Although Spiderman may not be the definitive superhero (Sorry, I love Batman too much) he is most certainly the definitive Marvel hero. Even those who believe that another superhero or another group of superheros produced by Marvel is better than our loveable web-head must agree that Spiderman has been carrying the company for the last few years. He pioneered the company's movie career (culminating in 2011, with a film which oddly doesn't feature Spidey) with the creation of the first genuinely good film about about a Marvel superhero (shame about those sequels) and by doing this launched the company into the limelight once more, paving the way for many shameless rip-offs, unwanted adaptations, action blockbusters and stupid decisions.
So, Spiderman is the face of Marvel and as such it was inevitable that he would seep into Japan at some point or another (1970 being the comic in question's first publication date) and the result is The Manga Spider-Man. The comic was originally written and drawn by Ryoichi Ikegami, who's name I should probably recognise given the comic quotes him as "internationally acclaimed" and the people I hang out with are all Japanophiles
So I did some quick research, found a resumé for Mr. Ikegami and found out something very interesting about his career: before The Manga Spider-Man he had not written a single comic! Marvel trusted a complete newbie with the task of selling on of their most influential characters in Japan. Although I will give the man one thing, from his other works it at least looks as if he can draw well.
However, on the writing front he must have been appaling because after the sixth story featured in the manga (no idea how many issues in) the task of writing the comic was handed over to the Japanese Sci-Fi Novelist Kazumasa Hirai. Unfortunatley I only managed to get ahold of Issue 12 of this series, an Issue whichg was both written and drawn by Ikegami.
First let's take a look at the cover:
Eugh, where to start? The first thing that should catch your eye is that Spiderman is not featured on this cover anywhere. There is a logo which looks a spider-baby in the left hand corner (with text below to remind us that we are in fact reading "SPIDER-MAN THE MANGA" and not a good comic) and a gigantic spider with a man's head can be seen in the back ("cleverly" referencing an Issue from the american series which I can't find online) but Spiderman himself is not featured on the cover at all.
This strikes me as a rather odd decision from a marketing stand-point. The most iconic feature of any superhero is his/her costume, everyone knows that. A superheros costume says everything about them, in some cases even acting as a true identity or providing their powers. Why would anyone leave it off the cover? Especially with a character as iconic as Spiderman.
Moving on, the next thing that strikes me is the title. The word "SPIDER-MAN" leaps off the page in a blast of colour, whilst the words "The Manga" hover tenatively above in small, badly coloured text which is almost invisible at a glance. I may have been wrong about the marketing for this comic, this is clever. The decision to hide the fact that this is not traditional Spiderman by printing the first half of the title in really small, hard to read text is a stroke of genius. My theory about this is that if an unexpeirienced comic-shopper sees the comic they will automatically associate the word Spiderman with the american series, leading to an unfortunate impulse buy. Clever marketing team, almost had me there.
Finally the art, which I expected to at least be decent given the artist's past work, is appaling. The woman in the foreground is supposed to be running in fear as far as I can ascertain but her facial expression seems to be a mixture mild concern and ecstacy (Spidey's webbing is that good). Her posture is supposed to represent running, but actually seems to show that one of her legs is about a third of the length of the other. The perspective is so warped that it looks like her arms
are as long as she is tall!
Apart from the profoundly disturbing image of the offspring of Stretch Armstrong featured in the foreground, the background of the comic's cover also features perhaps the stupidest image ever seen on a comic cover! A huge spider, complete with a massive web and three other stupidly over-sized spiders, has the head of a character who I can only assume is Peter Parker. I realise that I've already mentioned this but I just can't get over how stupid this is. I know Man-spider is technically a character in the American comics but he's not prominent, and certainly not a candidate for the 12th issue.
The proportions of the Parker's head are stupidly wrong in relation to both the size of the spider's body and the size of the girl's head. If Parker's head was that big, then the spider wouldn't be able to support it. Furthermore the absence of any form of neck on the spider's body and perspective used for this cover makes it look like the spider's legs are coming out of the Peter's head! The anatomy of this creature is insane!
The final nail on the coffin of this artwork is mind blowingly stupid. Assuming that the girl is in the foreground, the Man-spider is in the background and they both have heads of roughly the same size (they both have human heads, the size of which does not differ massively from person to person) then surely her head should appear to be larger than his. So, why is it that his head appears to be larger than hers? How do you mess something like that up? It has to be one of the simplest concepts of art!
This is the most annoyed I have been with a comic in years and I haven't even opened it yet! All right here goes...
Upon opening the comic two things immediately leap out at me:
The inside cover features an extremely insensitive Twix advertisement. The image of a blue hand (any ideas?) holding an apple whilst pointing directly upwards is featured on the upper half of the page, whereas the image of a blue hand (this is seriously bothering me) holding a Twix bar whilst pointing downwards is featured on the bottom half of the page. These images are perfectly aligned so the overall impression is that of some sort of hand creature the anatomy of which would be more confusing than the Man-spider featured on the front page. In fact the only reason that I can tell that these are two seperate images is that the back-ground colour changes half-way down the page (the top half of the page is orange, the bottom red). Over the top of this profoundly confusing image lies this text: "Eve shared that apple and look what happened. Don't you make the same mistake!" with the first sentence over the top of the apple and the second sentence over the top of the Twix. Don't believe that any advertising campaign could ever be that insensitive? Here:
(Sorry about the image quality. I couldn't find this anywhere on the internet and I don't currently posses a scanner so this was the best I could manage. The rest of the images in this recap are of a much higher quality and the second I find a better version of this on the net or get a scanner, I'll update this one. If you find a better version drop me a line at bytesmedia@live.co.uk with a link) This is officially the most insensitive advert ever. Yes, it even beats that one. Who thought this would be a good idea? Who made the link that sharing a Twix = Original Sin? Why are their hands blue? The word SPIDER-MAN is printed in text larger than that featured on the front of the comic. Note to marketing team: You can stop it now! I already bought this abomination, you don't need to remind me that there are better comics I could be reading right now!
