Amazing Spider-Man Activity Pad (Merrigold Press)

Background

Merrigold Press produced a couple of branded Spidey coloring books in the early 90's. This one is a small activity pad. It is 5.2" x 7.75", top-stapled. The cover is soft card. Interior is 48 newsprint pages of black and white line art.

Story Details

The book is 50% simple coloring pages, and 50% games and activities - word games, join-the-dots, finish the drawing, etc.

All of the artwork appears to be original. Although a number of classic scenes are represented (e.g. the unmaskings of both Spider-Man and the Green Goblin from Amazing Spider-Man #39, I'm pretty sure they have all been re-drawn in order to produce an image which better stands along as a coloring page.

Certainly the art is of a high quality. The lines are clean, the characters are well-represented, and the framing of the compositions on the page is pleasing to the eye. There are no captions on the images, and no attempt at constructing a story line.

General Comments

This "classic" Spidey coloring. High quality artwork, with a careful mix of content.

In the early 2000's, we were treated (thanks to Paradise Press) to an awful run of badly-drawn and highly repetitious slabs of discount newsprint Spider-Man coloring books. This example from a decade earlier shows how a little care can use the same low-budget format to achieve a far more commendable result.

Overall Rating

No story, cheap newsprint. But effort was clearly applied where it mattered most, in the content of the artwork.

I'm going to give it a generous four webs.