Everything before the "but" is bollocks...

Yes, the Slave Trade was awful, an I am as much in agreement with that as any of the minority of people living in Bristol, who want the name of Colston Hall changed. However...

P. Collins

Who are these name changers? Are they Bristolians, born and bed here of Bristol families, educated in Bristol Schools, worked hard to buy their own houses, and pay council tax? How dare they come here from other cities and countries and tell us what to do?

also P. Collins

Amazing Spider-Man #23

The Goblin and the Gangsters

Villains: 

The Green Goblin, “Lucky” Lobo

Supporting Cast: 

Aunt May, Betty Brant, J. Jonah Jameson, Frederick Foswell + Mr Merriweather, the Business Executive Club and their butler, and a chorus of gangsters and policemen.

Observations

Liz and Flash do not appear.

Parker is wearing blue trousers (jeans?), a black open top shirt and white jacket throughout this episode rather than his normal blue suit and yellow waistcoat — possibly because the story takes place on a Saturday?

Failure to Communicate: On page 7, Peter Parker returns to Aunt May's house, retrieves his Spider-Man costume, changes clothes and goes into action. But on page 19, he retrieves those same clothes from an alley near the warehouse where the fight with the Green Goblin took place.

For the third consecutive issue, J. Jonah Jameson is represented as a comedy hypocrite who wants to be thought of as a public spirited citizen, but not particularly as a detractor of Spider-Man. Possibly Lee thought the character had become too one-note, or wanted to undo the damage done to him in the Scorpion story?

Spins a web, and size: Uses liquid webbing to block up gangster's guns; puts liquid webbing on gangster's back and throws him against the wall; puts pool of liquid webbing on floor to trap gangsters; puts web net on ceiling so gangsters are trapped as they come into room. No wonder he's run out of the stuff by the end of the episode!

The Green Goblins Bag of Tricks:  The Goblin’s role as “gadgeteer” is played down this issue: he only uses his pumpkin bombs and his finger blaster. (He throws 4 bombs in the fight with Spider-Man, and then claims to have run out.)

Peter Parker’s financial position: He forgets to take photos of the arrest of the gang — maybe because he still has $8,000 in the cookie jar?

p6 “Before his arrest, Foswell was the kingpin of the rackets” The words “king of crime” and “kingpin of crime” are used interchangeably. A kingpin originally meant part of a wheel pivot in a car; but it was in use to mean a Mafia boss by the 1950s. The big bald guy known as The Kingpin won’t appear until issue #50.

p8 “It’s like a scene from The Untouchables” The Untouchables, a TV series about Eliot Ness and Al Capone, finished its run about the same time Amazing Spider-Man started (May 1963). Stan just can't resist lamp-shading this kind of thing.

p9 “We’ll have to close down all our gambling joints.” Up to now organized crime has mostly been interested in stealing stuff.

p14 “That, you green garbed goon, remains to be seen!”  In America, "goon" primarily means “thug” or “henchmen” (derived from the Popeye cartoons). In Britain it retains its older sense of “idiot” or “fool” because of the popularity of the Goon Show on the radio. (Note also that Spider-Man has caught the alliteration bug off Stan Lee.)

A gangster decides that he is going to fill the still-vacant role of “king of crime” in New York. He tries to muscle in on Lucky Lobo, one of the current bosses (who looks disconcertingly and irrelevantly like Jack Kirby). One of Lobo’s henchmen gives him information about his boss’s criminal businesses, and the gangster leaks them to a newspaper. He intends that the police will arrest Lucky Lobo for tax evasion (as sometimes happens to famous gangsters) leaving the gang ripe for a takeover. But the plan works too well: the police don’t just arrest Lobo himself, but also his entire mob, leaving our friend with nothing to take over. The end.

The gangster who gets hoisted on his own petard is the Green Goblin, and the newspaper which breaks the story is the Daily Bugle. It isn’t quite the “cops and robbers” tale Stan Lee promises on page 1 — no-one does any robbing at all — but it’s quite a decent little gangster yarn; the kind of thing which could well have occupied a few pages of Crime Does Not Pay! or Justice Traps The Guilty! The only thing missing, is, er, anything very much for Spider-Man to do. He has a fight with Lobo's mob and ties them up with webbing before the police arrive; he has a big and inconclusive fight with the Green Goblin; but the story would have been very much the same if our hero hadn’t been in it. Was this an intentionally avant garde bit of plot construction — life carries on and Spider-Man isn’t always at the center of it — or yet another example of Lee and Ditko not being able to work out what the hell to do with the post-triptych Spider-Man?

Not only is Spider-Man incidental to the breaking up of Lobo’s mob; but his fight with the Green Goblin ends in an impasse. This is rather well choreographed: the Goblin finds that his bag of tricks is empty and flies away. Spider-Man tries to go after him, but finds that he has run out of web (not surprising, given the amount he has been wasting sticking gangsters to floors and ceilings). He tries to jump after the glider anyway; misses; and has to do a dramatic maneuver to land safely. This is the kind of thing that Stan Lee means when he points to the  comic's realism: there aren’t a lot of other comics which would have left a big fight between hero and villain unresolved. Stan Lee will later backfill this as the Goblin's unique selling point: post-Ditko the Goblin is very much rebranded as “that foe whose battles with Spider-Man were always inconclusive."

The actual fight takes place in some kind of boiler room: quite where, we aren’t told. Spider-Man and the Goblin just crash through a skylight into a room full of pipes and girders. It will be remembered that Spider-Man fought Doctor Octopus and Mysterio in an artist’s studio and and on a movie set, respectively. When Ditko can see that a fight scene is a little pointless, he often drops the antagonists into an unlikely location.

Back in issue #10, the incumbent King of Crime — the Big Man — was revealed to be a Daily Bugle journalist named Frederick Foswell. Having served his time in prison — a whole year! — J.J.J. decides to give him his old job back. In issue #10 Foswell was very specifically a columnist and leader writer, but now he is equally specifically an investigative reporter and a crime specialist.

Issue #10 involved a fairly clever piece of misdirection: everyone, including Peter Parker, thinks that The Big Man is Jameson, but actually he's Foswell. This issue goes out of its way to imply that Foswell is the Green Goblin. On page 6, the Goblin meets a gangster who gives him Lucky’s tax details. The Goblin says that he wants to make the list public, “and knows just the way to do it…”. On the very next page, Foswell rushes into Jameson’s private club with the papers. The hint that Foswell and the Goblin are one and the same could hardly be more explicit; and no other explanation of where Foswell got the papers is proffered.

On page 5, Parker sees Foswell talking to some hoods, but can’t follow them because he doesn't have a costume with him. This could be another example of Stan Lee's realism: he might just have dropped in the idea that Spider-Man has to wash and dry his costume from time to time because as an amusingly naturalistic touch. But in plot terms, the only repercussion of the wet costume is that Parker can’t tail Foswell when he would like to. Quite a lot of narrative effort is expended to make Foswell appear mysterious.

In issue #27, we will find out what Foswell is really up to. But that is not remotely hinted at or foreshadowed here. You will search in vain for a cameo by Patch the Informer in this issue.

Amazing Spider-Man #23: note figure in purple suit. He will not be named as 
Norman Osborn until issue #37

On page 6, for the first time, we seen J.J.J attending the “Midtown Business Executives Club”, hereafter mainly referred to simply as “my club.” Six or seven figures appear in the scene, only one of whom — bald, elderly called Mr Merriweather — gets any dialogue. But standing in the background, very distinctly, is this guy:

Amazing Spider-Man #23, detail.

Ditko makes a lot of use of background characters and extras, whether it is the generic group of boys who hang around with Flash Thompson; Liz Allan’s girlfriends; or the ever-present chorus of Bugle-reading men-and-women in the street. But this isn’t some random face in the crowd: he will pointedly appear again in issue #25 (when Peter highlights him as “someone important”), and again in a club scene in #27. Indeed, one might suspect that the only point of introducing Jonah’s club is so we can be introduced to him.

If you are a spider-fan, you can, instantly identify him as Norman Osborn, although he will not be  given that name until #37. In issue #39 it will be revealed [SPOILER] that Normal Osborn was the Goblin all the time!

So what is going on here? Did Lee and Ditko know all along that the Green Goblin would eventually turn out to be J.J.J’s friend from the club, while laying a false trail that he's Foswell? Or do they at this point intend Foswell to be the Goblin, only to backtrack in a few issues time?

Fan lore states that it was the identity of the Goblin that Ditko and Lee fell out over. I don’t believe this myself. But I think this issue shows just bad their relationship was getting. Ditko foreshadows the Goblin’s unmasking, and sets up a situation where Spider-Man's worst enemy is Jameson’s comrade, and Lee doesn’t bother to write a speech bubble or caption to ramp up the suspense. I am inclined to believe Ditko’s account. He knew Osborn was the Goblin from the off; and is seeding a plot far in advance. But he didn’t bother to tell Stan. Or if he did tell Stan, Stan didn’t care.

How should we see this issue? Maybe Lee and Ditko wrote a deliberately inconsequential issue in order to remind us that the Green Goblin is still around, reintroduce Foswell, and underline Jameson as a public figure. Or maybe Ditko wanted to do a substantial gangster story and found that it got hijacked, as so often in the past, by a super-villain fight scene. We’re going to get a much chunkier tale about the Goblin, Foswell and the Mob in three issues time. (It will also feature an unwearable spider-costume, interestingly enough.) Should we see that as Ditko’s attempted to redo this episode the way he wanted to? Or is this a deliberately slight tale an intentional curtain raiser for the big one?

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 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. 

Eyes Down...

...removing any traces of the slave trade from Bristol might require half the city to be pulled down, and not just the plaques of signs with Colston's name on it....
Nigel Currie

Until recently, until a lot of publicity was given by the Bristol Post to a very small but vociferous minority of mainly non-Bristolians, the majority was not even aware of Colston's link to slavery...
C Stephens

All these do-gooders who want to change the name of the Colston Hall should be more concerned what is happening in Bristol an other cities regarding girls that are groomed for prostitution and are usually under 18 years of age.
Wendy Fryer

If the name of Colston Hall has to change, the suggestion to change it to the "Corstan Hall" [after Jean Corstan MP] is a good one...It has absolutely no connection with the slave trade, so should not offend those minority groups who are trying to change it, whilst happily living here in this great city. These people should shut up or move somewhere else
P Collins

What a great idea...to suggest naming one of the new trains after Edward Colston. What a great way to remember a truly great Bristolian who, ok, was linked with the slave trade, but...
Mr G Briggs

Amazing Spider-Man #22

Preeeeeeesenting…the Clown, and his Masters of Menace!

Villains: 

The former Circus of Crime

Supporting Cast: 

Liz Allan, Flash Thompson, Betty Brant, J. Jonah Jameson, Aunt May (one panel only) + Mrs Van Der Twilliger and a chorus of police, doctors, schoolkids and art-lovers. 

Observations:

This is the first time Spider-Man fails to appear on the cover of his own comic; it won’t happen again till issue #58. (Issues #63 and #72 have symbolic covers in which only the villain and the spider-signal feature; issue #79 has Peter Parker in peril) 

The splash page is purely symbolic (we never see the Masters of Menace in a circus ring, and Spider-Man certainly doesn’t see the Ringmaster walking out on them.) The cover is more or less an enlargement of the first panel of the first page. 

In Duel With Daredevil the Circus of Crime appeared to consist of Samson, a strong man; two trapeze artists (unnamed) and a human cannonball (also unnamed). There are also figures on stilts, a figure in an “Arabian nights” costume, a bald uni-cyclist, and at least two clowns. (When the Ringmaster first appeared in Hulk #3, he had a clown, a cave-man, a midget human cannonball, and a grotesque with a long neck working for him.) The Clown and Princess Python appear here for the first time: but in a classic piece of Stan Lee "backfilling" everyone takes it for granted that they were in the team which Spider-Man defeated a few issues back.

p2 “In a sleazy hotel room in a shabby hotel, some sneaky sinners are startled by the sight of a sparkling spider-signal.” Lee doesn’t generally go in for this level of alliteration. (The Batman TV show, which loved it, is still a year in the future.)

p2 “With my little gizmo secretly stuck to his fedora…” Obviously, the Ringmaster wears a top hat, not a fedora. It isn’t immediately clear why Parker gets this wrong. It’s an incredibly weak joke.

P4 “Some of these new biochemical discoveries of Dr Henry Pym are awfully interesting.” Dr Pym is, of course Gi/Ant Man. Why Peter Parker is reading his research in a high school science class is unclear. (There doesn't seem to be a teacher in the room, so maybe this is some kind of private study period?) 

p9 “Those crummy rat finks! I got them all together! Taught them all they know!” It is a good thing the Ringmaster literally recites his soliloquies out loud, so people hanging by the window can find out what is going on. 

“One things for sure! I’m not Tuesday Weld” Tuesday Weld was a child actor turned adult Broadway star. Interestingly enough, she had guest starred in two episodes of an entirely forgotten circus-themed TV drama/soap “The Greatest Show on Earth.” 

p9 “He’s probably…using my old hideout…the warehouse where we stores all our circus equipment….on west 22nd Street.” West 22nd Street is between Grenwich Village and Times Square, in the Chelsea theater district, a by-no-means unlikely place to be storing circus gear. 

p11 “Boy! Didn’t any of you ever hear of the Good Neighbor Policy” The Good Neighbor Policy refers primarily to Roosevelt’s foreign policy towards South America in the 1930s. Again, this joke makes much more sense if Stan Lee, rather than Peter Parker, is making it. 

p17 “Before they can take it on the lam…”  i.e before they can run away with the loot. 

Peter Parker’s financial situation: Peter sells pictures to the Bugle for the first time since issue #19. Jameson says the pictures of the Circus of Crime being arrested are “wizard” and “front page stuff” so Peter probably takes $2,000, leaving $4,000 in the cookie jar.

I think Spider-Man fans may want to shout at me this month; because having been quite rude about the generally well-regarded Scorpion story, I am going to give a cautious thumbs up to the frequently overlooked second appearance of the Circus of Crime. 

It's a heist story -- specifically, a thieves-fall-out tale. A number of plot lines lead our hero on a moderately merry dance. The Circus of Crime are out of jail (after 6 months); Spider-Man tracks them down to their hotel room and intimidates them with his Spider-signal. (Unusually for Ditko, the cover is simply an embiggerment of the first frame of the story.) During the confrontation, he cleverly slips a spider-tracer into the band of the Ringmaster’s hypnotic hat. But after he has gone, the circus troupe turn against the Ringmaster, who has after all landed them in prison twice before, and kick him out of the band. The team, now led by the Clown, decide to rob an art gallery as their first solo gig. The Clown distracts everyone with his juggling unicycle act, while the rest of the gang make off with the paintings. But wouldn't you know it! The art exhibition they chose to rob is the one being sponsored by J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle -- they end up putting J.J.J. in hospital. 

The Clown doesn't do a great deal in the story -- Princess Python is the central baddie -- but he is a splendidly sinister Ditko creation, all painted on sad face and frown, who idly juggles and unicycles while planning daring crimes. 

Of course, when Spider-Man tries to track them down, his spider-tracer leads him to the hide-out of the Ringmaster, who is no longer part of the band. But Spider-Man hypnotizes the Ringmaster with his own hat and finds out where the gang is hiding out. Princess Python offers to turn the other members of the gang over to the police, and share the loot with Spider-Man. The Clown, realizing he’s going to be double-crossed, takes the paintings himself and makes off with them; only to intercepted by the Ringmaster, who decides he's going to have the artwork -- but he in turn has been trailed by the police. 

The story is structured as a sequence of two to three pages scenes, only a minority of which involve fighting: the robbery (page 5-7); Spidey tracks down the Ringmaster (page 7-9); Spidey fights the Clown, Cannonball and the acrobats (pages 11 - 13 and 15); Princess Python tries to seduce Spidey (page 16 - 17) ; Spidey's big fight with the python (page 18).  This makes for a very pacy read. By Stan Lee’s criteria, there is little “action” in the comic — no single extended fight. But more happens on each page, both in terms of plot movement and in terms of physical action than in many a 12 page battle sequence.

No-one would accuse Silver Age Marvel of having been a hotbed of feminism; but Amazing Spider-Man isn't usually the worst culprit. (Early Fantastic Four can be genuinely uncomfortable to read because of its casual sexism.) But the relationship between Spider-Man and Princess Python is downright weird. When the Princess initially tries to seduce him, Spidey remains as acerbic as ever: 

"Why don’t you and I team up? We could make beautiful music together!"

"Sorry ma’am. I happen to be tone deaf."

But when she confronts him physically we get this kind of thing: 

Spidey: "What can I do now? I can’t fight a female. I can’t use force against her…"
Princess: "My only chance is to take advantage of being female…"
Spidey: "I don’t want to have to get rough with a female…"

It's almost like Stan Lee himself feels uncomfortable with the idea of a lady baddie and keeps drawing attention to it. The very word "female" sounds clumsy, coming from someone who normally calls women "gals" or "chicks". (Note that at the beginning of the story, Betty admitted that she was a "foolish, jealous, female"). But the taboo against male on female fight scenes seems to have been taken out of all proportion. As far as it goes, it is sensible to bring up schoolboys  — who, by hypothesis, fight each other all the time to establish status — to think that it is not manly to start a fight with a woman, or with a smaller man, or with anyone wearing glasses. And you wouldn’t stage man vs woman wrestling bouts or prize fights for the same reason you don't have mixed tennis tournaments —  there is too much disparity in strength and stamina for the fight to be fair or interesting. But it seems that this playground honour code has been turned into an unbreakable moral principal. Is it really the case than a male can never hit a female? What does a male police officer do if a female criminal is resisting arrest? Don't male soldiers ever have to confront female warriors on the other side? What does a gentleman do if a lady hits him first? 

It will be a long time before Spider-Man has to confront this dilemma again: he doesn't have another female opponent until Medusa (#62) and the Black Widow (#86). 

There is a strong sense that this issue is trying to create a new, post-triptych format in which characters have comic foibles rather than personalities. When J.J.J threatens to fire Peter Parker (a freelancer) no-one even bother to pretend they think he means it. When he learns that Betty has kept a vigil by his hospital bed he exclaims “Too lazy to go to work, eh!” and Betty smiles ”He’s as nasty as ever — so I know he’s all right now!” The issue before last Jameson was paying masked supervillains to murder Spider-Man: now he is a Perry White style comic foil whose bark is worse than his bite. Similarly, Peter and Betty are repeatedly shown together during the art heist, giving the impression that they are now a couple in the way that Lois and Clark are. The final page, with Peter saying “Oh no! The painting have been recovered! We’ll have to look at them again!” and the three of them marching off together feels very much like the end of situation comedy. 

Which is far from being a criticism. If the Amazing Spider-Man is to continue as a monthly comic, it can't be in a state of permanent crisis: there needs to be a comfortable status quo which can be disrupted and reestablished each month.

This is a perfectly adequate story, with tons of plot movement, some dead ends, and some minor twists. Lee and Ditko could carry on giving us this kind of thing almost indefinitely. But three issues on from The End of Spider-Man, and there is still no real sense of direction for the new, self-confident Peter Parker.

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.