Okay, one brief comment before I get into the series for the week, another set of Good Comics I Had A Hand In. I understand that this is comics, and that therefore everything must be oh-so-serious, but anybody who can't seem to react and respond to Joe's silly-stupid rap song and the additional lyrics I posted the other day needs to grow a bit more of a sense of humor, and take these things a bit more in the spirit in which they're offered--or at least the spirit of the holidays, two weeks late or not.
Okay, end of stupid rant. On with stupid commentary.
Today's Good Comic I Had A Hand In is the #-1 issue of UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN, part of Marvel's ill-advised "Flashback" month. Why ill-advised? Because, as it turns out, many readers don't really want an entire month of comics in which their favorite characters have no costumes or powers, and the #-1 numbering allowed many of them to simply skip over this month's issue without leaving a gap in their collections. Nevertheless, the kernal of an idea behind "Flashback"--telling tales of our heroes from before they donned their costumes, had something of interest to it.
In the case of UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN, we had an additional problem, wich is that there were something like four other Spidey titles participating in this event. So the question became, how to make this book stand out from the pack? My answer was twofold. First off, I convinced John Romita Sr. to do the artwork on the book, one of the few stories he produced since he retired as Marvel's art director. Secondly, Roger Stern (whom I tapped to sub for regular writer Kurt Busiek who was jammed up with deadlines at the moment--much to Kurt's consternation when he learned that John Sr. would be drawing the story) hit upon the notion of featuring not a young Peter Parker, but his secret agent parents, and included a sequence in which they learn that Mary is pregnant--making this the earliest Untold Tale about Spider-Man that you could tell.
On top of that (and mainly because I could only prevail upon John to pencil in the neighborhood of 17 pages) I was able to tap Fred Hembeck to do an all-new installment of the Petey series he'd started sporatically for editor Jim Salicrup years before, featuring a very young Peter Parker well before he gained his powers, in the spirit of such strips as Dennis the Menace and Little Lulu. In fact, when the decision was made to produce variant covers for some of the "Flashback" books for a certain retail chain, rather than go the obvious route, I had Fred do the cover-one of the few he produced for Marvel.
And yes, that cover copy proclaiming Richard and Mary parker Agents of SHIELD was a mistake, and it was entirely made by me. I remembered that they had been secret agents, and I somehow misrecalled Stan saying that they had been working for SHIELD, even though he didn't. I really should have checked that.
More later.
Tom B
Question I was just thinking about these -1 issues the other day, with both the Untold tales and Daredevil (with Gene Colan on art) issues coming to mind. Is this issue of Untold Tales collected anywhere?
Posted by IHeartMaryJane on 2007-01-08 17:57:42
Joe's silly little rap song was great. Your choice to add lyrics to make fun of the most popular title you have had this year was, at least, a poor choice in my opinion and many others as well. I do have a sense of humor and love coming to Marvel.com to read the latest blogs.
So post what you like, have fun while doing it, I support you. But think about how upset your CUSTOMERS are with delay after delay, ship date broken after ship date broken promises made then broken not once or twice, but more times than I can remember in the Mini-Series that is Civil War.
But in Joe Q.'s paraphrased words, if they are talking about Marvel, whether it be good or bad, at least they are talking about Marvel.
Posted by dtabor2 on 2007-01-08 21:15:02
Huh. I didn't realize the -1 issues were badly received. I remember enjoying the ones I got (which would have been the normal series I collected). I do get kind of irritated with not being able to figure out where in my collections to stick them, but I figure that's my problem.
Posted by motteditor on 2007-01-09 16:25:31
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About this blog: Ramblings and musings from the mind of Tom Brevoort. "It won’t be clean. It won’t be fun. It mostly won’t be coherent."
About the author: Tom Brevoort is Executive Editor for Marvel Comics, and oversees such titles as New Avengers, Civil War, and Fantastic Four.
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