One Zombie in a Billion

While I’ve taken to writing more verbose (for me at least) posts on here, I’m quite taken with the simplicity of the Tumblr setup.

So I’m now dually blogging here and over at my tumblr account, it’s http://retrosuper.com/ have at it!

Since I’m on a Spider-man binge this month, I’d thought I would talk about the two spidey albums from the 70s.

The 70s were an interesting time for Marvel, as a company Marvel essentially accepted just about every merchandise and media deal available to them. Which either provided the public with gold (The Mego toy range) or stinkers that haunt the company to this day (the Captain America tv movies), these albums are somewhere in the middle.

As a quick preface, I first discovered the existence of both of these when I was 10 years old in the adverts of old comics. Since then I’ve been trying to track these down and finally through the wonder of the internet I can listen to both of these..uh..gems.

I’ll start off with the Spider-man rockcomic. Sporting a wonderfully marker coloured John Romita cover, this album is essentially a Spider-man disney movie, a radio show style narrative with a few songs dotted here and there.
The story is basically Spider-man against the Kingpin, with some Italian muzak framing his sequences, being 1972 the villain choice was no doubt influenced by the success of the Godfather that year.

Honestly, it’s pretty forgettable, the songs aint great and the story for the most part, boring. The one amusing sequence is Dr.Strange’s bloodthirsty guest appearance, where he sends the Kingpin to hell, to spend time with the devil (Nice unintentional foreshadowing of his future nemesis though).

Second up is Spider-man : Rock Reflections of a Superhero, this beauty is about 10 times better than the rockcomic. Full of lovely tracks like “Gwendolyn” that are reminiscent of 50-60s bubblegum pop and broken up cool narration by Stan Lee, it’s almost like a U (or G-Rated) Tarantino soundtrack.
The albums is lots of fun and wrapped in a fantastic cover drawn by John Romita and painted by the wonderful Nick Cardy.

If you want to track these down, Spider-man : Beyond the Grave – A Rockcomic is available from itunes and Spider-man : Rock Reflections of a Superhero is available DRM-Free from eMusic and the Amazon MP3 store.

So it’s worth beginning this by saying I don’t really care about “One More Day“, there’s been a few great stories over the last ten years, but it’s been a while since I really enjoyed this book, until now.

Part of the appeal is the revamped Spider-man continuity.
Peter Parker’s single and broke, Harry Osborn is back and acting more like his confident movie counterpart, Spidey has his webshooters back and his id is secret. This is the Peter Parker I want to read about, this is the character I grew up reading reprints about in the annuals and old comics I’d buy with my pocket money (I loved the 5 for £1 deals Deadhead Comics did), so obviously I’m glad to see the character back to this classic status that I love.

Writing wise, Dan Slott was born to write the webslinger. He gives Peter that right about of wit that makes him funny rather than just a wise ass and makes him just mopey enough to be the Parker we remember, whilst not going overboard with the self pity (something I felt the movie Spider-man wallowed in a bit too much).

The storyline dealing with Spidey’s new adversary, gang lord Mr.Negative, harks back to those great Hobgoblin stories of the 80s and Maggia stories of the 70s.
I always loved that Spidey basically dealt with all the gang and petty crime in the Marvel U while the bigger heroes were busy with the cosmic threats, it’s always grounded the character and after a very cosmic/mystical few years I think it’s a great place to start this renewal.

The art by Steven McNiven, is of course, fabulous. Well detailed and the story telling clear and concise, I dig the little techie details on the spider-tracers and the way Peter’s web shooter trigger folds under the wrist strap when not in use (I think Ditko did that too).

My only real criticism is with the trade dress. I’m am glad to see that the old typeface for “The Amazing Spider-man” is back, it’s a classic, the problem I have is with the left hand box.
It’s a very clunky look, straight from Marvel circa 1998, terrible, the Marvel logos alignment is off in that box for pete’s sake, not to mention the thick black borders and pee-yellow gradient behind spidey there, yuck. Get Chip Kidd to sort that out!

So yeah, Spidey is back and well worth checking out.
The book is out three times a month with each arc lasting those 3 issues, so you can wait till the end of the month, pick up all three and get a complete story, sweet!

Superheroes in Real Life - Citypages

Most of these “superheroes” appear to be in their 40s, mid-life crisis on infinite earths indeed.