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.
