Amazing Spider-Man Artist Pad: Spinning into Action!

Background

This "artists pad" is published by Dalmation Press, a U.S. company from whom I have not previously seen any Spidey products.

Story Details

The pad is square-bound at the top, large-format at 13.3" x 11", with a carry handle. Inside are 40 single-sided black and white pages to color, plus a sheet of stickers featuring Spidey and a host of classic villains.

Also, on the front cover are three fat double-ended crayons, giving six colors in total. It looks like the crayon holder is not resealable, and removing the crayons will damage the book. That's a bit of a shame, and turns the carrying handle into a gimmick.

The pages are perforated for easy tear-out. The artwork is taken from the Parragon/Scholastic Australia line art pool (see Spider-Man Color/Activity (Scholastic Australia) for more examples) which has been very popular in the UK/NZ, but which is not so well-known in the U.S.A.

General Comments

There's a mix of puzzles and coloring pages. To handle the landscape format, some of the content has been zoomed and cropped, while in other cases there are simple two portrait pages side-by-side to make a landscape page. A "crawling spider" border has been added to each page.

The illustrations feature the silly captions which tend to accompany this material. The puzzles are well constructed, although I've seem them all at least ten times before in other activity books from the same source material.

Note that Electro is the star villain of this old Parragon/Scholastic Australia artwork pool. Given that he is also (quite coincidentally I'm sure) the star of the upcoming movie, I suspect the next few months will see a few more books like this one squeezed out of that tired old pool of content. It's a good way to tie into the movie hype without paying the movie franchise licence fees!

Overall Rating

Despite these pictures already having been done to death in New Zealand, they're not so well known in the U.S.A. So this book has a bit more impact.

The double-ended fat crayons are pretty cool, although it's a shame you have to tear the book to get them out. The stickers are attractive, and the artwork is well presented. The book is chunky and impressive, and for a $4 asking price on Amazon, this whole product represents great value for money.

Perhaps it's a bit generous, but I think I can stretch to Four Webs for this solid and well-priced product.

Footnote

The Scholastic Australia version of this pad is Amazing Spider-Man: Giant Activity Carry Pad (Scholastic Australia), which is based on the same pool of artwork and puzzles, but which is formatted and packaged differently and lacks the crayons.