Marvel Flipside

Spider-Man: Turn off the Snark

Wow! They really did make some changes to that Spider-Man musical, didn't they? I can see why it was so dangerous now... those large bananas will poke someone's eye out!

Peach of the Beach

I will be traveling for a couple of days as I transition into summer, but before I go, I'll throw an image at you that will surely stick in your head for days to come.

Are you prepared? Don't look now, but...

IT'S AUNT MAY IN A SWIMSUIT!

(And Peter Parker in tighty whiteys? Not so-- it was the 70s, and that was swimwear, apparently.) Taken from Spidey Super-Stories #13 (1975), with art by Winslow Mortimer.

And, yes, he DID fight the Sandman in this issue. Who'd you expect, the Icemaster?

Why I Like Spider-Man

Also: Friday Night Fights, starring Spidey vs. Psycho-Man!

What's awesome about comics is you get people punching each other. That probably makes me sound like a bad person, but that might only be because there's so much more behind that phrase but all I can do is sum it up with "people punching each other." Things like underdogs overcoming crushing odds. Like people blessed with talents and stretching them to their limits. Like brightly colored icons throwing brightly colored energies about. Like performing a complicated choreography of movement.

And the fact that the best physical battles really do mimic the internal battles that seem equally crushing, stretching, and complicated. Spider-Man takes all the great tragedy, overwhelming responsiblity, and personal determination that threatens to subsume him and fights back.

"And it's ALL MY FAULT… juslt like MARLA… just like UNCLE BEN. I didn't save him. He died because I was WEAK. Because I wasn't GOOD ENOUGH. I made a promise to him that day that I could NEVER be good enough to keep… but I swore I'd never stop trying.

I KNOW I'm not good enough. I never WILL be. That's no excuse to STOP FIGHTING. No matter how much it SCARES me. No matter how much it HURTS. Ben Parker taught me that. And NOTHING scares me more than letting him down."

From Amazing Spider-Man #661 (2011)
by Christos Gage, Reilly Brown, Victor Olazaba, and John Rauch

Swarm

Still very, very busy. In lieu of any original content, I'll just point you to something that had always captured my imagination as a kid-- the episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends featuring Swarm! Heck, maybe I *am* getting into the Halloween spirit, as this certainly pays tribute to Things That Are Creepy and Bodysnatcher.

&

Losing Time

Just like Spidey, I'm traveling back in time to stop the time-villain Kang from disrupting the American Revolution because I hate the bicentennial celebrations of 1976.

Oh, wait. I mean just like Spidey, I'm losing time to write witty blogs because there's too much going on this week. I'll try to put up a Friday Night Fights and see you in the future... on Monday!

From Spidey Super Stories #17 (1976) by Jim Salicrup and Winslow Mortimer

Doctor Spider vs. Octo-Man

What's going on here? Just a Flipside-version of familiar Marvel heroes and villains!

What IF?! There was never a public exhibition of radiation back in the day, and only scientists were observing the fateful experiment that was interrupted by a spider-- and it bit the mild-mannered visitor going by the name Otto. And what if a young Peter Parker managed to become an intern for a laboratory using experimental robotic arms, and when an accident caused things to go horribly awry... well, I guess you get something like the above pic!

Dating New Avengers

In New Avengers #3, there is this page, featuring banter between the New Avengers and the Thing regarding a certain movie:

New Avengers #3, by Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen,
Wade von Grawbadger, and Laura Martin.

I certainly count this fine example of cinema very high among my all-time faves list. But I also am acutely aware that it's, let's face it, an OLD movie. Ghostbusters was released in 1984, which makes it more or less 25 years old.

This is funny for a couple of reasons. First of all, with the "rolling timeline" of the Marvel universe, in which the rise of superheroes is never more than 13 to 15 years ago, the film Ghostbusters would have been out for nearly 10 years before the first superheroes (the Fantastic Four) appeared in the Marvel-public's eye. So the Thing would have seen the movie as Ben Grimm, a somewhat young teenager at the time, and ten years later have become the heroic monster we all know and love.

The second thing is to consider the target audience of comic books, which would primarily be young males age 14-17, which again, places the reference nearly 10 years out of their reach. Much is made in the Avengers comic itself about this very fact, of course, because if the young readers are like Ms. Marvel, who says she's never seen it, they will meet with the Thing's incredulity and remark that it's ubiquitously on cable.  

Of course, there's always YouTube as well.

Worst Marvel Cover: August

Again, there wasn:t THAT much that seemed Worst about the covers for August, but there sure were a heck of a lot that were just  bland. So, I'm sorry, Mario Alberti, for having to single out your comic cover here, but you can blame my own high standards.

The cover has a nice asymmetrical element because of the area on the side for the logo, but I'm tempted to think that wasn't the original design, as the whole thing seems compressed and shunted out of the way. There are other little problems that bug me, such as the elongated torso of Spider-Man and the Human Torch's leg shortage. I also don't like it when artists get kid's faces wrong, and they end up looking like miniature adults, as with the case of Franklin's face, here. But the biggest problem I have is the coloring. It throws off the whole picture. The coloring is brightest and in most contrast with the green in the Human Torch, drawing your eye up there instead of toward Franklin, where the real drama is. The duplicated shadow of Venom is lost by virtue of the background that's literally awash with the green, instead. There is an idea of a motif, but really some other variation of colors would be better than to simply have an overlay with the entire picture.  The tension is pretty dramatic, of course but that seems lost because the whole this is so muddy. I like the almost pencil-like quality, however. That was nice.

Spider-Man/Fantastic Four # 2, cover art by Mario Alberti, on sale Aug. 4

Worst Marvel Cover: July

Worst Marvel Cover this month?

Amazing Spider-Man #636, cover by Mike Fyles
I applaud the attempt to change up the trade dress of the cover design-- that logo, the cover blurb, the moved indica. All of that shows some creativity and willingness to change. But the art itself is rather dull, and maybe even unfinished. Obviously, I'm talking about the big formless head atop the figure to the right, which I almost take for being Power Man for some reason. Part of the problem is the logo interrupting the scene, which isn:t rendered so that there is a distinction between foreground and background. I actually thought the images behind the logo were meant to be a real part of the scene, until I figured out while analyzing it that it's actually a picture within a frame on the wall. If I have to regard it so deeply, than you may not have created the fully embracing kind of art needed for comic books. So I wonder if I can fault the painting (it's a painting within a painted cover!) as being out of proportion?

Runners up?

Fantastic Four Annual #32, cover by Brian Hitch (I've already discussed my problems with Hitch's problems of perspective and over-rendering)

and
Lady Deadpool #1, cover by Greg Land (exhibiting typical strange body types and perspective despite a good cover gag.)

Supporting Cast Haiku

Neither wife, nor girlfriend.
Girl Next Door no more, she waits
Yet Another Day.