Credits: Danny Fingeroth & Roger Stern (writers), with numerous artists, colorists, and letterers
The 1987 Amazing Spider-Man annual told the story of Peter and Mary Jane’s wedding. The Spectacular Spider-Man annual detailed their honeymoon. What does Web bring us this year? A series of profiles on Spider-Man’s supporting cast, along with a gallery of Spidey’s “forgotten foes.” Most of these losers are one-time Marvel Team-Up cannon fodder; although Black Cat is thrown in there for some reason (maybe the reasoning is that people “forgot” she was originally a villain). These aren’t even Handbook entries, they’re pin-ups of throwaways like Moondark with a few lines of text thrown in. Some of these villains are so ridiculous I’m happy to see them for the first time, but I still can’t believe Marvel published an annual that consisted entirely of annual back-ups. It’s obvious the books were having scheduling difficulties at the time, but Web really caught the worst of it. Web’s already endured months of fill-ins, and now this? The abundance of filler sends readers the message that this book is a low, low priority, which is a reputation you don’t want the third book in your franchise to receive. Couldn’t the filler annual be assigned to Spectacular, so at least the honeymoon story could show up here?
No comments:
Post a Comment