Spider-Man & Friends: Sharing & Caring For All

Background

Bendon Publishing produced this series of four books, each extolling various "virtues". The books themselves are thick card cover and pages, suitable for pre-schoolers. They are 9.5" tall, about 6" across, but cut with a wavy outline to make them more "interesting".

Each book in the series competes with the others to promote the most insipid of candyfloss qualities. This one is entitled "Sharing & Caring For All". Each contains five double pages and all follow the same pattern, as follows:

The first four double pages in each book feature Spider-Man on the first double spread, and then another one or two stars on the second and third double-spread. The fourth spread features one minor star on each page. All of these characters are accompanied by one or two paragraphs describing the character and their ideal qualities.

The fifth and final spread features a more detailed scene with several characters. The text on this page relates to the specific virtues and describes how perfectly our heroes epitomize this virtue.

Story Details

Stars are: Spider-Man, Spider-Girl, Captain America, and Hulk.

Final tree-house scene text is: "When school is out and chores at home are finished, it's time to meet up at their secret tree house. Sharing and caring for all, Spider-Man and his friends are glowing examples of teamwork and always do what is right!"

General Comments

Interestingly, the description of Hulk says that "Usually, Bruce Banner is a shy young man." Interesting then, that in 34 issues of Spider-Man & Friends (UK Magazine) I have yet to see Bruce Banner, and we always see Hulk. C'mon guys, let's have some consistency in our narrative here, please!

Overall Rating

Sharing is Caring? Pass the vomit bucket and let's score this one as level "Infra-Orange" on the Maximenton Cliche Scale (metric version). Oh yeah, and 1.5 Webs on the Spider-Fan scale.