Amazing Spider-Covers

 

While one of the pleasures of browsing a comic book store (or even a comic book display in a store's book or magazine section) is letting your eye wander across those eye-catching covers that are doing their best to entice you to take that issue home, the experience becomes even more of a reason to kill some time when the cover artist is being innovative not only with the character(s) portrayed but also with other elements of the overall image. (Bill Sienkiewicz's work might be one example that would come to mind in that respect.) And so having recently been preoccupied looking through various Spider-Man titles, I thought I'd pick out a few such issues to share which were especially eye-catching to me, where even the issue's masthead at times became collateral damage.

Let's start with what may be a surprising choice to some of you--artist/writer Ed Hannigan, whose work you may remember from The Defenders but whose covers from Amazing Spider-Man and Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man in the early 1980s were at times groundbreaking in terms of bringing more artistry to a cover image than what you were expecting.

Battleground: Detroit!

 

We've come to the conclusion of a five-part story arc in the pages of Invincible Iron Man that has a lot riding on the outcome--specifically, the fate of two worlds, threatened by the actions of a rogue Rigellian commander who will stop at nothing to gain power for himself and the empire of his own he craves. To that end, he has set his sights on Wundagore II, a planet which the New Men of the High Evolutionary have once again claimed as their own, but which the Colonizers under the command of the self-serving Arcturus have set their sights on.

With the two sides now in a state of war, the conflict has drawn in both Iron Man and his young apprentice, the Jack of Hearts, who have been separated in the exchange of hostilities: Iron Man having since joined the forces of the New Men, while Jack, on board the Rigellian flagship, has only recently learned the extent of Arcturus's perfidy regarding his betrayal of the Rigellian Grand Commissioner and the fact that he intentionally deceived those under his command. And now, Arcturus has threatened to attack Earth unless Jack supports him; but instead, Jack threatens to expose Arcturus's duplicity to his crew. It's at that point that the command ship is rocked by the combined attack of Iron Man and the New Men, and the battle to decide Wundagore's fate erupts.

Yet as this issue's cover reveals, Iron Man will have a greater part to play--against a pulverizing brute that once served as the enforcer of the will of Galactus!

Bonus Features: Spider-Annuals, 1964-1999

 

Aside from rogues' galleries, pin-ups, and, in all too many cases, reprinted material, a staple of Marvel "king-size" annuals has been the informative bonus features that came in the form of exploring a character's abilities, being provided with a tour of their headquarters, a rundown of their supporting cast, or a supplemental tale consisting of only three or four pages, on the occasion that the main story didn't fulfill the expected page count. You'll find many of these bonus features given their due throughout the PPC over the years--but for a little variety on the subject, we'll begin digging through and dusting off some of the more under the radar material where a little extra creative effort went into these features.

In this inaugural post on the subject, we turn our focus to one of Marvel's inaugural characters, the amazing Spider-Man--and as long as we're going that far back, it seems fitting to include a few of the bonus features from the character's first annual from 1964, itself packed with additional material to no doubt titillate Spidey's growing fan base and including a number of pages which spotlight the work of the book's artist, Steve Ditko.

History, Hilarity, and Hembeck

If you've ever hoped to see a meshing of a Marvel story with wall-to-wall puns, you could dig through your old copies of Not Brand Echh--or you might instead treat yourself to Fred "Knees" Hembeck's 1982 effort, which celebrates the 20th anniversary of Fantastic Four by taking the form of a gathering usually reserved for slightly tipsy celebrities who honor one of their own with drinks and mock insults.

In other words, your six bits have just bought you a V.I.P. ticket to the

Its 36 pages are not only packed with characters, but also the work of roughly thirty-five artists. Hembeck explains his story thus:

And if you still find the whole concept slightly unbelievable even with Hembeck's explanation, the fact that the FF don't realize what they're walking into smooths things over and allows you to settle back with the rest of the guests. And, hoo boy, are there ever going to be guests at this shindig.

While I enjoy a good pun along with the next guy, I was mainly having fun trying to identify whose work was on which page. There are a number of under-the-radar artists who made contributions to this issue, and so I honestly had my share of misses; but frankly I was delighted to see what some of the heavy hitters would do with this sort of tongue-in-cheek material, though you'll find Hembeck adapts to all of it beautifully while providing a good deal of the FF's history in the process.

It's Official: Thor Is A Mercenary Teddy Bear

Homage covers are always eye-catching and often an unexpected surprise, since they can trickle down from any comic book and are completely unpredictable as to what title (or company) they'll show up in--but it's fair to assume that even artist Walt Simonson was pleasantly surprised at the mileage his cover for Mighty Thor #337 has received through the years.

The issue was Simonson's debut as the title's regular writer, while returning as artist from a previous 1977-78 run in the book. Since that time, a number of artists have paid tribute to Simonson's cover--and while many other characters have cracked, crumbled, ripped, or smashed through their own masthead in one way or another, there's no denying Simonson's distinctive pose for the Thunder God--or rather, for Beta Ray Bill, the alien who surprised even the Asgardians with not only his victory over Thor, but also his ability to lift Thor's fabled hammer.

Here, then, is a brief collection of issues which paid tribute to that cover, along with a note or two about the cover artist for each.

The Lost Boys

It was during the (West Coast) Avengers' conflict with Master Pandemonium and the deadly Mephisto when Agatha Harkness began to consider the conundrum of whether or not the twin children of the Scarlet Witch and the Vision were actually "real."

We've already seen Miss Harkness provide an answer to the Torch's question when the situation with Master Pandemonium was resolved; but while writer/artist John Byrne did a thorough job of arranging for these children to have literally never existed, it's important to note that Steve Englehart's original story of their birth provided Byrne with sufficient tools to do just that.*

*Byrne's research wasn't as exhaustive as he might have wished.  The linchpin to the fact that the children weren't "real" lies in the one piece of empirical data which Miss Harkness provides to test it:  "Whenever Wanda is not consciously thinking about them, the tiny creatures disappear!" If that's the case, then their "grandmother"--Simon Williams' mother, who stepped in to care for them when the Vision and Wanda became involved with the West Coast Avengers--has some explaining to do as to how seven issues of WCA adventuring went by for Wanda without the children disappearing even once, and thus has nothing out of the ordinary to report when the parents return from Europe to reclaim them:

As busy as Wanda must have been on missions, it's very unlikely that Mrs. Williams, who seems quite attentive to the kids, never took note of their disappearance--and equally incredible that, as preoccupied as Wanda must have been with Avengers business, not five minutes went by without her thoughts being focused on her children.


Regardless, to put the matter into perspective, it's time we had a look at key events from Englehart's twelve-issue 1985-86 Vision and the Scarlet Witch limited series, which focuses on Wanda's unexpected and improbable pregnancy and, for at least an instant in time for this couple, provides one of the happiest happy endings you may have ever seen in comics.

But the event would also unknowingly end up setting the wheels in motion for... oh, let's see:

• Wanda going mad;
• the end of the Vision;
• the deaths of Ant-Man and Jack of Hearts;
• the end of the Avengers;
• the death of Miss Harkness;
• M-Day; and, if we connect the dots,
• the Marvel Universe, as we knew it, ceasing to exist.

This post already has its title, but we could also simply call it:

(Needless to say, those complications would extend beyond the delivery room!)

Spectacular Spider-Knees

Ordinarily, any of us might have had the same reaction Al Milgrom had, when discovering that he'd been replaced as the artist on Spectacular Spider-Man on a whim:

Well, maybe not the same reaction. But we should keep in mind that this is happening during Assistant Editors' Month at Marvel, and such havoc is to be expected. In this case, while his boss is in California with the other editors, Bob DeNatale has decided to take a different approach with the art on this issue--but who will be his choice over Milgrom?

Yes, Fred Hembeck, the caricature artist known for adding curlicues to his characters' knees and elbows. Do we dare have a look at how he's going to draw an entire Spider-Man story?

The Knees Of Battle!

Where would Christmas be without a little humor? And when it comes to comics and humor, we need look no further than artist Fred Hembeck, who composed these delightful holiday sketch cards featuring Marvel characters.

You can find these and more of Mr. Hembeck's cards sold on eBay.