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I'm caught in Spider-Man's webbing ... and I can't get free! Well, to be honest, it's more "won't" than "can't." This is the best of times for our friendly neighborhood webslinger. His four Marvel Comics titles -- featuring the work of some of the premiere writers and artists in the industry -- are selling nearly as well as the always-popular X-Men titles. And, of course, there's this little movie that's opening Friday ... Spidey scales the silver screen
Spider-Man primer
TV animation came naturallyBy gary c.w. chun
gchun@starbulletin.comThe buzz around this movie, complete with rave reviews by those fortunate enough to attend an advanced screening, has been humongous. "Spider-Man" is THE most anticipated movie of the summer, not "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones." Granted, the "Star Wars" mythos is richer and more complex, but a lot of people seem to relate to a regular guy who becomes a reluctant superhero.
There is so much hype surrounding the movie's opening that retailers and publishers nationwide agreed to take advantage of this publicity, hence Free Comic Book Day on Saturday (see accompanying Drawn & Quartered column on Page G7 for details on Honolulu participants). After missing the opportunity the "X-Men" movie provided, there was no way the industry was going to mess this up again.
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IN DESCRIBING the Spider-Man comic in last May's D&Q column, I wrote "where the superhero archetype has (usually) been defined by action and not reflection, Spider-Man was the industry's first self-absorbed superhero ... (he was) a bit neurotic and profoundly skeptical, always in constant struggle with himself."His alter ego, Peter Parker, as conceived by (Marvel Comics) editor-in-chief/writer Stan Lee and original artist Steve Ditko, started off as a bookish, bespectacled high school student, isolated and unpopular, an orphan who lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. At a school science exhibit, he's bitten by a spider accidentally dosed with radiation, giving him the powers of an arachnid."
Or a "genetically engineered" arachnid in the movie version. Plus, the bite put on actor Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker has also given him to ability to "organically" shoot webbing from his wrists, rather than the mechanical ones made by the comic's science geek.
The remainder of the Spider-Man origin story will be revealed in the movie, which, thanks due to director Sam Raimi, has stayed true to the comic book, delighting long-time readers, as well as those who remember the late '60s animated series (see related sidebar) and the short-lived, live-action TV series of the late '70s, starring Nicholas Hammond.
"The significant aspect about the movie is that it's been previously labeled as 'the movie that could never be made,' " said Ted Mays, owner of Gecko Books. "What with Marvel's previous financial problems and the rights to the story being bounced around among the movie studios, it was going to be a huge financial goldmine -- everybody wanted it and there were so many people attached to the project at one time or another, like James Cameron.
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"Those in the comic book world knew that, if the story were done right, it would be the ultimate comic-book movie," Mays said. "But there was always one roadblock after another, ever since the idea of doing a Spider-Man movie first came up in the late '70s when the first Superman movie was being made."But all we had were these clunky, direct-to-video adaptations, until 'X-Men' broke that curse."
As a teenager, Mays chose to stay away from the TV show adaptations of the Spider-Man story, as well as "The Incredible Hulk" and "Wonder Woman." "These were mundane versions with no ooomph! It took the first Superman movie to do a respectful and faithful adaptation without having to resort to camp like that '60s Batman movie, which poisoned the making of any good superhero movies for 10 to 15 years until Tim Burton made his version of Batman.
"Just because someone dresses in Spandex and fights criminals, that doesn't mean you have to laugh at them!"
Mays also feels that "the passage of time in the development of the Spider-Man movie has only helped, special effects-wise. Audiences are more accepting of CGI animation and it's integrated much better into live action. I remember the first couple attempts were pretty disconcerting, but now people are comfortable with it and have a more tolerable acceptance level, where it may have a cartoon feel to it, but is still very realistic.
"I think Tobey Maguire also has that everyman aspect in his acting that will help suspend disbelief," he said. "Like Superman and Batman, we think of most superheroes as pure personas. With Marvel Comics and Spider-Man, from issue one, the dichotomy presented by the Peter Parker character has been just as important. A good half of the stories deal with his private life.
"He's so quintessentially normal, and he's defined the Marvel template of the superhero with the Achilles heel. Spider-Man tweaked the Batman origin story, where Bruce Wayne's parents are killed by a criminal while the young Wayne helplessly watches. With Spider-Man's origin, where the character of Uncle Ben is also killed by a criminal, Peter Parker learns, in that defining line of that story, that 'with great power, there comes great responsibility.'
"After trying to make money as a masked wrestler, he now feels obligated to fight crime as a sense of duty to his late uncle."
THAT "SENSE OF DUTY" has transformed the entire mainstream comic book industry in recent years, as established players -- including Marvel and DC, upstarts Image and CrossGen, DC's auxiliary companies Vertigo, Wildstorm and Alan Moore's America's Best Comics imprint, plus notable independents like Dark Horse and Oni Press -- have taken it upon themselves to publish better quality comic books.
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Steve Lo, a sales clerk at Jelly's in Aiea and a 10-year comic-book store veteran, said that "so long as you have good writing and good artists, comic books will always sell. But the Spider-Man titles have had increased sales. When someone like J. Michael Straczynski -- a writer who made his name with the sci-fi 'Babylon 5' TV series and his own 'Rising Stars' comic book -- takes over writing 'The Amazing Spider-Man,' more people buy that title."The comic book industry bottomed out creatively in the early- to mid-'90s, when collector/speculators were buying 25 copies of any one title, and Marvel went bankrupt and had a massive cutback of titles.
"Now it looks like people are once again reading comic books for the pure enjoyment of it. It's good for the industry as overall sales are climbing back up." The sales surge is actually in trade paperbacks, where issues related to a single story arc are collected into one book.
Internet fans have also helped keep a couple of books in print, he said. And it's the Internet that is generating all the favorable buzz about the Spider-Man movie.
"(After all) the years of waiting, the years of legal mumbo jumbo and all the HYPE, all pay off big time," enthuses Chris Mason of the Superhero Hype! Web site after seeing an advanced screening. "Any Spidey fan who has been dying to see their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man done right will not walk out of the theater disappointed!"
"From what I've seen from the previews and in magazines," Duane Chang, owner of Collector Maniacs, said, "the movie should do really well. Not only have the movie-related toys sold well, like the action figures, but I've noticed over the last two months that more 10- to 13-year-olds have been buying and reading the 'Ultimate Spider-Man' title."
"The trailer and TV commercials," Mays said, "have shown me everything I could hope for. The most important thing I could at least say after finally seeing it would be 'it didn't suck!' It doesn't have to be the greatest movie ever, but if it conveys elements of the character that have defined Spider-Man over the last 40 years, that have made him the No. 1 superhero, then it would have been a success."
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If you're a Spidey neophyte, a relatively inexpensive introduction to the character is through the five black-and-white volumes of "Essential Spider-Man" that sell for $14.95 apiece. Each contains, on the average, 25 complete issues. Spider-Man primer
By Gary C.W. Chun
gchun@starbulletin.comThere are also 40-plus trade paperback collections that you can ask your comic book retailer about, as well as four current monthly titles, "The Amazing Spider-Man," "Peter Parker: Spider-Man," "Ultimate Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man: Tangled Web." These range from $2.25 to $3.50 each.
By the way, a copy of an original 1963 "The Amazing Spider-Man" No. 1 is fetching, depending on its condition, anywhere between $25,000 to $40,000 on the collectors' market.
"Amazing Fantasy" #15, the comic book that originally introduced the wallcrawler, goes for $35,000 to $50,000.
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Sometimes all you have to do is ask. That's how Spider-Man made the swing from comic books to animated television. TV animation came naturally
By Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.comIn the mid-'60s, Columbia Pictures producer Steve Krantz kept tripping over piles of Marvel comics his kids were crazy about, "so I read some of them and thought they were great. I called Stan Lee at Marvel to talk about animating the books for Saturday-morning television."
Lee was friendly and enthusiastic, recalled Krantz, a frequent island visitor and husband of novelist Judith Krantz. They quickly struck a deal -- Krantz would handle bringing nearly all the Marvel superheroes to life, while Lee wrote or supervised the scripts to make sure they were high-quality.
Krantz's head animator on the series was Ralph Bakshi. They later teamed up to make the adult-oriented animated feature "Fritz the Cat."
"Not just Spider-Man, but Captain America, Thor, Sub-Mariner, the Hulk; nearly all the titles except the Fantastic Four. At the time the network didn't have confidence in the Fantastic Four. No one had approached them before -- or Marvel -- about this kind of animation, so they were breaking new ground."
But it was Spider-Man that was the big hit, between 1967 and 1969, said Krantz. "It's still being aired, in one market or another. It was incredibly successful.
Spider-Man, whose screen debut happens Friday, is on the small screen first. Spidey hype
"The Making of Spider-Man" special airs at 6 p.m. today on MTV and "Spidermania" is at 6 p.m. tomorrow on E!
"Stan Lee really did a great job creating these characters, bringing human values and doubts to them, giving equal weight to superpower and schoolwork. Genius. It's all Stan's doing. He never wrote down for kids, and that's why adults liked his writing. He's a national treasure.
"The transition to animation wasn't that difficult. We added POW!s and BAM!s and the Batman TV series picked that up. The theme song was great, too. I don't remember who wrote it -- some guy just walked into the office and handed us the song and said, 'Here!' and we said, 'OK.' That's all there was to it."
Krantz acquired the rights to DC superheroes at the same time -- "I wanted to corner the market before anyone realized there was a market" -- but the runaway success of the Marvel animations kept his hands filled. Producer Chuck Fries made 13 live-action "Spider-Man" TV shows in the late '70s, and new animated "Spider-Man" series have appeared since.
"I keep in touch with Stan Lee, though; he's one of MY heroes. And so I kept up with all the news about the planned movie all these years, the lawsuits flying back and forth. Terrible! But Stan never gave up hope. He knew he had a wonderful, original character, and that it would eventually make it to the screen with the same care that it appeared in the comic books.
"Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker is brilliant casting -- the antithesis of a superhero. Just like Spider-Man!"
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