Don't get me wrong; the Spider-Man Magazine is a slick, handsomely produced title, printed in full-colour on glossy paper throughout, at the very reasonable price (for these days, at least) of $5.95. It's certainly a far cry from the rather drab, black & white newsprint comics of my own childhood (we're talking mid-1970s to early-1980s here, folks). This debut issue comes with 108 - count 'em, that's 108! - free Spider-Man stickers, a giant colour poster of Spidey slugging it out with the Green Goblin (Boo! Hiss!), a cut-out door-hanger, fact-sheets about other Marvel Comics' characters and puzzles galore. I mean, they've crammed a lot of stuff into just 32 pages, so you certainly feel like you're getting value for money.
That is unless, of course, you bought this magazine for the comics section. That's right - you remember comic-books, don't you? That was the paper-based medium where ol' Web-Head made his first-ever appearance, back in Amazing Fantasy #15 (June 1962). Well, it seems that actual comic-book content comes low on the editorial totem pole as far as Spider-Man Magazine is concerned, because there are just 11 pages - count 'em, that's 11! - pages of comic-book narrative to be found here.
Puzzled by this, I dragged out a copy of the first comic-book I ever owned - The Amazing Spider-Man #12, published in Australia by Newton Comics back in 1975, and which came my way via a Spider-Man showbag my dad bought for me the following year. And the contents of these two magazines, published nearly 40 years apart, makes for a telling comparison. My old Newton Comics edition has a colour cover, with a pull-out colour poster (of The Ghost Rider, as it happens), but the remaining interior pages are printed in black and white. It contains a 21-page Spider-Man story ("Turning Point: Featuring the Return of Doctor Octopus", by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko) and a 7-page back-up story featuring The Mighty Thor ("Defying the Magic of Mad Merlin", by Stan Lee/R.Berns and Joe Sinnott). And there's a two-page letters column (Marvel Mailbag) edited by 'Gentle' John Corneille.
And what, by contrast, does the Spider-Man Magazine offer the young, prospective comic-book reader of today? An 11-page "story", titled 'The Tenant', which concerns Peter Parker's concerns about his dotty-but-charitable Aunt May taking in Doc Ock as a lodger in their home, convinced that Otto Octavious has foresaken his criminal past and is determined to become a "model citizen". We, along with Peter Parker, know better, and, pretty soon, Peter (suited up as Spider-Man) uncovers Doc Ock's criminal scheme - to dig a tunnel from Aunt May's cellar that will allow him to burrow underneath Stark Laboratories and steal their new "particle cannon"!
What struck me about this wafer-thin plot, penned by Fred Van Lente, is just how little actual story - or, rather, script - there is to be found here. I counted anywhere between 110-120 words of narrative text (captions) and dialogue per page. By contrast, the lead story appearing in my 1975 Spider-Man comic (originally published in 1964) contains, on average, over 240 words of narrative text and dialogue per page - yet still has as many panels per page (6) as 'The Tenant' story from 2012!
I know some may object to this seemingly arbitrary comparison, by arguing that 'The Tenant' (like the rest of Spider-Man Magazine) is pitched at a much younger readership, and that the plot and dialogue should remain within their levels of written English comprehension. Yeah, well guess what? Back in 1964, The Amazing Spider-Man was aimed at an audience presumably not much older than the kids reading Spider-Man Magazine today - and frankly, they not only got more story for their US$0.12c (or AUD$0.35c, in my case, back in 1976), but they got a far better story, full of drama, action and tragedy, which captured Spider-Man's intrinsic appeal as a flawed hero, struggling with his newfound super-powers and the responsibilities that came with them.
The great irony is that, back in the 1940s and 1950s, one of the chief criticisms levelled against comic-books was that they "ruined" children's appetite for reading "good" books, because children were essentially "reading" pictures, rather than words, which therefore stunted their comprehension of written English, and failed to develop their vocabulary - or so the argument went. Yet my own recollection of reading these 1960s-era Marvel Comics stories (reprinted in Australia throughout the 1970s) was that they actually fuelled my love of reading, thanks in part to their highly literate scripts, multi-levelled plots and invocation of other literary forms (The Mighty Thor comic-book became my conduit to the world of Norse mythology). And they were exciting, in ways that many of the "approved" children's books we were made to read at school simply weren't.
But glancing through 'The Tenant' in Spider-Man Magazine, I just can't imagine kids of today would get that same electric charge from reading a truly compelling comic-book story. I can't help but feel that they, and the parents who shelled out for this magazine, have been short-changed if they wanted something to read - instead of just having to be content with just looking at pretty pictures.
I know that my comments are tainted with cross-generational grouchiness - "comics were better in my day, blah, blah" - and I'll readily wear such criticisms. Indeed, I've not read American superhero comics on a regular basis since the mid-1980s, largely because I became disenchanted with the growing trend for underwritten and overdrawn comic-book narratives that have dominated the genre for much of the last two decades (DC's Gotham Central and New Frontier being notable exceptions, insofar that I actually looked forward to buying them each month). And I've never been a fan of the warmed-over, manga-infused artwork that chokes so many current-day superhero comics like a noxious weed, such as Cory Hamscher's artwork on 'The Tenant'. But I guess what I really find dismaying about Spider-Man Magazine is that it's a confirmation of the true value of comic-books today - a glorified brochure for the Spider-Man licensing franchise, rather than a medium to tell exciting stories to a new generation of readers. (Note: The image accompanying this post is not of the recent ACP issue, but the main illustration and layout is very similar to the Australian edition of this magazine)
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