Today’s Spider-Man newspaper strip suffers from the same affliction as all continuity strips in today’s newspapers, but when it first began in 1977 it was pretty darned good! The first volume of a hardcover series collectiong it shipped last week, and I’ve been reading through it a story at a time. Currently I’m about half way through, and so far I’ve read, in order, the stories of Dr. Doom, Dr. Octopus, the Rattler (who?), the Kingpin, a recap of Spidey’s origin, and Kraven the Hunter. These stories take place in a continuity parallel to the comic strips, but they almost fit except for a few small details. For one thing, although Spider-Man had encountered Dr. Octopus at least once before in antecedent newspaper strip continuity, in his adventures with the likes of the Kingpin and Kraven, he was obviously meeting them for the first time.
My biggest quibble is that the strips are presented sideways, three dailies or one Sunday per page, with enough space wasted at the top and bottom (or on the sides, if you prefer) to run at least one additional strip. They could have chosen to run the strips from top to bottom at the same size, but perhaps the thought was that that format would have drawn more attention to the wasted space. A collection of these strips was planned in 2007, and in lieu of other editorial material, interviews with Stan Lee and John Romita about that project were reprinted in the back, but they add little insight and serve only to draw attention to the overall sloppy editing.
Editorial problems notwithstanding, it’s difficult to ruin good material such as this and I look forward to reading the rest of the volume in the days to come and hope to see subsequent volumes in the future.
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The Sundays have to be every seventh strip, so giving the Sundays their own pages would require running the others at one, two, three or six to a page.
Would the Sundays be as big printed the other way? It may be they chose to run the Sundays sideways, and ran the dailies the same way in imitation.
Not necessarily. The strips are presented 3-3-1 (Monday through Wednesday, Thursday through Saturday, Sunday) and the sequence repeats. A Sunday strip is equivalent in size to three dailies (not including the title panels, which they did not repeat). The Sundays were presented in black and white, so color wasn't a consideration. They could have made better use of the space available by splitting the Sundays between pages when necessary and running four strips (or their equivalent) per page. In other words...
Page 1: Monday through Thursday
Page 2: Friday, Saturday, 2/3 Sunday
Page 3: 1/3 Sunday, Monday through Wednesday
...and so on.
Yes, it would have required more work, but the end product would have been nicer and they wouldn't have had to make it returnable.
I remember when the Spider-Man comic strip began in the Post 1977. My family took the Globe but my grandmother took the Post and I would sometimes see the Sunday funnies at my grandmother’s house. I remember my eyes just happened to focus on the last panel of the strip (of Spidey swing away from the Daily Bugle building) and I thought it was an advertisement of some sort. Then my eyes pulled back and I realized it was the beginning of a brand new Spider-Man comic strip!
I didn’t read it regularly, but now I’ve seen the six daily strips that lead up to it. The Sunday is just as I remember it from 32 years ago. Stan’s early Monday strips would begin right where Sunday left off, but by the end of the week would lead right back (more or less) to when the Monday strip began. (Harold Gray did that a lot, I have observed.) That method provided weekday readers with a little extra action without the Sunday only readers knowing they had missed a thing.
The way Lee handles this strip reminds me of the plot and pacing of "Rock Reflections of a Super Hero".
I got volume 1 of the Spider-man Newspaper stips for Christmas from my Aunt. I did not expect to get it. For one I never thought about buying this and two I rarely get anything comic related for a gift. I've started reading it and I'm really enjoying it. The John Romita Sr art is fantastic.
While this is a fun read, I agree the formatting is pretty lousy. From what I can tell the second volume hasn't been released yet. Maybe the formatting will be better when the second volume is released.
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"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx
Check out the Secret Headquarters (my store) website! It's a pretty lame website, but I did it myself, so tough noogies
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Is there any talk of reformating and re-releasing?
Would the Sundays be as big printed the other way? It may be they chose to run the Sundays sideways, and ran the dailies the same way in imitation.
Page 1: Monday through Thursday
Page 2: Friday, Saturday, 2/3 Sunday
Page 3: 1/3 Sunday, Monday through Wednesday
...and so on.
Yes, it would have required more work, but the end product would have been nicer and they wouldn't have had to make it returnable.
I didn’t read it regularly, but now I’ve seen the six daily strips that lead up to it. The Sunday is just as I remember it from 32 years ago. Stan’s early Monday strips would begin right where Sunday left off, but by the end of the week would lead right back (more or less) to when the Monday strip began. (Harold Gray did that a lot, I have observed.) That method provided weekday readers with a little extra action without the Sunday only readers knowing they had missed a thing.
The way Lee handles this strip reminds me of the plot and pacing of "Rock Reflections of a Super Hero".
Not yet.
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx
Check out the Secret Headquarters (my store) website! It's a pretty lame website, but I did it myself, so tough noogies
Listen to WOXY.com, it's the future of rock-n-roll!
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