Spider-Man: Caught In The Web

Background

A Golden Book, by the Golden Books Publishing Inc, of Racine, Wisconsin. This little fella is 8" x 8", holding 24 color-soaked pages.

Story Details

This book is a spin-off from the 90's cartoon series, and mimics the art from that show. Pencils are by Steven Butler, inks by Jeff Albrecht. Both of them have plenty of mainstream Spidey comics credits, so they kind of know what they're doing - even though the art is rather skewed towards kid-pleasing simplicity.

The story is by Michael Titelbaum, who has done other writing work for DK Publishing. Coloring is computer-style, courtesy of Bongotone. Never heard of 'em. I guess they're another of those countless computer coloring outfits that sprang up when Photoshop started getting affordable.

Anyhow, back to the book. Every page is full-color to all borders. Many of the illustrations are two-page spreads. There's a paragraph for each page, or sometimes every second page on the spreads. Let me give you an example of a text for one of the pages: 'A pumpkin bomb exploded. "Surprise!" shouted the Hobgoblin. "I'll take this!" snarled the Scorpion, grabbing the recombinator. He smashed the stage with his powerful tail.'

You get the picture. The story is simple. Peter is at the Science Expo where Dr. Connors is displaying his mutagenic recombinator. Hobby and Scorpy show up, independently, to grab the recombinator. Spidey heads after them, sets the two fighting each other, and defeats them. Peter sells photos to JJJ.

General Comments

That's it. Nice and simple. I'd say the reading age is around the 6-8 mark, although young kids will enjoy having it read to them, and older kids might enjoy the fun romp, even though it's a bit easy for them. Basically, this is good harmless fun, and a nice little collectable. It's a bit hard to find these days, but I bought mine second-hand at Amazon, and as long as you don't want a mint copy you'll probably find one there too.

Overall Rating

A silly, splashy story. Three and a half webs.