I’d wager that most of you visiting don’t remember the first live-action Spider-Man
on screen.
Clearly, based on the image above, I don’t mean Tobey Maguire. Or Nicholas Hammond, who starred as Peter Parker over 12 episodes of The Amazing Spider-Man on CBS starting in 1978, spun out of a TV movie the year before — or even the stuntman inside the costume for most of that show, Fred Waugh. Or, for that matter, Shinji Tōdō; he led Toei's スパイダーマン [Supaidāman], a very loose adaptation of the Marvel character, which aired in Japan during roughly the same span as its American counterpart.
No, I’m talking about Danny Seagren.
One tiny spoiler for Ant-Man coming up after this odd image…
According to a time.com headline on Monday, “The Supreme Court Just Quoted Spider-Man”.
If you had the trifecta of this, upholding the first African-American President’s expansive health-insurance plan, and ruling that marriage is a right inclusive of same-sex couples under the Constitution in your latest United States Supreme Court Actions Your Ten-Year-Old Self Would Never Believe office pool, I really gotta hand it to you.
One small quibble with the article is that the immortal line quoted here from its debut is “spoken” in that original story by the narration rather than by Spider-Man or Peter Parker’s dear Uncle Ben.
Related: Board Now • The Amazing Spider-Man Minus
Andrew Garfield Plus Garfield • See You Next B'ak'tun
Williams-Sonoma is selling a Marvel Spider-Man Flexible Spatula.
How freaking awesome is that?
I just recently got one as a gift, along with a Spider-Man Cupcake-Decorating Kit. The latter is no longer available from the Williams-Sonoma website; neither is the Marvel Heroes Cupcake-Decorating Kit featuring Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. I’m linking to them anyway in case that changes and including some images below ’cause they’re freaking awesome.
I’m pretty sure that I learned the word “equinox” from a comic book: Marvel Team-Up #60, dated Aug. 1977.
Panel from Marvel Team-Up #59 © 1977 Marvel. Script: Chris Claremont.
Pencils: John Byrne. Inks, Colors: Dave Hunt. Letters: Bruce Patterson.
Okay, I might’ve actually learned it from the previous issue, MTU #59. But #60 has
the antagonist of the story, Equinox, on the cover. It didn’t feel right to have the big splashy image leading off a post about Equinox not be a picture of Equinox. [Note: As you’ll see, I’ve since been able to include a scan of an interior panel from #59.]
I saw Anderson Cooper kidnapped by the Broadway version of The Green Goblin
last night in Times Square. Spider-Man rescued him. The whole thing played out on CNN.
Now, I’m usually watching ABC’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, at least in the background, on New Year’s Eve. It’s frankly more habit than tradition, since I grew up in the days where it was just about the only (and certainly the most popular) deal on the air broadcasting the ol’ ball drop.
Last night, though, CNN was the channel of choice. I’d heard good things about Cooper’s bizarre annual pairing with Kathy Griffin — he (largely) pretending to be annoyed with yet obviously appreciating her unfiltered chatter.
I have more conversations about Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark with folks who don’t read comics than with folks inside the hobby and business. Part of that, I suspect, is because I’m not very plugged into the comics world these days. But part of it is also because the show’s talent, spectacle, and travails are intriguing — yet “comics people” already know, in a way others might not stop to realize, that Dark has little to do with comics at all.
Poster © 2011 Marvel Entertainment. Art/Design: Unknown.
Spider-Man comics, as well as the in-revival Spider-Man movie franchise and general merchandising, will be fine no matter what happens on stage. Neither Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film nor the Christopher Nolan takes in 2005 and 2008, all of which were blockbusters, had any appreciable affect on comics readership except in ancillary fashion: The long-running Batman animated series that launched on Fox in 1992, now one of the most definitive and well-respected versions of the Dark Knight mythos, was influenced by — even more to the point, made attractive to Fox and Warner Bros. by — the 1989 film’s success and the 1992 release of Batman Returns. Many of the creative personnel of that series worked on comics set in the animated continuity (yes, it’s art imitating art imitating art) for DC, and Harley Quinn, created as The Joker’s gun moll especially for the show, was eventually introduced into the mainstream Batman comics. In terms of brand awareness through DVD sets and related items like toys, Halloween costumes, and not-quite-comics storybooks, more kids might have been introduced to Batman than would have had Bruce Timm and friends’ string of animated series from the Caped Crusader’s to the action-figure bonanza Justice League Unlimited not been such a success, but the films themselves didn’t drive adult moviegoers to comics shops; a Spider-Man musical is going to interest a larger number of comics readers in Broadway than it will Broadway regulars in comics, and that number will be small.
![Andrew Garfield in costume as Spider-Man, mask in hand, with his head replaced by that of Garfield the cat and text reading 'With great power there must also come great lasagnability' [sic: luh-zan-ya-bil-it-ee]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSefTwOXCJm50xWFoPohPNd9Rwb4UmD63E-6PwdAOzjnhb2ZYQ8mRKAht0RjPvLwty94NXgN7-_lDmuBbO8-kheQsXh5ZUx9fbyiTCFV-6q3VUrn4Zt6AVxVmuyDDk0Wd5dv0fn3BVEQhU/s1600/SpiderManGarfield-Lasagnability.jpg "''I hate Mondays and also the guy who shot my Uncle Ben.''")
