulk, Doctor Octopus, and Mary Jane all show up to make for nice pictures, and really, why should anyone complain about that? Probably my favorite of the spreads was the cross-section of Peter’s apartment. Martin likes doing that kind of drawing, and it’s always fun in the sense of being able to say “Oh, so that’s how his house is set up! Looks like a decent place!”

Favorite meta moment in this story: Spidey gets into his apartment with the two bad guys and Mary Jane is waiting there, voluptuously laid out on the couch. Brain is perplexed by her; Bull is obviously smitten. “Okay, wall-crawler. Talk! Who is she?” asks Brain. “Beats me!” is Spidey’s response. “She’s either my girlfriend, my wife, or my ex-wife! It depends what issue this is!”

On to the second story, “Identity Crisis.” Dr. Gray Madder (oh is that old man writer crafty!) is a psychiatrist, and he’s the guy who Spider-Man decides to come to with a biiiiiiiigggg problem. The good doctor is a little greedy and thinks that helping Spidey will lead to a huge career boost and fame. He’s more than happy to take on this new patient. Well, the kinds of problems that Spider-Man has include things like growing four extra arms, being attached to a black alien costume, having an incident in which he got Hulked-up, another incident in which he shrunk down to Ant-Man size, becoming Spider-Ham, and plenty of other problems. Also, Spidey has a hard time figuring out how the Green Goblin died and came back to life, how he has been married to and unmarried to Mary Jane, how he was almost a dad once but then MJ just wasn’t pregnant anymore, and how his poor Aunt May has been dead or almost dead so many times. It’s all just too much: Dr. Madder winds up checking in to see another psychiatrist at the end of the story.

It’s plain to see that Stan Lee had a blast putting this story together. Kind of like he’s good old Grandpa Stan: “Well, I’ve known this guy since he was knee high to a grasshopper, and look at all of the crazy things he’s been through over the years!”

The Amazing Spider-Man Spidey Sunday Spectacular. Nothing else quite like it on the stands today… it will really make you appreciate Spidey’s history, the man who played a huge part in turning him into a character we all love today, and absolutely gorgeous art by a guy who still has a whole career ahead of him!

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