Spider-Man Jumbo Coloring Book (Alligator)

Background

This is yet another coloring book featuring the same old art that seems to turn up everywhere these days. 8.5" x 11.75", 192pp, soft cardboard cover. Published by Alligator books and almost certainly a UK-specific product.

Story Details

If I'm not mistaken, much if not all the coloring pages in this book are taken from Bagley art out of Ultimate Spider-Man. Doctor Octopus and Black Cat are favored, along with plenty of Spidey shots.

The art seems to have been extracted digitally, perhaps by running a computer edge detecting algorithm or color separator over scans of printed comics. There doesn't seem to have been a lot of manual cleanup, with the result that there's something rather jaggy and incomplete about many of the pictures.

This seems to be the exact same art that is used in the Spider-Man Color/Activity Books (Meredith) series by Meredith Books. Maybe there's some sort of link between Meredith in the U.S. and Alligator in the U.K. Or maybe Marvel made the images available to both of them. But whoever is to blame, the quality of the images is distinctly amateur hour.

General Comments

There's no puzzles or games in here - nothing but page on page of coloring. The paper is good quality clean white paper, and there's 192 pages for the price of four pounds UK (or three pounds in the remaindered books discounter where I bought it). I guess that's a fair price, as long as the kid you're buying it for isn't too picky about the quality of the artwork the color in.

Overall Rating

Poor artwork reproduction spoils the entire effect. Two webs.