Spiders And Lizards And Dinosaurs, Oh My!!

In case you needed a reminder...

...1970s Spider-Man was the best Spider-Man!!

'Nuff said!

From Amazing Spider-Man #166 (1977)

Spider-Manic Monday #5--The Great Coincidence Machine

Some minor but spoilerish points about the brand-spanking new Amazing Spider-Man movie (which I thought was pretty good). So, if you ain't seen in yet, come back later, OK?

Spoilers commence after the 4 promo posters...




Look, I'm the last guy to insist that a movie be slavishly identical to the comic books.

And I understand that the constraints of a 2-hour movie require certain storytelling short-cuts that you might not need in a weekly TV show or a monthly comic.

But really, screenwriters James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves...do you expect us to believe a) Richard Parker worked at Oscorp AND b) that Peter Parker's dad "created" the genetic hybrid spider that bit Peter AND c) That same spider was also responsible for the stronger-than-steel "super-silk" that Peter uses to make his webbing AND d) that Curt Connors also worked at Oscorp, and was Richard Parker's "partner," and was perhaps responsible for his disappearance/death AND e) Richard Parker developed the equation that led to the Lizard formula AND f) that Gwen Stacy had an internship at Oscorp under Connors??

For the next movie, why not just have the Daily Bugle headquarters in the Oscorp building, AND Max Dillon employed as an electrician there, AND Otto Octavious a scientist there (who was also buddies with Richard Parker), and...

An awful lot of coincidences going on there, is all I'm saying.

Also, how much does a NYPD Captain earn? Because the Stacys' crib is pretty damn swank...

Also, a 17 year-old high school intern, granted a very smart young lady, has access to every piece of technology and every top-secret formula at the world's biggest bio-tech company? Even after her boss gets fired?

Also, we're fighting a doctor who has experienced terrible results from an inadequately tested serum, and your solution is to expose everyone in lower Manhattan to an even-less tested antidote? There are no possible side-effects from everyone inhaling these gene-altering snowflakes??

Like I said, pretty entertaining movie...just don't think about it after it's over...

Spider-Manic Monday #1--Great Moments In Science!!

It is frankly a miracle that everyone in the Marvel Universe is still alive.

Exhibit One:

Oh, yes, a grand idea. Please have experiments in "radio-activity" open to the public, and have no shielding or protection of any kind.

LIKELY BUT NOT PROVABLE FACT: except for Peter Parker, everyone at that demonstration was dead of radiation poisoning in 6 months.

It must be noted--when this place is described as "on the outskirts of town," they mean New York City. An atomic research center "on the outskirts of" millions of people. A plant that had two atomic accidents within one issue (OK, one was deliberate, but still...).


It's bad enough that fugitive Flint Marko was able to sneak into a nuclear testing site--although I suppose that if teenager Rick Jones was able to, Marko could. But it was later revealed that this occurred near Savannah, Georgia. So, they're actually detonating actual nuclear bombs near cities of 100,000+ people.

Those panels are from Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #3 & #4. So in the world of Spider-Man, scientists were a little bit lax in protecting the public, is all I'm saying.

Then again, that was positively the theme of the first few years of Spider-Man. People like to comment on the preponderance of "animal" villains in Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery, but honestly, it wasn't so much animals as "science gone mad."

**Spider-Man himself is born of a ridiculously unsafe science demonstration (AF #15)
**Adrian Toomes invents as flying harness (that also makes him stronger, yada yada). Instead of patenting it and being a gazillionire, he commits robberies and kills people. (ASM #2)
**A radiation accident not only gave Otto Octavious his powers, but drove him criminally insane (ASM #3)
**Atomic testing turned Flint Marko into an incredibly powerful being (ASM #4)
**Unsanctioned and unethical testing of his formula turned Curt Connors into the Lizard, and almost led to the downfall of the human race. (ASM #6)
**An "electronic brain"/robot goes berserk, terrorizing a high school (ASM #8)
**The Green Goblin was later revealed to have been the result of yet another bit of ill-advised tampering with God's domain (ASM #14)
**With the help of J. Jonah Jameson, corrupt scientisits try to surgically create super-powered villains (Scorpion, ASM #20), create killer robots (Spider-Slayer, ASM #25), and more experiments create tragic super-crooks (Molten Man, ASM #28)
**Greedy scientists refuse to help idiot Norton Fester investigate a meteor he found, so his unsafe experiments create The Looter (ASM #36)
**More scientists with killer robots (ASM #37)

I could have stretched to fit Electro and Mysterio in there, if I tried hard enough.

If you look at the Lee/Ditko run, perhaps more than any other Marvel title, Amazing Spider-Man hammered home the pint that scientists were dummies who couldn't control their creations, could be bought, and endangered society. It wasn't completely anti-science--there were good scientists, and Peter often used his science knowledge to resolve the crises. But the first few years of Amazing Spider-Man read like a primer on how dangerous science was.

Perhaps, then, the true lesson was: With great science, must come great responsibility...