Spider-Man Magazine #3 (Story 1)

Background

This is a magazine-sized periodical that was targeted for kids (Think Nickelodeon Magazine). It contained two six-page comic strips (One staring Spider-Man and the second another Marvel hero or group - usually the X-Men). It also contains fan art, puzzles, word searches, jokes, and kid-targeted features (on nature, etc.), as well as bios of Spidey, and other Marvel characters (Doc Ock in this issue). Some issues contained Marvel trading cards bound inside. The entire mag is done in that jokey, Marvel Bullpen style. The mag was packaged by an outside firm, and distributed by Marvel.

This preamble section isn't generally used, you can just delete text the text here and leave it empty. That's because normally all the detail is related to a specific issue, and should be put lower down under that issue.

The only type of review that normally uses this preamble text is a short review (e.g. a 17 second review) that wants to summaries a multi-issue story arc with a broad brush, not going into details for any issue.

Story 'Spider-Man in: The Great Train Robbery'

While swinging through the city, Spidey almost has his head taken off by a flying subway car, which he catches before it slams into a building. After setting it safely on the ground he becomes aware that it was tossed by The Rhino, who is on another rampage. As it turns out, Rhino was apparently hired by a disgruntled train designer who was turned down by the City to design new cars for a new supertrain. During the slugfest that follows, Spidey manages to subdue the Rhino and, after webbing him to the front of the train, carts him off to jail.

General Comments

Keeping in mind that this is targeted for kids, it plays out fine (if you go for that kind of thing-my son seemed to like it when he was younger). It really isn't an item that most Spidey (or X-Men) fans will want to seek out and actively collect, but if they stumbled across it, it is kind of fun to have. Here, even though the stories are simplistic, the Spider story works better because the plausibility of a disgruntled designer hiring the Rhino to wreck the train works so much better than a tired version of Mystique wanting to conquer the world.

Overall Rating

The comic stories are simplistic and probably don't fit into any actual continuity. Plus the feature articles are all one-two pages long. The jokes are cute, but if the comic was owned by a kid, they probably have completed all of the puzzles, thus bringing down any real (or imagined) value of the book as far as hard-core collectors are concerned. The back-up story features the X-Men's Rogue and Gambit. While the writing on Spidey story is OK, the X- Man story appears to have been knocked out during commercials of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends.

Footnote

This issue contains no trading cards.