posted
And now, 3 of my favorite music videos... er, episodes!
Ep.25
"MENACE FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD" has the show go completely off the deep end. It starts quiet enough, as we meet "Hammond", a smart-alec Bugle reporter (who reminds me a bit of Steve Lombard from the SUPERMAN comics). He's investigating a building that disappeared. Peter-- who, between episodes, is suddenly taking pictures for Jameson, is assigned to "interview" Dr. Orloff, who's picking up strange radio messages. Pete thinks he's a "kook", but somehow is able to make out messages Orloff can't-- indicating whoever's sending the messages are the ones who made the building disapear-- and are planning a repeat performance. Spidey speeds across town, and arrives just in time to see a building vanish before his eyes! Taking a closer look, he finds a hole in the ground that goes down... WAY down. As a crowd races toward him, Spidey figures the best course to take is to go DOWN the hole! What follows is a psychedelic panorama that may have left some of the younger viewers wondering what the HECK they were watching.
Spidey finds the building intact, atop a gigantic elevator mechanism, and decides to find out who's responsible. After encounters with a swarm of devil-bats and a giant "guard", he arrives at an underground city, where its ape-like inhabitants (that Charlton Heston movie was awful popular the year this was made) have captured a small crowd of people from one of the buildings they stole, and plan to make slaves of them. Their leader sneers, "Who's gonna stop me?" "Did I hear my cue?" replies Spidey. BIG fight, followed by the revelation that "The Leader" is actually "Mugs Riley", a bank robber and escaped con. It's never explained how he found his way underground, or moreso, conned the Molemen into making him their leader, but when they find out STEALING is is only motivation, they quickly turn on him.
For years, I thought this was a really bizarre remake of the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby story from FANTASTIC FOUR #31 (Oct'64), "THE MAD MENACE OF THE MACABRE MOLE MAN", which had been adapted into an FF cartoon the year before as "RETURN OF THE MOLE MAN". But no! Turns out, it was really based on "ONE OF OUR SKYSCRAPERS IS MISSING", a Joe Simon-Al Williamson story from THE ADVENTURES OF THE FLY #2 (Sep'59). This was reprinted recently, and the sequence of The Fly, on his own, descending down, down, DOWN the hole, and his confrontation with the story's villain, and even the resolution where the underground dwellers promise to return the buildings to the surface and dismantle the mechanisms, is almost IDENTICAL! How wild is that-- a Spider-Man cartoon based on a Fly story!
The music this time out gets really wild, and includes such gems as "Latin Gear" by John Hawksworth (the title sequence), "Mods And Rockers" and "Diskothik" (Spidey swings to the bank, Spidey swings underground), both by Bill Martin & Phil Coulter (the SAME 2 guys who wrote The Bay City Rollers' big hit, "Saturday Night"!) and "L.S.D." (Spidey goes down the hole) by Alan Hawkshaw, which also turned up on an anti-drug public service commercial.
Apart from everything else, the pacing of this story is better than most, balancing talky scenes with the swinging ones, serving to make this my favorite of all the Bakshi-Morrow episodes. Many of the animation sequences appear to have been assembled completely out of order-- including both the "down the hole" bit and Spidey's arrival at Mole City (he gets to the giant door only after wandering around inside the city for some time). But at this point, the way these things were being assembled, I suppose it's a miracle some of them made any sense at all!
Ep.26
"DIAMOND DUST" continues the "sports" theme of 2 earlier stories, this time out Pete is trying out for baseball as a pitcher, and doing quite well. But crime rears its ugly heads, in the form of a gang of APES (there's that Heston movie's influence again-- or maybe it's the DC Comics thing about how "apes" always sell). In reality, it's a bunch of near-illiterate goons DRESSED in ape suits, led by the suave, smooth-talking "Shakespeare, The Prince Of Thieves" (himself patterned after Basil Rathbone, looking like he stepped out of the movie LOVE FROM A STRANGER!).
Shakespeare plans to steal "The Optimo Gem" from the "Cosmopolitan Museum". To do this, he has one of his goons open a gorilla cage at the zoo, creating widescale panic! Spidey races to the scene and tackles the gorilla. After which, Shakespeare's "gorilla gang" wander the museum, anyone who sees them thinking they're the genuine articles. At the ballpark, Pete is stuck in the bullpen (and gets some heavy sarcasm about showing up late dumped on him by some unnamed blonde floozy). When the games goes very badly, the coach realizes he'd best put Parker in, but sends him to find a lost ball first. Doing so, he runs into a museum curator who tells him of "apes-- browsing thru the gem collection!" Before long (sort of), Spidey confronts the gang, and Shakespeare is in the hands of the cops. Then it's back to win the ballgame, during which he realizes he FORGOT to return to stolen Optimo!
This one's almost a flip-side to "MENACE...", as we have down-to-Earth baddies instead of a really wild sci-fi menace, and the pacing is much worse here than usual. When Spidey swings to the zoo, back to the ballpark, then from the front of the museum to INSIDE the museum, it seems like it takes forever, as he appears to be swinging all over town, down to the river and back, etc. The music for this is GREAT, though almost none of it has turned up online anywhere yet. But the ABSURDITY of this really hit me, decades after I first saw it, when I was on an art school trip to NYC. You see-- in Central Park, the baseball stadium, the zoo, and the Metropolitan Museum (on which the Cosmopolitan was obviously based) are all RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER!!! All that swinging clearly served no other purpose but to pad the episode out from 10 to 20 minutes.
There's 2 funny bits (mistakes?) in this one with the voices. In one scene, Shakespeare and his gang watch Spidey fight the gorilla on TV, and he says, "Well-- let's see!" in a completely different voice than the rest of the story. I put it down to his being from the same neighborhood they are, but having better education-- that's his REAL voice, and the whole "Shakespearean" aura he does is just a big put-on! The other scene's in the museum when the curator talks with the guard. When the curator says, "Well let's hope there's no monkey business!" it's in a completely different voice. Coinsidering the line, were the animators just having a joke at the audience's expense?
Ep.27
"SPIDERMAN BATTLES THE MOLEMEN" had me shaking my head back when. I heard the name in the coming attractions, and thought, "Wait a minute! Didn't he fight the Molemen LAST week??" I know rerun scheduling can be bad, but that would be insane. Turns out they had the nerve to do a SEQUEL, only 2 weeks after the original!
This opens with a prolonged swinging scene over Alan Hawkshaw's "Raver", one of the wildest rock tunes in the series' run. Another building disappears, causing Spidey to think, "But that's silly-- Mugs Riley's in jail!" He heads to Dr. Orloff's lab, and hears another one of those messages, which his "Spider-hearing" apparently allows only him to decode. This time he hears they're planning a trap for Spider-Man-- but what?
Spidey hitches a ride under a zeppelin, then accidentally stuns himself trying to land atop a building. By a wild coincidence, it's one of the very buildings The Molemen have a "descending mechanism" build under, and they YANK it down to the center of the Earth. While it appears he's near Mole City, Spidey goes "searching", and has more wild adventures than last time, running into a giant lazer-beam-shooting insect (which appears to have stepped off the 3rd season of ROCKET ROBIN HOOD-- made the same year by the same studio), a group of bloodthirsty warrior elves, and that giant guard (again). On reaching Mole City this time, he's knocked out and tied up. Incredibly, Hammond is among a group of surface prisoners for the 2nd time (I mean-- WHAT ARE THE ODDS???). Spidey breaks free, mayhem ensues, he forces "The Mole" to order everyone freed, the buildings returned, the mechanisms destroyed. But "The Mole" gets loose, tries to shoot Spidey, hits a control panel (it's The Master Technician and Sky Master all over again, I tell you!) and Spidey barely manages to flee the blast-- though how he got back to the surface when the LAST working mechanism had already lifted a building is never shown (or explained). Also a mystery is the identity of "The Mole", as the voice this time is completely different. They thought what Mugs Riley did was wrong, but 2 weeks (or a couple of months, depending) it's suddenly okay? Well, I guess Molemen aren't the smartest guys aroung.
This one reuses several tracks from "MENACE" while also introducing several more of the wildest, weirdest music bits in the series run to date. This time out, the coming attractions promised a "mummy" come back to life in "PHANTOM FROM THE DEPTHS OF TIME". A week later, the promised story aired, but with a completely different title...
[ May 20, 2007, 04:47 PM: Message edited by: profh0011 ]
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"THE EVIL SORCERER" falls about halfway between the really weird stuff and more traditional Spidey stuff. It starts out with a battle between magicians for control of the entire world, set long in the past. You'd almost think you stepped into a DR. STRANGE cartoon or something! Kotep, who looks like a 6-foot version of Yoda (right down to the pointed ears and green skin) loses the battle, at which point we switch to the present-day. Somehow, his "mummified" remains (the result of a spell that cost him the fight) are on display at Peter's college, as if he was a statue!
Susan (last name revealed here as Shaw), that blonde from "CRIMINALS IN THE CLOUDS", makes a return appearance, once again brushing Pete off, this time for a lecture on archeology, which Pete scoffs at. (I dug the stuff, I'd have gone along! Is this version of Pete really such a "brain"?) After, she hangs out at the coffee shoppe with another "jock" type, this one named Bob (they all look alike, don't they?). Susan invites Pete to have a drink with them, which probably annoys BOTH guys! (Women...!)
The professor is accused of scaring his students with stories about black magic & curses, and in the ensueing argument the dean says the guy needs a psychiatrist. "You think I'm mad, do you? I'll show you! I'll show the world!!" (Uh oh-- haven't we all heard this sort of thing before, and don't we all know where it always leads?) Before you know it, the guy reads a spell which brings Kotep back "from the depths of time". Kotep is not interested in helping the professor-- he seeks to raise a demon army and conquer the world! He sics a "demon-slave" on the guy, and before long, the student body's in danger. Oh, and Susan calls Pete a coward for running out "to get help" (WHY is Pete chasing after this obvious WASTE of his time?). Spidey challenges Kotep & his demon-slave, but Kotep vanishes "into the half-world of magic".
Ralph Bakshi seemed to catch his breath with this one, music-wise, as most of the "KPM" tracks had already been featured in "KING PINNED" and "SWING CITY". Kotep summons his demon-army, to the tune of Syd Dale's "The Hell Raisers" (talk about an appropiate use of a song!). They tell him he must defeat Spider-Man, or they will turn on him! He crafts a giant spider-web, and, wouldn't you know, Spidey gets STUCK in it-- before finding himself in another dimension, filled with hordes of devil-bats and other monstrous creatures. At Kotep's castle, he gets caught in another spider-web-- this one created by a giant spider! But Susan's words about Kotep's sceptre come in handy (at least she did something useful), though you gotta think this guy wasn't too smart to be telling his opponent, "No! ALL MY POWER rests in that sceptre!" Although Kotep's body clearly existed thru the ages in suspended animation, once the spell that brought him back to life is broken, he says he must "go back-- into the depths of time!" (This was announced as "PHANTOM FROM THE DEPTHS OF TIME"-- for some reason, they changed it to the more generic sounding "THE EVIL SORCERER". The longer, and more accurate title, wound up being used on a 3rd-season episode, where it made absolutely no sense at all. Like so much in the 3rd season!)
Ep.29
"VINE" shows Peter's luck with girls FINALLY turn around, as he's helping a nice girl named Jackie check out the attic in the old house her parents just bought. The place belonged to a Dr. Smithers who disappeared years before, and before long they uncover a strange seed pod, Smither's journal, and-- of all things-- a time machine! Exposed to air, the pod grows, cracks open and unleashes a quickly-growing vine that bursts out of the house and snakes its way toward the city, destroying everything in its path. "Too big for Spidey to handle", thinks Pete-- so he decides instead to (get this!) use the machine to go back in time, and find Smithers, who may know how to stop the thing. Wouldn't that be obvious to anyone?
And so, Spidey plunges headlong into a nightmarish primordial prehistoric jungle, populated by killer plants, giant killer frogs, and a strange race of furry blue humanoids, who capture him and take him to Smithers. He tells of how, 20 years earlier, he gathered the "men" and built a city-- but at some point the place was over-run by "vine-things". A huge dose of radium can kill them, but they've mutated by feeding off it slowly, to the point where they now depend on it. Spidey heads toward "the forbidden city" to get the last 2 remaining radium gems, which can solve both his and Smithers' problems.
Those mutated vine-things are intelligent now-- there's few things on this show weirder-looking than talking vines. "LOOK! A MAN-thing is among us!" Naturally, the leader vine looks like a different species (ain't that always the way?). When asked, "Shall I prepare the FANGED one?" he (it?) replies, "YES! It has been too long since we have used the arena-- and I wished to be amused!"
Spidey's caught, finds himself fighting some big ugly thing (I'm not even sure if it's supposed to be a mammal, a lizard, or what), steals the gems, the vines keel over, he returns to NYC, and dumps the gems into the giant vine's "mouth". End of problem. What I found interesting was how this episode once again featured some of the WEIRDEST music yet, until Spidey was back in control near the end, and then they returned to Ray Ellis' 1st-season music. It really fit! For once, Pete's still on speaking terms with the girl of the episode, as Jackie invited him back to "explore the basement".
Ep.30
"PARDO PRESENTS" weirded me out the 1st time I saw it (like just about every episode this season), but over the years it's become one of my favorites. It starts out very ominously, as what appears to be the shadow of a giant black cat hovers and walks high over the city, committing a series of robberies in its wake, tons of swag disappearing in an electrical disturbance akin to a transporter effect. Somewhere, we meet Pardo, a really strange-looking character with a long robe, big moustache, the usual green skin and an attitude that shows he's even more full of himself than most of this show's baddies. He's just collected this massive haul (the loot, inexplicably, floating in mid-air!), yet feels it's only the beginning!
Pete & his latest girlfriend Polly (I said his luck was picking up) attend a movie premiere (Pete hinting, mostly to the viewers, that it was Spidey who got the tickets). The Mayor, the city council, and the city's elite are all in attendance, to witness a "new screen process"-- but they have NO idea what's coming. As the show's about to begin, Pardo announces, "I hope you've all brought plenty of money, because this performance is a benefit-- MINE!" Suddenly, a giant cat's EYE appears on screen and mesmerizes the entire audience (except for Pete, who fights hard to overcome its effect). Goons go thru the audience collecting loot, as Pardo announces the entire audience will be held for a king's ransom . But Spidey tackles the goons and makes his way to the projection booth, where he & Pardo SEEM to recognize each other. (How can this be if Pardo is a newcomer?) Pardo escapes-- thru the giant eyeball-- and Spidey follows.
Following the commercial break, everything changes. Suddenly, with no explanation, Spidey's floating in a rooftop water tower, loaded with stolen loot. Outside, panic reigns as the audience runs to escape, the police and national guard arrive on the scene, and a GIANT CAT growls at the crowd from the rooftop! "MMMMMROWWW!!!" It feels like they skipped a scene somewhere... unless we take it for granted that the eyeball teleported Spidey from inside the theatre to inside the water tank.
The image of Pardo's face appears, hovering in the air, telling the cat to attack, and the crowd is once again mesmerized. Spidey challenges it to a fight (which looks hopelessly one-sided), and the rest of the story consists mostly of the cat chasing Spidey across half the city, until they reach the Brooklyn Bridge (always a popular spot for Spidey battles). As in "VINE", the 1st half of this episode mostly contained "KPM" tracks, but once the chase begins, it's Ray Ellis music all the way. In the end, the cat is electrocuted, but all that's left is Pardo's clothes! Pete wonders if Pardo and his "pet" were really one and the same.
While re-reading my early-60's comics, I suddenly recognized that "PARDO PRESENTS" was yet another adaptation (the show's 11th)-- of sorts. The scene of Spidey fighting the cat around the rooftop water tank looks VERY similar to the cover of ASM #30 (Nov'65), a story entitled "THE CLAWS OF THE CAT!", which featured a cat-burglar ripping off a whole series of penthouses. In addition, the major set-piece about an entire audience at a show being hypnotized (except for the hero) is straight out of ASM #16 (Sep'64), "DUEL WITH DAREDEVIL!" The difference being it's a movie theatre instead of a circus (circuses were considered on the way out by the late 60's), and it's Spidey rather than Daredevil who's the only one not hypnoptized. Note both Pardo and The Ringmaster (a Jack Kirby villain who dates back to CAPTAIN AMERICA #5 / Aug'41) wear loud clothes & have long moustaches! Talk about a BIZARRE reinvention of a story!
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"CLOUD CITY OF GOLD" shows Peter aboard a tiny airplane flying over the Andes, supposedly on a "student exchange" program. HUH??? He hears a story about a "lost city of gold jealously guarded by its inhabitants". Next thing, lightning strikes, the engines give out, the plane crashes. Pete switches to Spider-Man (NOBODY asks what happened to Pete), they build a raft and head downstream to get away from natives looming closeby. Before you know it, the jungle's disappeared, they're racing thru a rocky canyon, and the stream reaches a dead-end at a whirlpool! Sucked DOWN into it like the drain at the bottom of a bathtub, they find themselves in an underground river, menaced by rocky rapids and blood-thirsty bats. Was Spidey ever MORE out of his environment? (I'd think this was more JONNY QUEST territory-- see "TREASURE OF THE TEMPLE".)
Exiting the tunnel, they come upon the City Of Gold-- ruled over by De Vargas, a descendant of Spanish Conquistadors (and still dressing as one), who keeps the natives in a grip of fear via "The Volcano Crapowa" (I translate that as "exploding S***"). Spidey battles a giant "Aztec War Bird", whose wings never move. Either the animation has reached new levels of cheapness, or this baby is some kind of creature of magic (take yer pick). The bird is beaten, the others are captured, and Spidey is soon stuck down the volcano shaft, battling "the guardian of fire"-- a giant spider! Someone's fool enough to shoot a cannonball at him, and-- even I don't believe this-- it causes the vocano to erupt, along with an earthquake, which destroys the entire city. De Vargas, we're told, is running for his life from the natives, his "power" over them now broken.
The foursome get back on the raft and continue downstream... or DO they? We see them going thru another underground tunnel-- more rocks-- and then... NOW WAIT A MINUTE!!! It appears they travel UP the spout they came down from, and are soon back at the plane, where Pete says "I saw the whole thing from here". I'm sorry, there's just NO WAY I buy this. A helicopter arrives and takes them to safety. Personally, I think the whole thing was in Pete's imagination.
This episode is notable for featuring a LOT of "new" music, much of which was later reused endlessly in other episodes. I keep hoping some of it will turn up eventually-- it's pretty wild stuff.
Ep.32
"NEPTUNE'S NOSE CONE" begins when a satellite housed in what looks like a Mercury capsule goes off-course over the Antarctic Ocean, and JJJ dreams of glory for him and the Bugle by sending Pete (who's now apparently taking pictures full-time) and lady reporter Penny down to search for it. Lost in a snowstorm, they crash on a tiny island, which inexplicably houses a tropical jungle, bizarre monstrous creatures, and a tribe of cavemen! Apparently, this episode features the TV show's version of "The Savage Land", except there's no sign of Ka-Zar or Zabu.
Pete's knocked out in the crash, and on awakening finds Penny gone-- a prisoner of the cavemen, who plan on throwing her and the "nosecone" into their volcano to appease their fire-god and grant them warmth. He figures it'll block the spout, pressure will build, and the whole island will be destroyed. (Hey, didn't we see something like this the week before??) En route to save Penny, he's attacked by a flying snake, man-eating plants, and the cavemen, who chase him thru a giant wooden door (which looks like it was the inspiration for a similar one in the origin of IRON FIST-- I kid thee not!). He finds an immense tunnel, filled with huge statues and equally huge monsters. (The visual is almost IDENTICAL to one featured much later in KA-ZAR #11 / Oct'75.) The best part of this is the music-- WILDER than ever!!
Spidey escapes the tunnel, rescues Penny, and somehow, the nose cone's retro-rockets activate themselves-- sending the thing BACK into orbit. (OH, COME ON!!!!!!!) Somehow friendlier now, Pete says the cavemen can probably be convinced to help unbend their propeller (and here I thought the wings were sheared off). Back in NYC, JJJ doesn't believe a word of it, since the capsule was spotted in orbit again. He asks "Where did you REALLY go? Paris? London?" Pete leaves him a "scoop"-- a box containing an egg, which hatches a baby flying snake that prompty bites Jameson.
This has long been one of my least-favorites. I think I may have stopped watching the show regularly after this one. Funny enough, they got around to doing a story somewhat similar to this in ASM #103-104 (Dec'71-Jan'72), which DID feature Ka-Zar and Zabu, plus Kraven The Hunter, JJJ and Gwen Stacy. Between the two, I think I prefer THIS one!
Ep.33
"HOME" is one I think I missed on its first-run. It starts at the Coffee Shoppe, where what appears to be an 8-piece band plays (not likely at such a tiny venue), and while everybody has fun & dances, Pete reads about the government testing a "proton device" in the desert. Rodney Rogers & Sonja, last seen together at the end of "SWING CITY", turn up saying Pete should "live a little". She asks him to dance, but he's just not interested. That is, until a pretty redhead named Carol approaches and begins talking about science. Pete feels like he's met his dream girl at last, and an hour of dancing later, looks forward to seeing her again.
But things go quickly wrong when he later finds Carol stealing equipment from an electronics warehouse. What th'...? He's even more surprised to find she's got SPIDER-powers, just like his! (Both the wall-climbing and web-shooting.) In a twist, she webs him, escapes, and it takes 2 hours before the webbing disolves to free him. The next night, she's a no-show, but on patrol he finds her again. And this time, she's brought friends. A hovering globe deposits several "spider-men" who rescue Carol. Because she knows his secret identity (among other reasons), Pete follows on a chase that (according to him) covers "half the United States". (Either he's exagerating, or the writers have flipped out yet again.)
In a cave in the desert, Pete finds an underground city (this seems like something out of a Jack Kirby FF comic), is captured and taken before the ruler-- Carol's father. Seems they come from another planet, crashed on Earth, and have been awaiting rescue-- which may come JUST too late, as that proton device Pete read about in the paper, designed for "excavating", is about to be tested nearby! They hoped to transport a device that would weaken it by remote-control, but the equipment they needed was damaged when Pete foiled the robbery. Feeling guilty, he offers to help, and although there's some confusing and contradictory dialogue (Carol's Dad comes across as a real "stiff" the way he talks) eventually he manages to plant their device on the proton device and flee. At which point, a beam of light shines out from their home planet, disintegrating the proton device (and thus negating all their worries), before transporting their entire city back to the stars. All done to some amazing, spectacular soundtrack music.
Pete wonders if he'll ever see Carol again, and back at the Coffee Shoppe, reads a newspaper which reports "proton device failure" (no mention of it being wiped out of existence). This particular cartoon was padded out by showing the same very long pan shot of the band playing-- 3 TIMES!
Another thing I thought I'd point out involves Spidey swinging. It didn't start out this way, but the longer the 1st season went on, they started having long shots of Spidey swinging, with the city in the background-- and NO visible means of support for his webbing. Like-- WHAT exactly is he swinging FROM? The 2nd season got much worse with this, and in this one I believe they also showed him swinging across the southwestern desert (that proton device sure looked a lot like the "gamma bomb" in INCREDIBLE HULK #1 / May'62). Perhaps the MOST obvious and absurd shot is when they have a high-angle view of the Empire State Building-- and somehow, Spidey is shown swinging past it or over it. HUH??? It's no wonder we saw Spidey in so many underground caverns this season-- at least THERE he had a roof to swing from. (Best not to even think about it... hee hee.)
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"BLOTTO" is a riot-- in more ways than one. "Clive" is a movie director turned raving-mad scientist, and like several previous Spidey villains, has a grudge against those who "laughed" at his ideas. Via a "new screen process" (didn't Pardo have one of those?) he's created a creature called "Blotto" which encompasses all the darkest aspects of the human psyche-- and with his "spiritscope", freed it from the movie screen and brought it to horrible life! Unleashed, it begins absorbing everything in sight-- cars, mail boxes, street lights, entire buildings. THAT'll show them!
Pete is seen driving some glamorous movie star with an accent to an appearance at his school-- when he runs out of gas. (OH REALLY???) It's that moment Blotto appears, ahd he quickly rescues the lady & switches to Spidey. But how do you stop a thing like that?
Clive (and his dwarfish sidekick, "Colin"-- easy to see where that tribute is aimed) appear to the Mayor via TV broadcast. "Now you see what wonders I, Clive, have wrought! Surrender your city to me-- and maybe I'll let you LEAVE-- before I DESTROY it. Just-- MAYBE!" "Stay tuned to this channel for further instructions." That always gives me a laugh.
Most of the music is recylced this time, but ranges from "epic adventure" to "crime noir" in style. Dark, frightening stuff! If ever Spidey was out of his league, it's now, but somehow, against all odds (or common sense) he manages to save the entire city from destruction. Well, what's LEFT of it by then, anyway...
Ep.35
"THUNDER RUMBLE" starts with Spidey matching wits with "Boomer", a safecracker who likes to rob banks during thunderstorms. But this is anything but a "down-to-Earth" story, as the focus abruptly switches to the planet Mars-- where we find a race of superhuman, godlike warriors who have apparently conquered most of the Solar system, and plan Earth as their next target. Ares, God of War, sends Boltan, god of thunder (who looks like the traditional depiction of THOR rather than the Jack Kirby one-- except for his being at least ten feet tall) to Earth. He arrives just in time to stop Spidey from nabbing Boomer in Central Park. Talk about worlds colliding!
Spidey somehow manages to stun Boltan, then gets help from "the gang" (a crowd of hot-rodders who, presumably, attend the same school Pete does) to tie him down. But Boomer strikes a deal with Boltan and frees him, at which point Boltan uses one his hand-hurled lightning bolts to send Spidey toward outer space!
After reaching the gold depository, Boltan is attacked by the air force, but to no avail. Just-- barely-- Spidey stops himself from hurtling out of Earth's atmosphere, and returns for a rematch. Before you know it, Boltan's own weapons backfire against him, sending HIM back into space, whereupon Spidey clobbers Boomer. A fun diversion, sort of halfway between the type of stories done in the shows 1st & 2nd seasons.
Ep.36
"SPIDERMAN MEETS SKYBOY" is another one I missed the first time out. A scientist, Dr. Caldwell, being honored by the scientific community, mysteriously vanishes in front of a crowd. His son Jan (who attends the same school as Pete and appears to be slightly younger than him) decides to use his father's "missing" invention (which only he knows the location of), the "astro-wave projection helmet" (there's a mouthful) to help search for his missing father. FLYING over the city in a red outfit, he runs afoul of Spidey, who stupidly thinks it's someone "invading his turf" and challenges him to a mid-air fistfight. (Never mind that Spidey CAN'T FLY!)
Pete's rival at another paper, Jerry Muldoon, snaps a pic of the fight, and next thing, Jameson tells Pete not to come back unless he, too can come up with a pic of Spiderman fighting "Skyboy". (You'd THINK JJJ would want something different & original, but apparently not this time...) And so, we see Spidey on patrol-- with a large, awkward camera hanging on a strap around his neck. I guess in the cartoon universe, he hasn't gotten ahold of a camera small enough to attach to his belt yet. Or gotten the idea of setting it up with webbing so he can take pics of his own fights. Oh well...
Meanwhile, somewhere outside the city, on "Lightning Mountain", we meet the story's villain-- a character called Dr. ZAPP!!! He's kidnapped Caldwell and is trying to force him to reveal the location of his invention. Seeing the pic of "Skyboy", he rightly deduces it's Caldwell's son, and lures him into a trap-- with Spidey right behind him. Both fall into Zapp's clutches, and things look bad... until Spidey noticed the heavy glasses Zapp wears, and decides to put his bulky camera's flash-bulb to good use. Anyone who's seen the origin of Captain America knows what happens when some baddie stumbles into electrical equipment, and before you know it... ZAPP!
I strongly suspect this is the show's 12th adaptation-- of sorts. Quite a few elements, from the mountain-top secret lair to the lightning-based villain, seem inspired by the very 1st Starman story, all the way back in ADVENTURE COMICS #61 (Apr'41)! Oddly enough, there also seems to be several similarities to Larry Ivie's Altron-Boy serial that ran in MONSTERS & HEROES #1-6 (1967-69), including, again, the remote mountain-top hideout, and a young hero using the invention of his missing father. The Altron-Boy serial started about a year before this cartoon was made, so it's possible someone on the show was aware of it.
Dr. Zapp is the latest baddie here who appears inspired by a movie actor-- in this case, Otto Preminger! More than most, the voice & accent is VERY similar!! The goofiest scene may be where he's talking to Caldwell, apparently via a closed-circuit TV system-- but then reaches thru what appeared to be the screen, which is actually a window. Later on, while pursueing Skyboy, Spidey is confronted with there being no buildings to swing from in the country-- and "hitches a ride" on a truck. One has to think after a similar chase in "HOME", someone may have brought up the point. We see him hanging in mid-air behind the truck from his spider-web, in defiance of gravity (there's a lot of that in this episode).
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"COLD STORAGE" follows up on "THUNDER RUMBLE"'s trend of down-to-Earth baddies (sort of), with "Dr. Cool" and his henchman, who pull diamond heists at midnight. Their hideout is an ice factory, where they hide their loot ("hot ice") for transport inside the genuine variety. Spidey shows up to nab 'em... but gets careless, gets knocked out, tied up, and left to FREEZE TO DEATH in a "nuclear-powered" freezer with the thermostat set to "absolute zero". Oops!
He wakes up to find the place thawed out quicker than expected... or HAS it? Outside, all is in ruins, and the city has been taken over by cavemen and dinosaurs. SAY WHAT??? Apart from the wooly mammoth and the giant lizards, I'm almost reminded of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. It's one non-stop series of deadly hazards after the last, more and more, until...
The real ice man, ahead of schedule, stops by turns off the freezer. (Yep! It was all a dream!!) This week's cost-cutting padding consists of the exact same robbery sequence staged again, right down to the line, "I wonder what we'll get for THIS?" Spidey shows up again-- they try to knock him out the exact same way as before (not very bright, are they?) and this time he puts the kibosh on them like he should have in the first place.
I remember seeing this first-run, and it was just one more episode that made me really tired of watching the show. At least the music's cool, though most (if not all) of it is recycled from earlier episodes.
Ep.38
"TO CAGE A SPIDER" opens with Spidey complaining about how tired he is of losing sleep and running around in a hot costume. He goes after some bank robbers, but gets clobbered in a most absurd fashion, by a device called a "vibrator" (which looks like a jack-hammer) that's hurled at him from a speeding car. He's clobbered and falls to the ground, which knocks him unconscious. We're supposed to believe he fell from around 80 feet up, but I don't buy for a second that something that big could be thrown straight up that far from a moving vehicle. At any rate, for the 2nd time in the show's run (counting "KING PINNED"), some crooks get away. His track record this season has been uneven, to say the least.
A crowd gathers, followed by police, including Captain Stacy (his first appearance on the show), who managed to keep Spidey from being unmasked by a blood-thirsty mob. Despite repeatedly helping save NYC this year and more than once being shown on good terms with the Mayor, inexplicably Spidey is apparently suspected of being guilty of SOME crime, and taken to the prison infirmary to recover. While there, Stacy calls his wife (a major deviation from the comic-- where he was a widower, calling his DAUGHTER). And then, a group of convicts grab him, hoping to use him as a hostage to help in a prison break.
Waking up, slowly recovering, Spidey decides to pretend to throw in with the cons, to keep Stacy from being hurt. Knocking out the lights, he picks them off one by one, finally taking out the leader in the prison yard. Stacy offers his thanks, and says he'll speak in his defense at "the trial" (even though we have no idea what he's suspected of having done!). Spidey declines, takes off, saying he's actually HAPPY to be losing sleep and running around in a hot costume.
Of course, this is a rather faithful adaptation (the show's 13th), of ASM #65 (Oct'68), "THE IMPOSSIBLE ESCAPE!", which came out only a few months before this story aired. The main difference, apart from no mention of Gwen Stacy, was how Spidey wound up hurt & unconscious. In the original, the story followed a 2-parter in ASM #63-64, "WINGS IN THE NIGHT!" and "THE VULTURE'S PREY!" (funny how the cartoon used that title a year before the comic-book did), in which the "new" Vulture found out the original Vulture was still alive-- and got clobbered by him (I don't believe the 2nd Vulture has ever turned up again in the comics). Spidey then got clobbered as well, the cliifhanger ending leading to the prison story. It made more sense in the comic, as the reason he fell from 80 feet up was, he was fighting a guy who could FLY! (Maybe the cartoon should have shown him taking on a penthouse burglar or something?
Between the setting, the visuals and the dark, "crime drama" style music, this episode was more down-to-Earth and "film noir" in style than usual. This season certainly was on the schizophrenic side, flip-flopping between realistic "crime" stories and wild, outrageous sci-fi and fantasy material (and only the occasional "super-villain" on display). When I tuned in the following week and saw they'd started reruns, that was it for me. I figured, I'd put up with enough of it, and stopped watching. As a result, I never knew there'd been a 3rd season worth of stories (if only 13 episodes) until a couple years later, when I started watching syndicated reruns. In its way, the 3rd season was even more schizo, and made the 2nd year seem almost "normal" by comparison!
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"TROUBLE WITH SNOW" was a shocker when I first saw it-- sometime in the early 70's, as part of the syndicated rerun package. This and several episodes that followed appear to be an attempt to return to the format of the 1st season, with 2 10-min. stories per show, while retaining the psychedelic backgrounds and weird music. I wondered if, after doing an entire season of "full-length" stories (mostly padded out to be that long), Bakshi & co. weren't trying to upgrade the show. If so, they succeeded to some degree-- but NOT FOR LONG.
This story probably has more narration than any other Spidey episode, which can get annoying after awhile. A miraculous, "one-in-a-million" set of cirumstances brings a snowman to a semblance of life, and naturally it goes on a rampage, growing bigger with each subsequent snowfall. Pete first sees it while futilely trying to ask Susan Shaw out on a date (AGAIN???) and getting told once more she'd rather hang out with Roy Robinson (both characters appeared previously in "CRIMINALS IN THE CLOUDS" and "THE EVIL SORCERER"). Later on, JJJ demands that Peter bring back a photo of the snowman, or not come back at all. (Once again, by the time he's saying this, it's already been in the papers, and should be considered "old news".)
Pete backtracks the snowman's prints to the spot of his "creation" and figures out what the narrator already told us minutes before. Tracking the monster with a much smaller camera than he had in "SPIDERMAN MEETS SKYBOY" (but still much bigger & clunkier than the one he had in the comic-books), he loses it when the snowman attacks. Via some cable & hooking into the city's power supply, he takes out the creature in a manner similar to that used in "KILOWATT KAPER".
Although quite a lot on the "stiff" side, compared to much of the previous season, this story flies by at lightning-speed.
"SPIDERMAN VS. DESPERADO" introduces a new super-villain (we hadn't seen enough of them of late), a cowboy-themed baddie who rides a robotic flying horse. (Shades of Giant-Man's enemy, The Black Knight!) The high points of this one is some of the dialogue. The villain, on seeing Spidey approaching, says, "Well! If it ain't the dude in the funny outfit!" Just before Spidey gets clobbered in mid-air, he says, "What in tarnation...?"
Spidey plants an idea in JJJ's head to lay a trap for the western baddie, but naturally, Jameson figures the two are in cahoots, and against all sense, the police apparently agree. Even so, Spidey manages to save the cops, capture the crook, AND get away in the process. The attitude of the law toward our web-slinger sure is schizophrenic this season.
Aunt May made her 4th appearance on the show in this episode, watching the news with Peter as a report on Desperado comes on. Considering he lives with her, you'd think we would have seen more of her than we did on this series.
One obvious feature that identifies the 3rd season is the end credits. Though basically the same as the 2nd season (the picture of the dock at night), the credits FADE in and out instead of blinking. Also, a new credit was added at the very end. In addition to the previously-used "Spider-Man appears in Marvel Comics Magazines", this year they added, "Spider-Man is based on an original character creation by STAN LEE." Uh huh. I'm glad the recent MOVIES finally "fixed" that, to say "Created by STAN LEE and STEVE DITKO".
Ep.40
"SKY HARBOR" introduces Baron Von Rattenraven-- another aerial villain in the mold of The Sky-Master, except this one appears to have been hiding out, scheming and building since "The Great War". Between his outfit and the squadron of lazer-beam-shooting biplanes, he sure looks like a refugee from WW1-- but wouldn't you think by the late 1960's he'd be a LOT older than he appears here?
Perhaps borrowing an idea from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s heli-carrier (or Spectrum's "Cloudbase" in CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS), "The Baron" has built a mobile airfield, complete with a hangars, held aloft by a pair of zeppelins. (Take THAT, Sky Master!) He tells his men, "I want to take hostages!"-- and they actually succeed in hijacking a jet-liner in mid-flight. With the plane and its passengers captive, air traffic grinds to a halt, and The Baron plans to rule the skies-- and possibly the world.
Spidey is personally recruited by the Mayor, and against this menace (which apears completely out of his league-- nothing new there), he quips, "Maybe I'll use mirrors." In one of the quickest turn-arounds ever seen concerning such a "big" menace, Spidey hitches a ride on the tail of The Baron's biplane, which is subsequently damaged by a blast from one of his men! While trying to land on Sky Harbor, he winds up crashing into it thanks to more of Spidey's meddling, and the entire colossal construction crashes into New York harbor. (Presumably, the jet-liner was landed and held elsewhere-- otherwise, Spidey just destroyed it AND all its passenger-hostages!!!) In the wrap-up, Spidey jokes with the Mayor that The Baron's plans were "full of hot air".
"THE BIG BRAINWASHER" is one of my favorites of the 3rd season. The Kingpin returns-- with a completely different voice this time (as with Doc Ock and The Phantom, the original voice was MUCH better). The story opens with a dialogue-heavy scene that spells out most of the plot in a rather forced, rushed, awkward way, as Kingpin & his scientist-lackey "Winkler" have devised a way to brainwash city officials into doing his bidding.
This story marks the only appearance on the cartoon of "Mary Jane"! While her personality seems dead-on (fun & flighty), her hair seems wrong (blonde & no bangs) as does her voice (I never connected her with a thick Bronx accent-- or is that Brooklyn?-- she sounds like a floozie from some old gangster pic). MJ tells Pete about her new dancing job, saying "I'd dig watching you watching me." Stuff like this makes me wonder, WHY the heck did he EVER waste time with all those other girls who never returned his interest???
At "The Gloom Room A Go Go", we see that same band from "HOME" playing again, while MJ dances wildly onstage, then takes a break to snap photos of city officials (as instructed by her boss). Among them are-- surprisingly-- Captain Stacy, who is portrayed here as her UNCLE. Not only that, he looks COMPLETELY different than he did when he appeared in "TO CAGE A SPIDER"!!! Consistency clearly wasn't one of Ralph Bakshi's priorities.
The action is FAST and FURIOUS, as Spidey fights some thugs, confronts The Kingpin, who escapes with Stacy & "his niece". During the chase that follows (much shorter than it might have been if this had been done the year before), we actually see Kingpin's car pull away from the SAME building he eventually arrives at (the re-use of animation & backgrounds reaching ever more absurd levels). Spidey fakes out the thugs lying in wait in the dark with a web-dummy (shades of "CAPTURED BY J. JONAH JAMESON"), but STILL gets knocked out again, this time by gas (shades of "KING PINNED").
And then, Kingpin locks Spidey in a steel-lined room, chained to the wall, which quickly fills with water. Outside, Kingpin tells Winkler, "Leave it filled for 5 minutes-- then, clean it up." But Spidey has created a web-ball with an air pocket inside, to keep him from drowning. On finding this out, Winkler blurts out, "He ain't drowned!" Spidey replies-- "NO-- I AIN'T!" POW. Next thing you know, Kingpin is clobbered, and a rescued MJ says, "And I thought MY act was somethin'!" Ironically, in his 2nd cartoon appearance, Kingpin ends up in the hands of the law, even though it NEVER happened in the comics. (Shades of Ming The Merciless being beaten in the 3 FLASH GORDON serials.)
This was the show's 14th adaptation, and what excited me the 1st time I saw it was that I'd read a reprint of the original only a few months before seeing the cartoon. The bulk of it was loosely based on ASM #59 (Apr'68), "THE BRAND OF THE BRAINWASHER!", which was actually the follow-up to the Doc Ock / Nullifier story in ASM #53-56, with hanging plot-threads in #57-58). In the original, Pete returns home after having been missing with amnesia for weeks, to a relieved May-- and a surprisingly overjowed Gwen. This was the story in which Gwen finally realized how much she cared for Pete, though they had soap-opera problems due to her father Captain Stacy becoming a stooge of The Kingpin. MJ's part was pretty much just what is was in the original (her dancing was even a feature of the book's cover!). The cartoon, however, jettisoned the 2nd & 3rd parts of the story, where things got really complicated. Instead, surprisingly, they used the climax of ASM #52 (Sep'67), "TO DIE A HERO!", the 3rd chapter of the earlier Kingpin story. In that, Spidey & JJJ are locked in the steel water-trap room. By rights, that scene should have been used in the earlier cartoon, "KING PINNED", but wasn't-- though they did have the line, "Put them in the tank!" (Spidey recovered before that happened, leading to The Kingpin's helicopter get-away.)
For whatever flaws it has, and this bad habit of "mix-and-match", compared to most of the Bakshi-Morrow cartoons, I wish MORE of them had been like this!
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Prof--I'm behind on your reviews (and just about all Gym'lls threads these days), but keep 'em coming!
Amazing to be the Loan Spidey comic! Coming out three times a month! Interesting news, though an obvious marketing ploy. I've never *not* collected all the Spidey titles, so it doesn't effect me, but we'll see what this means story wise. The article got boring after awhile, so I'm not exactly sure how the creative teams will work
<----------Attention Deficit on Fridays Cobie
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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Per a PM to Reboot (hope you don't mind 'Boot!) Re: Sensation Spider-Man Annual.
You were right. It was really great. A great, great Peter and Mary Jane tale after quite awhile.
Funny thing was, I could name you those issues they were references (probably be off by an issue or two, since you know I don’t check that stuff ). Issue #59 or so is with Gwen and MJ dancing. But Spider-Man #88 is when he walks into the party and says he’s Spider-Man. Issue #143 is when he’s at the airport on the way to France (to fight Cyclone) and finally kisses Mary Jane.
It was good to see Mary Jane again. And I don’t mean 1960’s party-girl Mary Jane, but the Mary Jane after all these years. Thanks for pointing this out to me ‘Boot'.
...you know, it really was a great issue. With time for comics becoming less and less these days for me, it was a treat to read an issue with Pete and MJ written...well, *in character*. I hope to see more of it. I guess we'll know soon enough though, eh? (Slightly worried/slightly unable to muster emotion in this era of non-stop comics change).
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I tend to prefer MJ before Gerry Conway made her morose, and Len Wein turned her into a whining, clinging, complaining, possessive, "typical" girlfriend.
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"THE VANISHING DR. VESPASIAN" presents the cartoon's 2nd "invisible" villain. while "Dr. Noah Boddy" (Ep.12) used an electrical machine of some type, "Dr. Vespasian" does it with a chemical formula that he drinks-- and feeds to his rather large dog as well. Financed by a group of gangsters (who look like more refugees from old Warner Bros. films), he turns the tables on them and takes over the gang. A string of bank robberies ensues.
Spidey, once more personally recruited by The Mayor (something more in common with the 60's Batman than the comic-book Spidey!), turns up at the next robbery, only to be visiously attacked by the invisible mutt. Believed dead by the crooks, Spidey in reality has figured out the gimmick, and plans accordingly. "What you want with an ice cream truck in a bank vault is beyond me."
Something that started late in the 2nd season is having a brief "flashback" after a commercial break-- one more way to "pad out" the stories. In most cases this year, the flashbacks-- like many old-time movie serials-- include stuff we didn't see before the break, which is what used to be considered a "cheat". They do a lot of this this year.
"THE SCOURGE OF THE SCARF" opens with David Lindup's "Stop Look And Listen", one of the loudest and most blaringly upbeat instrumental pieces ever used on the show. Theatre-goers are shaken & confused by an eye-popping spectacle in the sky, many thinking the world is ending. But under cover of what is really just a tremendous optical illusion, "The Scarf" and his gang rob the box-offices of several theatres in sequence.
A "pop-art" themed baddie, The Scarf then brazenly plans another robbery the next day, at an art show. In a scene straight out of the Adam West BATMAN show, gas fills an art gallery as the crooks rob the customers. But Spidey has tipped the cops to his suspicions, and a paddy wagon is waiting at the crooks' getaway route. Fun, but almost too simple.
I noticed certain parallels between this and the earlier "PARDO PRESENTS" (except, no giant black cat). Among them, incredibly, was Peter hanging out with Polly, the SAME girl he took to that film premiere!
Ep.42
"SUPER SWAMI" begins in a manner very similar to the previous episode, as weekend travellers bound out of town are confronted with a giant eyeball in the sky which seems to make bridges, buildings and boats vanish into thin air-- while people and cars remain suspended in mid-air. TV broadcasts are interrupted by "Kogar, Super-Swami Of Storms", who resembles a short, fat Fu Manchu. He blows into a crystal ball, causing a snow storm, and Spidey is abruptly caught in the middle of it, spinning head-over-heels out of control.
After the commercial break, inexplicably, we see Spidey bouncing back and forth inside the crystal ball-- then crash OUT of a giant crystal ball, somewhere in a cavern deep under the city. There's NO explanation as to how he got from swinging high above the buildings to suddenly being deep in the sewers. At least when they pulled this in "PARDO PRESENTS", it could explained via teleportation. At any rate, Spidey follows an underground passage, confronts an image of Kogar in flames, them leaps thru it, finding it's just a projection. A rather overlong fight scene ensues (once more to the tune of "Stop Look And Listen") until Kogar gets clobbered. Had this been a 2nd-season story, it might have been an epic, from the way it started out. As it is, it's over far too quickly.
"THE BIRTH OF MICRO MAN" ressurects that old 1st-season standby-- the prison break. "Dr. Pretorious" tunnels out, and as a panicked warden informs us, he's threatened to destroy the entire city of New York with something called "The Kingdom Come Machine". On a foggy road at night, Pete almost runs down, then picks up a strange hitch-hiker. It's only after dropping the guy off and hearing the news that he finds out he's inadvertently helped a fugitive-- and somehow, was seen and is believed to be his "accomplice"!
Spidey quickly tracks Pretorious to his lab, seconds before the police also show up, and points toward a closet he disappeared into. But there's nothing inside except a cat, leaving the cops thinking Spidey's "losing it". Suspicious, Spidey checks things out more closely... and discovers a SHRINKING ray! Evading the now-giant cat (as he's so small), Spidey finds Pretorious, and his "Machine"-- a tiny, miniature nuclear pile, set to overload! A quick run-around with a pet monkey and a fight later, the reactor is disarmed, as the police are amazed that what almost wiped out the city was so small.
There aren't the greatest cartoons in the world, but compared to some of the really weird ones they did the year before, I find them quite watchable.
Registered: Aug 2003
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Dan Slott, Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines and Morry Hollowell Marc Guggenheim, Salvador Larrocca and Jason Keith Bob Gale, Phil Jimenez, Andy Lanning and Jeromy Cox Zeb Wells, Chris Bachalo, Tim Townshend and Antonio Fabela
So, Dan Slott?!
McNiven, Larocca, Jimenez and Bachalo?!!!
*ONE* title, as Amazing, shipping multiple times a month?!!!
New stories, new ideas, new villains and a focus on Peter's supporting cast, something that has been lacking for *years*?!!!!
Well, I'm pretty damn excited! This could end up being the best time to be a Spider-Man fan in years--nay, decades! I've got to say, I like where Marvel is going with this.
Though I've said that marrying Peter was a mistake, I've said multiple times that I'm cool with whatever happens to the marriage either way (whether it stays or goes--I'll still be there after anyway afterall). So that's hardly the most important thing on my mind. What I like is the consolidation of the titles, the quality of the creators and what I'm hearing so far.
I'm very, very excited about all of this.
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Slott [have I mentioned I don't like him? Pretty sure I have, but just in case] made reference to "the...can't get a date...Spider-Man" @ Newsarama. They're "Scarlet Witching" it. [BTW, the "thrice monthly"ness was confirmed a month back]
Between Slott, Bachalo and this, my interest just hit Zero.
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
posted
Really? I've been very impressed with Slott so far--I definately like him a lot. I never read that FCD Spidey story you mentioned to me though (which I recall you didn't like).
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Cobalt Kid: -The Carrion Saga- Ah, the first really great PPTSS Saga, and once more, another continuation of the Jackal story (which kind of continued the Green Goblin/Gwen story). Another mysterious villian beings attacking Peter at home, knowing his identity, and additionally has a whole array of powers that make him dangerous. With the White Tiger, Spidey is still continually beaten by Carrion, until finally captured to learn from Carrion that he is "the Living Clone of Professor Miles Warren!!!" (aka the Jackal). A cool plot twist and good story, as Spidey battles and then beats Carrion, who dies in the end.
Did you know who Bill Mantlo intended Carrion to be?
quote:David Yurkovitch, MANTLO: A Life in Comics: In late 1978, Bill began writing the seven-part Carrion saga, which soon had [everyone] wondering about a mysterious villain who seemed to know everything about Peter Parker, including his secret identity. All signs pointed to Carrion being//the clone of Peter Parker. Ultimately, Bill's original ending met with editorial interference. Tony Isabella recalled 'that the published version of the Carrion saga was radically different than what Bill had originally planned:
"Bill was writing [PPTSS] at the time and I had just read the concluding issues of the story which introduced Carrion. In the published version, the villain was revealed to be a clone of Professor Warren. Bill confirmed what I thought; he'd planned for Carrion to be the clone of Peter Parker, which Warren had created at the end of [Conway's] run//. All of the clues pointed to it.
However, though the story arc had been approved by the then-editor of Marvel and the then-writer of AMAZING, that writer had a change-of-heart and subsequently demanded Carrion not be Parker's clone. As all but the final issue// had been plotted and drawn, Bill had to do some fancy dancing to accomodate what I still think was an unreasonable dictate. He was quite pleased that I [and others] realized where his story had been going before he was forced to change it at the last minute."
And we have THAT ASM writer and THAT editor to thank for the eventual Clone Saga Tom DeFalco "gifted" us with. Who were in those spots then, Des?
Regardless, fascinating stuff in this Mantlo Tribute book. There are two sections devoted to his runs on PPTSS, as well as MTU and various Hulk/Spidey team-ups. Spider-fans should order it-- see my Mantlo thread for how-- for the Spidey stuff alone.
-------------------- "Anytime a good book like this is cancelled, I hope another Teen Titan is murdered." --Cobalt
"Anytime an awesome book like S6 is cancelled, I hope EVERY Titan is murdered." --Me
From: Up a Gumtree | Registered: Jul 2003
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