Meet Spider-Man & Friends

Background

The guys at Paradise books produced a ton of Spider-Man spin-off back in 2002, including the book that introduced Spider-Man & Friends. The legacy Spider-Man and Friends carried through into a series of toys, and still continues today in stories in the Spider-Man & Friends (UK Magazine).

Paradise peaked in 2002, though they kept reprinting and re-releasing their coloring books through to 2004. You don't hear much from them now in the Spider-Man arena, others have taken the Spider-Man & Friends and run ahead with it. But lets wind back five years to 2002 and have a look at this kindergarten-friendly board book.

Story Details

12" tall and 6.5" wide with a cutout jagged edge, the bright colors are instant winners with three year olds. The pages are hard cardboard with glossy print - not completely indestructible, but still good and hard-wearing. The thickness of the card means that there are only four double-page spreads in this book.

Each spread features some bright friendly art, and a paragraph of text. The text is smallish print, clearly this is a book for reading to kids, not for kids to read to themselves. Let me give you the plot.

Page 1+2: During the school week, these four kids are normal kids.

Page 3+4: On Saturdays, Peter, Bruce, Steve and May meet at their secret tree-house because they have super-powers.

Page 5+6: Summary of powers. Peter and cousin May do Spidey stuff. Hulk is strongest one there is. Captain America is super-athlete.

Page 7+8: Together they make the neighborhood a safer place, all before dinner-time.

General Comments

Well. To what can one possibly object! This is great wholesome stuff, a million miles from Civil Wars and the death of Captain America. This unashamedly aims smack at the target market of kindergarten story-times, and ends up being a ton of fun at a fair price.

Overall Rating

Four webs for a solid, bright and friendly book.