Sorry to bug you again, hope I'm not being a pain. I just wondered if you had any additional plans to review more issues of Marvel Team-Up Vol 1. I have noticed that precious few story arcs were covered. I would be most interested in your take on the classic Claremont run. Some of the best Spidey stories period (yes you read that right), in my most humble opinion, occurred in these issues. The Spidey/Iron Fist/Daughters of the Dragon/Steel Serpent arc is a classic, as is my favourite arc of all time, Spidey/Black Widow/Nick Fury/Shang Chi/Boomerang/Viper etc. I can't believe these have been neglected. Also Captain Britain, Powerman, SNL cast, Dr. Strange/Ms. Marvel, Red Sonja, Wasp/Yellowjacket, all classics. I know you occasionally do look backs but please consider these issues, they are too good to let slide into oblivion. When you consider how bad the reboots were (acknowledged in this site), it makes these earlier efforts even more impressive as a team-up book done prope! rly seems to elude Marvel. Anyway, Happy New Year, and keep these great reviews coming!
Hey, you're not bugging me! Write anytime!
I do have some MTU coming up in Lookback, but none of the Claremont stuff, unfortunately. The next (January) PPP will have Stegron the Dinosaur Man from MTU #19-20. The February PPP will have the Basilisk from MTU #16-17. I agree that the Claremont/Byrne stuff is good Spidey reading but I don't have any immediate plans to review those issues, I'm sorry to say. (Though I have been thinking about the SNL and the Red Sonja issues.) If you want to write reviews of some of these issues, I'm sure Jonathan would be more than happy to post them.
Thanks for the good words on my reviews, Jeff. Happy New Year to you, too!
Al
I didn't know if you know or not but Wilson Fisk died in a recent Daredevil comic and you don't have him marked as deceased.
[You really think he's dead? - Ed]
Well all signs point to yes right now, so unless they pull a clone saga I'd say the Kingpins dead.
[Well, he was "left for dead", but does that mean dead? - Ed]
Well he got shot 5 times and fell into the river and then he got stabbed, how much punishment does he get to take before he dies?
[Look at Green Goblin. Glider through the heart, buried for 20 years! - Ed]
so... are you saying Kingpin's son is gonna come back as Kingpin and start hunting Daredevil just like Osbourne did to Parker?
[Well, I'd want to see the head chopped off and his neck stuffed with garlic before I'd really be convinced! - Ed]
What's there to reckon? Kingpin's coming back is as likely as Kraven coming back and fighting with Spiderman
[You may be right. Let's just wait and see, huh? - Ed]
If we wait it could end up taking like 10 years when Marvel runs out of ideas and decides to bring back Kingpin.
[Or maybe you need to read a few more Marvel back issues. Big name characters tend to sleep longer than they stay dead! - Ed]
My name is Emma and I am a year 12 student at Barton Court Grammar School in Canterbury. For my A levels I am studying Media Studies and for my coursework I have ben asked to produce a new Sunday supplement. I was wondering if you could send me any information on how you chose you target audience.
The same way that street musicians, late night hookers and streakers at cricket matches choose their target audience.
Hi I'm Amy and I'm a huge fan. My boyfriend Richard is also a huge fan. He is dying to get an autograph from any of the artist or creators of the Spider-Man comic books. I want to give it to him as a gift. This would be the best thing to him in the whole wide world is it possible?
please! please ! e- mail me and give me your feed back if this is impossible or not.
PLEASE REPLY IT'S IMPORTANT
Yes Amy, it certainly is possible.
aggGGAGhgghghghhh ACK! Up... Date.... site....
Hiya, sorry for being so slow getting back to you, but last year was a bit hectic. Still, now that the new year is upon us, hopefully I'll have a bit more time in 1998 than I did last year, and my mailbox won't be so far out of date!
Thanks for writing!
Do you know how I can reach Joe Sinnott or his family (if no longer living)? I am trying to purchase a illustration that he penned which included my grandfather Ken and Bing Crosby.
Tell you what, if you give me Bing Crosby's email, I'll see if I can find you Joe's address!
Greetings from México, I want to thank you so much for doing this "Amazing" Web Page I´m a spider-fan since my childhood, (now Ím 25) but always i´ve loved Peter Parker. I quit Buying the spider-titles a while ago, but with your page i can always know what´s gong on. Thanks.
A cuestion: wich do you think is the best spider-era of all? Personally i think is the middle 80¨s and the early 90´s one.
Hiya, I just want to say I loved all your movies... all six of them. And thanks for writing such a cute email!
Dude, I just wanted to give you some props here. I have been reading Spider-man for over twenty-five years and have just recently discovered this site. I have been here all afternoon and just wanted to say that I love your reviews of the classic ASM issues! I have been laughing out loud all day ( much to the chagrin of my fellow employees}! Great sense of humour! It's amazing (no pun intended) how simplistic the issues appear in retrospect, but I still luv em anyway! Any thoughts on the new stuff?
Thanks for the good words. I particularly appreciate getting a letter with "dude" and "props" in it in the same sentence. Never gotten one of those before. Thanks! I mean it!
Thanks also for the laughs over the classic ASM reviews. Don't worry about disrupting your fellow employees... well, I guess it depends on what kind of work you do. And don't worry about the simplistic storylines... they're still some of the best comics ever made.
The new stuff? Almost everything from the end of the Clone thingy to the end of Howard Mackie kept me in constant pain. But I'm into everything that has been coming out for the last six to nine months. JMS' take has been top-notch. I thought the whole Morlun story was one of the best in Spidey's whole history. Jenkins is doing some richly varied stuff in PP. Compare the touching story of the little black kid who worships Spider-Man with the trauma of the Fusion story with the humor of the latest Vulture story. All good, all different. Hard to believe they were written by the same guy. The Ultimate books are terrific, too. And Tangled Web has been a bit uneven (expected, with different creative teams for each story) but well worth it. Taken all together, it's one of the best times to be a reader of Spider-Man.
(Reply by Al Sjoerdsma)
hey me again, sorry if im buggn ya =) can u put carrion II and carrion III on your site for me plz?
You again! Hey, quit buggin me!
I love your website and I love reading the reviews your broad range of contributors give the varied Spider-Man issues. However, I found a problem with the ASM #36 review. Was I the only one who had a problem with Dex killing Morlun? Do you really think Spidey couldn't have gummed up that gun that Dex shot Morlun with and taken the sniveling little worm out? I mean, c'mon, Spidey even yelled "No!", so it's not like he subconsciously wanted Dex to kill Morlun or anything. As many times as I've seen Spidey keep someone from being shot, it just makes me sad that this was overlooked as a bad bit of writing from JMS. Your ASM reviewer should have mentioned it. Though I will admit that this one the only gripe I had with the review or the entire first plot-run that JMS had. Anyway, just thought I'd send some feedback your way. Thanks for your time.
Hey, good point. Although, it didn't occur to me at the time. Peter was pretty stressed out, and even though his spider-sense might have given a buzz, in the circumstances it seems pretty reasonable that he might have slipped up. And maybe subconsiously he didn't really want to save Morlun. But hey, JMS wrote the story, so I guess we just have to trust him to tell us how it really happened!
hi my name is sherri and my husband has non-hodgkins lymphoma and is probley the biggest spiderman fan there is i have bought him everything that we can afford and then some a couple of months ago there was a spiderman at best buy in waterloo iowa and he took a picture of my son and one of my husband well we had just gotten our internet and i gave her the wrong e-mail address if you know whom this person was could you please give her the right one also i would like your help in trying to find someone that can help us to get to universal studios in florida or hollywood it really does not matter but we would like to go on a family vacation before my husband gets sick again and we never get to go we also have two boys ages six and two who also like spidman so thank you for the movie we cant wait love and peace merry christmas
Hey sherri, that's a touching story... but I'm afraid that even the Spider-Oracle doesn't keep track of who dresses up in a Spider-Costume each weekend in Iowa. This site is edited out of New Zealand - we're a long, long way from your part of the world!
All I can suggest is that you call Best Buy... your local store is Crossroads Blvd, phone 319-833-9261. They're open until 9pm most nights, and 6pm on Sundays. Maybe they can help you track them down. When you're in there, say Hi to Steve for me. He's working evenings this week doing stocktaking. Remind him he owes me 10 bucks from that bowling night.
I'd love to send you to Universal Studios, but then again, I haven't found the ready cash to go there myself yet!
When was MJ's baby conceived?
10:30pm, after two bottles of wine, sitting on the sofa with Letterman on the TV in the background...
...wanna buy a photo?
Do you know if Ben Reilly will be returning from the dead? If he is, then when?
11:30pm, next Friday night. I recommend you lock your doors and stay inside, zombies are never a pretty sight. Make sure your chainsaw is full of gas!
My brother has a Spider-man pinball machine that stays in the "tilt mode" all the time. A few weeks ago it decided to work for two or three games since going back into tilt staying there. He has a manual, has been through everything. Works like a new one except for the tilt problem. Any help or ideas would be appreciated.
It never ceases to amaze me, the questions that people think we might know the answer to.
OK then. On page 20 of the manual, you'll see the plumb bob tilt. It's on the inside front left of the main cabinet body. Check that it isn't shorting. If there's nothing obvious there, then follow the two contacts back to the main board and check the resistance with a multi-meter. Check them both ways, at least one direction should read as an air gap.
Man, we're good!
My wife went to an auction and came home with a "Buck Rogers" pin ball machine manufactured by D.Gottlieb & Co. I believe it was manufactured 1979. I machine is not working, there is power to a solnoid coil in the coin box area and some of the lights are on, but that is about it. I would like to start checking things out but am not sure where to begin since I don't have a schematic. Do you know if schematics are available and if so where. and how do you lift up the machine to get to the wiring, relays, etc as shown in one of your pictures.
Heh, heh, heh. You, my dear friend, seem to have bitten off a little more than you can chew!
Being that you are the Spiderman expert, I was hoping you may know where i can download a ringtone of the theme song for "Spiderman" to put in my cell phone.
Pinballs? Cell phones? This is a comics site, dude!
But as it happens, I did just recently managed to get hold of a MIDI file for the Spider-Man tune. I'll be trying to convert it to Nokia format, and if I succeed in downloading it, then I will put it on the site, along with full instructions. So keep checking back.
I need a list of Spidermans Weeknesses. I have searched for "weekness", but cannot find any reference to it on your site.
Hmm, that's strunge. Maybe the seerch engine is braken?
My son has been such a fan of Spiderman for 20 some years now. Is there any way he could get an autograph picture of Spiderman for his birthday?
Sure there's a way to get an autographed picture of Spidey. Just get a photo of Spidey, head over to Manhattan dressed like Doctor Octopus, sit on the side of the Empire State, wait for Spidey to swing past, and then do some REAL fast talking!
In your 2001 Vol 7 edition, you answered a letter concerning the MBNA Marvel Mastercard featuring Spiderman. I have an update to that I thought you might find interesting.
I've had the spiderman card since 1996. I JUST received my latest card and AIGHGH! No Spiderman!
Of course I quickly called MBNA and found out that apparently the contract with Marvel has run out and has not been renewed and cards are no longer available.
I'm much sad.
That's bad news! I never managed to get one myself, not being in the U.S.
Hey, if anybody out there has a Spidey Mastercard, I would love one for my collection. And I promise not to run it over its limit!
was spiderman created in canada by a canadian??
Sure he was... just like TinTin, strudel, the internal combustion engine, and the modern formula for gin and tonic.
Just wanted to let you and your Spidey fans know that we offer a really beautiful PERSONALIZED SPIDER-MAN BOOK, with information you provide, we place you into the action along with Spidey! Up to three friend name are placed into this book as well. Follow this link and take a look at Personally Yours - click on library, then adventure!
Look, I'd love to help you out, but this is a competely non-commercial site. We don't provide advertising for any commercial products, even if they do look pretty good. I had thought about maybe doing some sort of sneak-deal, where maybe I get a free copy of the book in return for sneaking a quick ad into the monthly magazine... but I really don't think I could get that past the Magazine sub-editor.
So, we would love to plug Personally Yours, but it runs completely against our official policy. Sorry!
Referring to the letter in a previous issue concerning the reference to Spider-Man in a french language novel.
Confused you should be as was the author. "Spider Man" is an american published superhero story about a superpowered man who believes that this power comes with great responsibility. "The Spider" is an english published comic that was sold all around the world about a nazi crime lord with amazing scientific resources and athletic skills who 3 years before the end of the war decided to begin righting wrongs and defending good people primarily from his old nazi associates. Not a clue about the three chromosones guy though.
Aha. It does indeed seem that the original writer, or perhaps the translator, has confused "The Spider" with "Spider-Man". A little more investigation on the internet reveals a 1930's Golden Age pulp fiction character named "The Spider", who is a contempary of Doc Savage and The Shadow.
The Spider first appeared in The Spider Strikes (1933), written by R. T. M. Scott, but was soon the work of 'Grant Stockbridge', a pseudonym for several writers, most frequently Norvell Page, totalling 118 novellas and two serialised movies (each in 15 parts) - The Spider's Web (1938) and The Spider Returns (1941). Presumably, it also produced a number of comic books.