Not even slightly bitter about not getting Glastonbury Tickets this year

Amazing Spider-Man #10

The Enforcers 

Villains: 

The Big Man, Fancy Dan, The Ox, Montana

Characters: 

J.Jonah Jameson, Aunt May, Flash Thompson, Liz Allen, Betty Brant, Frederick Foswell, Mr and Mrs Abbot, (plus a chorus of doctors, gangsters and hoods.)

Observations

Aunt May’s next door neighbor is called Mrs Abbott (and not, for example, Mrs Watson.)

Stan Lee doesn't re-read old issues, but relies on his memory: he references issue #9 but says it is called The Wrath of Electro, rather than A Man Called Electro.

Following the fight in issue #8, Flash makes two more attempts to be nice to Peter: visiting Aunt May in hospital, and warning him to be careful about speaking of the Big Man in public.

He's got radioactive blood! Peter gives Aunt May a person-to-person blood transfusion, which is massively anachronistic in 1964. Peter has the same blood type as Aunt May, even though they are not blood relatives. This will become hugely significant the next time but one May is at death's door.

On the splash page, Spider-Man "possesses the strength of countless spiders"; on page 21, he "has the proportionate strength of a spider". 

Spins a Web: Any Size: Spider-Man makes a web parachute and (briefly channeling his inner Bruce Wayne) a giant web spider to terrify a bad guy.

If Amazing Spider-Man #9  is a slice of spider-life; then Amazing Spider-Man #10 is as conventional a piece of story-telling as we've seen.  Indeed, it is hardly a Spider-Man story at all: if Parker had just been a photojournalist and the Enforcers had been more conventional hoods, everything would have unfolded in pretty much the same way. And this is no criticism. There is something gloriously surrealist about the way in which a small number of outlandish super-characters wander around a downbeat, realistic urban world and no-one pays much attention to them. 

A big man named the Big Man has taken control of the Syndicate which controls all the Crime in New York. Or possibly America. Or maybe just Forest Hills. Taking over the Syndicate is a pretty simple operation. He just tells his three mildly super-powered hench-people to intimidate seven gang leaders who have kindly assembled in his office in order to be intimidated. They immediately hand The Mob over to him. 

Traditionally, Organized Crime makes its money from illegal gambling, extortion, bootleg booze, ladies of ill repute and even drugs. But Ditko gives us a montage of The Big Man’s men cracking safes, robbing banks at gunpoint and hijacking security vans. Spider-Man's main job is arresting jewel thieves, so it makes sense that one tall man in a mask is in charge of all the jewel thieves in the country. The universe is Manichean conflict between Goodies (Cops) and Baddies (Robbers) and The Big Man has taken over the Thieves Guild. Over the next few months, the Green Goblin and the Crime Master are going to be pretenders to the same throne. One of Stan Lee’s first acts after Ditko’s departure will be to install the Kingpin as Top Crimer.

So: who is the Big Man really? J. Jonah Jameson thinks it is Spider-Man and Spider-Man thinks it is J. Jonah Jameson. If you approach the story as a puzzle, then the solution is almost painfully transparent. Out of the blue, Jameson has acquired a columnist named Frederick Foswell who writes editorials about how awful Spider-Man is at his bosses behest. He is a rather a little man. This is the first time any Bugle Employee, apart from Betty, has been given a name. I suspect I was typical of first-time readers in assuming that he had been mentioned before. Lee’s habit of back-filling means that when we are told that Jameson's top columnist is called Foswell (or that Aunt May's neighbor is called Abbot) we are inclined to say "oh, yes, and he always has been."

It shouldn’t be a great surprise that a brand new character, introduced on page 7 of a “whodunit”— the only person who isn’t part of the regular cast — should turn out to be the masked villain. It works a lot better than it ought. For one thing, it isn’t presented as a riddle-story: there is too much else going on for us to spend much time trying to guess the Big Man’s identity. We are fairly cunningly misdirected — or at any rate watch Peter being misdirected — into thinking that the Big Man is Jameson. We don’t ever get an explanation as to why Jameson is walking past the Big Man’s hide out right after Spider-Man’s first fight with Enforcers: in a proper whodunit, that would count as Cheating, but here we hardly notice. When it comes to the big revelation, we are more interested in Peter — and Jameson’s — reaction then we are with the trick about how Foswell was the Big Man all along. (He was wearing special high heels to make himself look taller. Duh!) 

It really is a very elegant little tale.

The distinctly lackluster cover pitches the story as a straight fight between Spider-Man and the Enforcers. It oversells it quite heavily: apparently, they aren’t merely the most merciless foes Spider-Man has ever come up against, but the most merciless foes that anyone has ever encountered. Doctor Doom might have a word or two to say about that. So might Hitler. The splash page (as well as being a nicer piece of art) sells the story much better, with the main question not being "how can one lone crime-fighter hope to defeat the Enforcers" but “Who is the Big Man?????????????????” (17 question marks in original.) So once again, Ditko offers up a plot heavy, film noir suspense mystery tale, and Stan Lee promotes it as a wrestling match.

The Enforcers are, simply, the Big Man’s enforcers: three heavies who he uses to intimidate all the crime lords of New York and collect unpaid interest from teen-aged secretaries. Teams of villains are a tempting plot device for writers — rather than come up with a single, strong concept (a villain with wings, a villain with robot arms) you can bung three or more mediocre concepts together, and let them spend the issue trading wise cracks. So we have Very Strong Guy; Little Guy Who Knows Judo; and Guy With A Gimmick (a lasso). This leads to some very un-focussed scenes in which the villains take it in turns to describe their powers to Spider-Man. There is a big fight, but no distinct moment when the baddies get defeated. The Enforcers have not yet descended into bickering among themselves (as the Masters of Evil and the Frightful Four do incessantly). Stan Lee must have thought they were a good idea, because they make three return visits (although only as generic crooks to pad out another story.)  At least they aren't as irritating as the Circus of Crime.

The Amazing Spider-Man is supposed to be set in New York; but it really happens on a very small stage. Peter Parker brags about knowing the Big Man’s identity, and sure enough the Enforcers come along and kidnap him. Betty Brant owes money to a loan shark, and sure enough the Enforcers turn up at the Bugle and bully her — at the exact moment while Peter Parker is in the office. Last time around we learned that J.J.J. had a personal account in a Forest Hills bank, right near where Peter Parker lives — which was, of course, the first bank which Electro robbed! This could be seen as a Dickensian level of coincidence, or just very lazy plotting. But I think that we have to read Spider-Man with a kind of double-vision. At one level, yes, this is Noo Yawk, and Spider-Man’s enemies are the worst enemies in the whole wide world. But at another level, Spider-Man is a local hero who lives in a village, and his enemies, though threatening and scary, are not terribly important in the grand scheme of things. Jameson is editor of a local newspaper and there is a local school and a local college and doubtless a friendly neighborhood grocery store as well. That’s why Jameson cares so much about Spider-Man and so little about, say, Ant Man. Spider-Man is making a big noise in his village and Jameson would like him to get off his lawn. 

Last time, Spider-Man removed Electro’s mask and didn’t find anyone very interesting underneath. "Who is Electro?" was one of the big questions that no-one was really asking.  This time, the question “Who is the Big Man?????????????????” (seventeen question marks) is shouted out on the first page, and to some extent drives the action. We are misdirected into thinking that he is a regular member of the supporting cast; but (in a sort of kind of twist) find out that he is the guy we only met this issue. But if anything, the big twist — the kind of thing that Stan Lee means when he talks about the realism of the comic — is that the hero completely fails to solve the mystery. "Some big brain I am." says Spider-Man "I not only have the proportionate strength of a Spider — I'm just about as dumb too!" 

As we've seen, this was to become a point of contention between Lee and Ditko. Ditko thought that in real life the bad guy never turns out to be old Mr McGrath who runs the funfair. Lee thought that stories needed better payoffs than real life. The same kind of thing will happen in issues 26 and 27. And then... Well, on one account, then there will be a big argument and the partnership will come to and end.

We are getting ahead of ourselves. But spiderphiles who know what I am talking about should take a long hard look at Frederick Foswell’s haircut.  

Listen Bud

A Close Reading of the First Great Graphic Novel in American Literature

by

Andrew Rilstone

Andrew Rilstone is a writer and critic from Bristol, England. This essay forms part of his critical study of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original Spider-Man comic book. 

If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider supporting Andrew on Patreon. 

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Amazing Spider-Man #9

A Man Called Electro

Villain:
Matt Dillon (Electro)

Named Characters:
Flash Thompson, Liz Allan, Aunt May, Betty Brant, J. Jonah Jameson


Observations:

“Although we know so little about Spider-Man, he’s always been on the side of the law”. The idea that there was a federal warrant for his arrest has been completely forgotten.

”I know it’s bad manners to drop in without an invitation, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me this once”. Spider-Man’s banter is notably less irritating this time around.

Spider-Man's red socks are separate from his blue tights. (And they are light enough to slip rubber shoes over!)

If Betty left high school "last year" then she must be around 17. Editorial comments on the letters page suggest that she is slightly younger than Peter.

Aunt May’s first illness! Up to this point, she has been represented as elderly, but not especially sick or infirm.

Guess Aunt May’s Illness! 1: It’s only symptom is fatigue. 2: It is rare  3: It requires medication, and the slightest delay in administering medication might be fatal. 5: It requires a major blood transfusion 6: Surgery returns the patient to full health in a matter of days.

Peter Parker’s Financial Position: Parker sells fake pictures of Spider-Man for $1,000: Jameson says they are really worth $20,000. The $1,000 pays for the specialist surgeon. No other medical fees are mentioned.

He can climb up walls; he has a spider-insignia on his costume; he'll soon have little spider-shaped tracking devices. But there is nothing particularly spidery about Spider-Man. He can indeed spin a web (any size) but real spiders mostly use their webs for trapping flies rather than making swamp shoes and canoes. Spiders aren't know for being strong and agile, and certainly not for having a telepathic radar sense.  If Stan Lee had chosen a different name, most of the stories would have panned out very similarly. Fly-Man or Cockroach-Man might still have spotted that if you are going to touch a villain called Electro, some heavy duty rubber gloves are probably in order.

But at a deeper, thematic level, "spiders" pull these comics together in a way that flies or cockroaches could not have.

We’ve already noted one example. In almost every episode, Spider-Man is defeated in his first confrontation with the bad guy, but comes back and beats the baddie on the second attempt (usually by thinking the situation through more carefully). Sometimes, it's a huge defeat; sometimes, a mere tactical withdrawal: but it always happens. So this month, Spider-Man is knocked out the first time he touches Electro's. The cover screams "the defeat of Spider-Man" but it isn’t that big a deal — he gets a bad shock from the electrically powered bad guy, but he recovers, and before the next battle he nips into a hardware store for some insulation. The moral — the one that the Human Torch hammered home in that school assembly — is "if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again." 

British school kids, at any rate, would instantly associate this maxim with the story of Robert the Bruce who is said to have been hiding out in a dour Scottish cave after having lost a couple of battles. According to the tale, he sees a spider trying to spin a web across the cave. The little arachnid fails twice, but succeeds on the third attempt, inspiring the Scottish King to have one last go at sending proud Edward's army homeward tae think again. 

Amazing Spider-Man #9
The best thing Ditko has contributed to date...
The whole of Spider-Man in a single image?

The splash page of Amazing Spider-Man #9 is more or less the best thing that Steve Ditko has contributed to date, which is to say, more or less as good as comic-book artwork gets. Some Ditko splashes are simply the first frame of the story; some are teasers – showing you a scene that will come later in the story. But what he does best is symbolic splash pages like this; abstract visualizations of the entire episode.

At the center of the picture are Peter Parker and Spider-Man: another full-body Gemini-split. This was how we left our hero at the end of issue #8, walking home after his mighty pleasant day. But here he looks panicked, scared. He’s definitely not whistling. He's surrounded by 20 or so faces: like one of those crowd reaction scenes which Ditko was so fond of. But there are not everyman faces but people we recognize: Aunt May, J. Jonah Jameson, Flash Thompson, Betty Brant.

And (although I think I missed this fact for thirty five years) some of them appear twice. 

That’s the genius of the scene. The faces on the left are looking at the Peter Parker side of the equation: Jameson looking indifferent; Betty smiling; Aunt May reaching out to him; the school kids looking hostile. The faces on the right are looking at the Spider-Man half: J.J.J. angrily denouncing him and (very sad and subtle this) Betty turning her back. There is a rather ambivalent collection of Ditko "men in the street": a woman in a ridiculous hat, obviously disapproving; a kid, obviously excited and an absolutely delightful cop who is stroking his chin, not quite able to make up his mind. In the bottom left (opposite poor Aunt May) shadowy figures representing the underworld are shooting at him. It would be over-egging the pudding to say that the fellow in the hat, who seems to be about 100 year old, more like a goblin than criminal, looks a lot like the Burglar, transformed into a bogeyman in Spider-Man’s imagination.

This isn't merely a symbolic representation of issue nine: it's a visual manifesto for the next dozen episodes of Amazing Spider-Man. Up until now, the Gemini Face has represented an internally divided self: the fact that one guy has somehow to be both shy Peter and arrogant Spider-Man. But Peter has chucked his glasses away and unified the two sides of the face; the stories, from now on, will be less about Parker's state of mind and more about the social world he inhabits; how presenting as two different people affects his human relationships.

I should be inclined to call Amazing Spider-Man #1 - #7 "the celebrity arc"; nearly every story is concerned, to some degree, with fame or notoriety. Amazing Spider-Man #8 - #19 might equally be labelled "the secret identity arc". Virtually every story has double-identities and disguises as a major theme.

Spider-Man now has a fixed supporting cast of five characters: J. Jonah Jameson, Aunt May, Betty Brant, Liz Allan and Flash Thompson. These five characters are increasingly going to form the matrix of the stories — a sophisticated plot-generating engine. Although I don’t think that Ditko ever went quite this far, you could easily imagine the splash from Spider-Man #9 redrawn, with each of the quintet having a different reaction to Parker and Spider-Man. 

J. JONAH JAMESON: Provides meal tickets for Peter. Prints editorials denouncing Spider-Man

AUNT MAY: Coddles Peter. Recoils from Spider-Man

BETTY: Loves Peter. Fears Spider-Man.

LIZ: Looks down on Peter. Has crush on Spider-Man.

FLASH: Despises Peter. Worships Spider-Man. 

"Very probably, Andrew" I can hear you saying "But what does any of this have to with spiders." 

Simply this. If the first moral lesson that school children learn from spiders is perseverance – "if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again", the second is certainly honesty. "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." 

Which also comes from a story about Scotsmen, oddly enough. 

Matt Dillon is struck by lightening while fixing electrical cables and finds that the two charges have canceled each other out. As you do. He discovers that he can throw sparks when he puts his hand through a wire coat hanger (what?) and makes himself a mesh suit which he wears under his costume (shades of 50 Shades of Grey!) His body is now a "living electrical generator" but he also seems to use some kind of electrical generator to charge himself up. The Science of all this is more than usually confused.

Despite making himself a natty little yellow and green costume, and imaginatively calling himself "Electro" hes doesn't engage in any electricity themed naughtiness. He robs a bank, and then decides (for no reason at all) to free some criminals from what is quaintly described as the House of Correction in order to "get them to be my flunkies". Stan Lee just takes it for granted that if you get superpowers, then naturally, what you will do is rob banks. Unless you are one of those ones who think it’s your duty to stop other people robbing banks. 

But Electro is really only a sub-plot to this issue. Or, more accurately: Electro is one of three plot threads running side-by-side. Aunt May’s illness is one plot; Peter’s relationship with Betty is another; Electro’s attack on the house of correction is a third. The threads get tangled up, of course — Betty kindly supports Peter during May’s operation; Peter has to go and fight Electro to raise money for May’s operation; Betty is angry that Peter went to photograph the prison riot after she'd asked him not to. But there is no big unifying moment. Electro entirely refrains from causing any power-cuts while Aunt May is plugged into life-support.

I think more than anything else this is what made me fall in love with Spider-Man. There is a six panel sequence (pages 5 - 6) in which Spider-Man goes out looking for criminals (to photograph). He gets caught in the rain; rinses out his wet costume in the sink; and nearly gets spotted by his neighbors when he hangs it out to dry. Nothing comes of this scene: it doesn't lead anywhere – it's just there. I suppose you could summarize the plot if you really wanted to: "Jameson is convinced that Spider-Man is Electro. Peter fakes incriminating pictures to pay for Aunt May’s surgery. Jameson is angry, but forgives him when he supplies better, genuine pictures, but now Betty is angry that he went on such a dangerous assignment." But that doesn’t really convey the tone of the episode at all. It just feels like a mesh or network of events. 

What’s another word for a mesh or a network? Ah yes. A web. 

"Life sure is funny!" say Spider-Man, after spraying Electro with a fire hose because, quote, electricty and water don't mix. "One of the most powerful criminals of all time! And what finally beat him! Just a dousing from a plain, ordinary, water hose.” In the very next panel, he unmasks Electro and complains “If this were a movie, I’d gasp in shock and then I’d say 'good heavens! The butler!'  But this guy I never saw before.” It's never clear whether moments like this should be seen as Stan Lee congratulating himself for being so clever, or Stan Lee ticking off Steve Ditko for being so boring; but it's certainly true that A Man Called Electro doesn't have a big pay-off. 

The question of whether Amazing Spider-Man should be more like a movie ("good heavens! My best friend’s father!") or more like real life ("this guy I never saw before!") is one that Writer Guy and Artist Guy were never going to agree on. But for the next year or so, to read Amazing Spider-Man is to fall into the flow of Peter Parker's life and stay there for a few hours.

Not stories. Life. One thing after another.

Listen Bud

A Close Reading of the First Great Graphic Novel in American Literature

by

Andrew Rilstone

Andrew Rilstone is a writer and critic from Bristol, England. This essay forms part of his critical study of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original Spider-Man comic book. 

If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider supporting Andrew on Patreon. 

if you do not want to commit to paying on a monthly basis, please consider leaving a tip via Ko-Fi.

Pledge £1 for each essay. 

Leave a one-off tip

Amazing Spider-Man was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and is copyright Marvel Comics. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copywriter holder.

 Please do not feed the troll. 

Amazing Spider-Man 8 (V): In the Neighbourhood...

In the neighborhood...

"Neighbor" is, of course, a Biblical word (standing for the Greek plēsion) meaning "a member of the community". Loving your neighbor as yourself was said by Jesus to be the whole heart of the Torah. The Old Testament arguably taught that "neighbor" meant only other Jewish people; the New Testament arguably teaches that everyone in the world is everyone else's neighbor.

The word "neighborhood" originally meant simply neighborliness or the state of being neighborly; but by the middle of 19th century it had acquired the present sense of "locality" "home" or "the part of the world where all your friends live".  It wasn't until the late 20th century that the abbreviation 'hood came to mean a specifically black neighborhood – a ghetto.

In 1964 the phrase "your friendly neighborhood" was already a well-worn cliche. Sam’s Market in Glenfield, Los Angeles was advertising itself as "your friendly neighborhood grocer" in 1958; the National Association of Retail Druggists was talking about "your friendly neighborhood drug store" in 1947. The earliest example I could find was a Methodist Church in Wisconsin which claimed to be "your friendly neighborhood church" as far back as 1935. Ed Wood's infamous movie Glen or Glenda refers ironically to "your friendly neighborhood milkman" (he's actually sleeping with the women of the neighborhood while their husbands are at work.)

Back in issue #4, Spider-Man sucked the Sandman into the vacuum cleaner with the words "Here’s the first part of your education courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man." I suppose the joke is that Spider-Man is unique; every neighborhood doesn’t have one; and that the Bugle still presents him as anything but friendly. Or perhaps "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" just sound a little like "friendly neighborhood milkman". It's funny: but not very funny. 

On page 2 of the Torch story in issue 8. Spider-Man tries to scare the Human Torch’s guests with a giant bat. (Why a bat, for heaven’s sake? Why not a spider?) The Torch says that it’s made of threads, and Spider-Man replies "Not threads, sonny boy!…Webs! Gen-u-wine Spider-Man webs!…The kind your friendly neighborhood grocer doesn’t sell". "The kind your grocer doesn’t sell" sounds as if it ought to be a well-known advertising slogan, but I can’t track down any example of anyone using it.

Spider-Man’s web is, of course, a secret formula known only to himself. He has spent a lot of photo money developing it in his bedroom.  Obviously, they are completely unique. So it's funny, but not very funny, to claim that you couldn't by similar webs in your local supermarket.

But the joke will run and run. Spider-Man will increasingly use it as a catchphrase. It will be referenced in the lyrics of the Spider-Man TV theme song; and decades later it will be the title of a spin-off comic. And it still won't be very funny.

   

Listen Bud

A Close Reading of the First Great Graphic Novel in American Literature

by

Andrew Rilstone

Andrew Rilstone is a writer and critic from Bristol, England. This essay forms part of his critical study of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original Spider-Man comic book. 

If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider supporting Andrew on Patreon. 

if you do not want to commit to paying on a monthly basis, please consider leaving a tip via Ko-Fi.

Pledge £1 for each essay. 

Leave a one-off tip

Amazing Spider-Man was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and is copyright Marvel Comics. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copywriter holder.

 Please do not feed the troll.