The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2

The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2, by Stan Lee and Frank Springer

October, 1977  Signet Books

The second (and final) volume of The Virtue Of Vera Valiant is better than the first volume. This slim, 121 page paperback picks up directly after the preceding volume, which collected the strips from October 11, 1976 through January 15, 1977; The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2 collects another three months: January 16, 1977 through April 17, 1977. 

Curiously, the last page states that a third volume would be released soon, but it was not to be – no doubt because The Virtue Of Vera Valiant had already been canceled by the time this paperback was published, the last strip having been published on August 28, 1977. My assumption is The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2 went to press before the cancellation happened. 

But even then, another insallment could have been published; the April 18, 1977 through August 28, 1977 strips could have comprised a third and final paperback, thus completing the series for those few readers who were interested. But I guess that is the key point; it seems clear that The Virtue Of Vera Valiant was not a succes, neither in newspapers nor in paperback. And, as I mentioned in my review of the first volume, it has yet to garner any kind of interest, or even any cult fame – to this day the full strip has not been collected. 

The unfortunate thing is that The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2 is much better than the first volume, and indicates that Stan Lee had figured out how to write the series. Whereas the first volume came off as tepid, given that Lee was spoofing soap opera melodrama and pathos without bothering to offer compelling storylines, in the strips collected here he has realized he needs to deliver a plot that pulls readers in, while still coming off as overly melodramatic. 

Again, though, Stan Lee has a tendency to jettison subplots without warning. The Virtue Of Vera Valiant ended with Vera Valiant being approached by elderly but dashing network CEO Martin C. Martin to be the star of a soap opera that would be real – in other words, reality TV before reality TV. The stories at the beginning of The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2 sort of follow on from this…but the “reality TV” thing is dropped posthaste, Lee focusing more on Martin C. Martin’s abrupt love for Vera. 

The reality TV stuff is ignored, save for a staff writer who sporadically appears, “taking notes” on the goings-on of the Valiant family (as a refresher, in addition to Vera there’s air-headed Aunt Gladys and portly loser Herbert). But even here the focus is more on romance; Aunt Gladys develops feelings for the writer, leading to the crazy-for-a-newspaper-in-1977 revelation that the writer is gay. I was a little surprised this made it into a mainstream newspaper; as it is, “gay” is never specifically stated, but twice we are informed the writer “doesn’t go for women.” 

But really the main focus of the first half of The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2 is Martin C. Martin pushing himself on Vera, who meanwhile pines for her boyfriend, Winthrop, who by the way has abruptly “disappeared.” It’s all very soapy and melodramatic, but done much better than such stuff was in the first book. Also, it gives artist Frank Springer a chance to do more than the threadbare, humdrum surroundings of the previous book; there’s a part where Vera and Martin C. Martin’s lothario son go to a disco, and there meet a femme fatale with the awesome name Ramona Rapture. 

This leads into a bizarre twist where a goon, who happens to be Ramona’s boyfriend, kidnaps Vera – but it turns out the goon works for Martin C. Martin, who moonlights as a crime kingpin! The whole “reality tv” angle is gone and forgotten and the second half of the book is all about crime boss Martin trying to blackmail Vera into being his woman. 

Herbert, the loser brother, has been talking about a new business deal he’s working on, and it turns out he’s been working with Martin C. Martin. But the crime boss opens an adult bookstore in Herbert’s name, and will only take Herbert’s name off of it if Vera agrees to be his woman – the adult bookstore, by the way, also being a bit more risque than what I would’ve expected from a 1977 newspaper strip, but the only thing we see of it is the marque out front with “Herbert’s Adult Books” in big letters. 

Stan Lee also opens up the storyline with the return of Winthrop, and also the brief “awakening” of his wife Melba, who has been in a coma for the past 14 years. Melba, whose face is never seen, starts talking in her sleep, providing oracles and whatnot, and her latest revelation is that Vera Valiant will soon die. When Vera claims that Melba never met her, thus throwing into question how accurate Melba’s predictions could be, Winthrop responds that Melba “didn’t know Jimmy Carter, either, but she predicted his election!” 

This brings a subtle but interesting supernatural bent to The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2, as Vera is freaked out in the final strips collected here that Melba’s prophecy will be fulfilled. Again it’s played for laughs, and Stan Lee has a hard time being both serious and funny – for example, Martin C. Martin’s goons take Herbert into a back room to torture him for not paying on his loan, but in the next strip we see that all they’re doing is forcing him to watch three soap operas on three televisions. 

Still, though, I enjoyed The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2 more than I thought I would, given that I didn’t enjoy the first one very much. Stan Lee has better found his footing and Frank Springer’s art is great as it was the first time, but it did seem as if some of the panels here were a little blurry. Not sure if it’s just my particular copy or if the reproduction process wasn’t done as well as it was for the first volume. 

Until the series is fully collected – that is, if it ever is – we’ll just have to wonder what else happened in the ensuing (and final) four months of The Virtue Of Vera Valiant. As mentioned the last page of The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2 mentions what will happen in the never-published third volume, noting a stranger who comes into the life of Aunt Gladys.  This no doubt refers to her runaway husband – the one who ran off with “a defrocked television repair person.” Recently I came across an eBay listing for a few Virtue Of Vera Valiant strips, and the seller happened to have the final strip listed. Here it is: 

This is the August 28, 1977 strip, aka the final strip of the series, so not only did Aunt Gladys get a Happily Ever After, but it looks like Vera and Winthrop did as well – Melba herself being on the phone was a perfect way to end the series, as she’s remained off-page the entire series…sort of like Niles’s wife on Frasier, now that I think of it. 

It’s debatable if Lee and Springer knew that the series was cancelled at the time. I’m betting they did, as the “cliffhanger” climax is in keeping with the series, and also brings the storyline full circle, as Melba, Winthrop’s wife with “sleeping sickness,” was one of the first subplots. Also the final “Next” caption, which is in keeping with the overdone, “melodramatic” tone of all the preceding such captions, plays in on the joke: “Did he say Melba?” 

Despite knowing that it no doubt played out on a goofy angle, I still find myself interested in the mention of the “psychic spell” that Vera falls under on the last page of The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2. I wonder what that refers to. And also it sounds like poor Herbert is sent to jail, but I bet all of that was lame; as I mentioned in my review of the first book, Herbert seems to have come out of another strip entirely. Thankfully he’s hardly in the series. 

Anyway, I’m glad I picked up these two books back in 2009, and I’m still surprised that the entire run of The Virtue Of Vera Valiant has yet to be collected. If it ever is someday, I will be sure to read it. And also, it’s only now occurred to me that the series title is strangely similar to one of the more famous newspaper strips in history: Prince Valiant. I wonder if Stan Lee did this on purpose?

Here are more random photos of the inside of the book, but same as last time: the binding is so tight I could barely get a good photo of the interior!

The Virtue Of Vera Valiant

The Virtue Of Vera Valiant, by Stan Lee and Frank Springer

June, 1977  Signet Books

Last weekened I was in the room we use for storage and going through a bunch of boxes of junk. I came across a big printer box that had books in it, all of them still in the padded envelopes in which they’d been mailed to me (not sure why I never put them in a bookcase or whatever, but anyway). The majority of them were hardcover editions of the Greek/Roman poetry I was into many, many years ago (I guess my estrogen level must’ve been high at the time), but on the sides of the box were two smaller padded envelopes with mass market paperbacks in them. 

Of course, those were the packages I opened first – and they turned out to be this book, The Virtue Of Vera Valiant, and the sequel The Virtue Of Vera Valiant #2. According to the postage stamps, each book was mailed to me in June of 2009…pre-blog, baby! As I mentioned before, one of the reasons I started Glorious Trash was to force myself to actually read all the books I bought, so these two Vera Valiant paperbacks would’ve been read back then if I actually had a blog. 

I am not sure how I discovered these books, which were scarce and obscure then and apparently even more today; I am surprised to see that The Virtue Of Vera Valiant, a daily/weekly newspaper strip by Stan Lee and Frank Springer that ran from October 11, 1976 to August 28, 1977 has still not been collected, other than in these two old paperbacks.  And even then the full series was not collected, so even if you get these two paperbacks you aren't getting the entire strip run.  This perhaps shows how obscure the series really is, as even Lee’s other newspaper strip, The Amazing Spider-Man, has been collected. But then, it’s kind of unfair to compare Spider-Man to The Virtue Of Vera Valiant. 

I think I found out about these books shortly before I bought them from online sellers in June of 2009 thanks to the then-recent DVD release of soap opera satire Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. This was a soap that mocked soap convention, and since it was before my time (I was born in 1974, so would’ve been 2 years old when it was on TV) I’d never seen it. But I recall thinking the commercials for the DVD release were funny (to this day I still haven’t seen the show, though I still think it looks funny)…and somehow, somewhere, I learned that Stan “The Man” Lee had done a short-lived newspaper strip “inspired” by Mary Hartman. 

How inspired? Well, just check the back cover of this first Signet paperback collection, which even mocks the title of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, repeating “Vera Valiant” twice: 

So, Signet Books was aware that this strip was intended to be a soap opera spoof, same as Mary Hartman was. I wonder if actual newspaper readers knew this. I’m guessing not, hence the short life of The Virtue Of Vera Valiant. The book, by the way, is copyright The Los Angeles Times Syndicate, so I’m assuming they too were in on the joke. It’s also my understanding that some papers printed the series under the title “Vera Valiant, Vera Valiant,” to give further evidence of the strip’s inspiration. 

But the sad fact is that, judging from this 126-page paperback that collects the first three months of the series (October 11, 1976 to January 15, 1977), The Virtue Of Vera Valiant just isn’t very funny. This really surprised me; just the other month I mentioned how funny Stan Lee’s work was in the The Amazing Spider-Man strip. Here though his humor falls flat; the jokes do not seem very natural, given the artificial nature of the series itself (it’s intended to be a spoof of a stilted, melodramatic soap opera), and the jokes themselves are often of the groaner variety, or just lame in general. Also, there is a lot of repetition in setups and payoffs, but that seems to be standard in the disposable, ephemeral world of newspaper comic strips. 

We don’t get any setup or intro, and the strips are arranged on each page without the series banner. The Sunday strips, as they are longer than the dailies, take up a few pages – and more often than not they cover the same material as the dailies, only offering a little “new” material. And the Sundays are here printed in black and white, even though they were in color in the original newspaper printings. 

As I say, there is a lot of repetition, given that the audience might not be with the series every day; there could be weekend readers who only saw the Sunday strips, or weekday readers who didn’t see the daily strips, so Lee has to ensure the story is understandable for both parties. 

This also means there isn’t much in the way of continuity; subplots come up and are dispensed with wily-nily, with no explanation. This was another surprise, as the Spider-Man strips did have continuity, so my assumption is Lee was either finding his footing with this series (and perhaps dealing with editorial mandates), or he was spoofing the often surreal nature of soap operas themselves. But still, this makes for an unsatisfying read at times. 

The setup is simple: titular Vera Valiant is a young, dark-baired beauty in Hackensack, New Jersey – a lot of the easy jokes come from the fact that the story occurs in Hackensack, by the way. She lives with her Aunt Gladys (parelells to Peter Parker and Aunt May) and her brother Herbert; Aunt Gladys, in the little we see of her, is a doting but air-headed older lady, and Herbert is a heavyset buffoon. A lot of the repetitive “groaner” comedy comes from Herbert; there’s a lot of jokes about him flunking out of various correspondence courses, his latest subject being podiatry. 

There’s even more repetitive jokery around Vera’s boyfriend, Winthrop, a meek C.P.A. That Winthrop is a C.P.A. is constantly mentioned, usually in a facetious light – Winthrop going on about how being a C.P.A. is a noble profession and whatnot. It’s funny the first time, sort of, but by the tenth time it gets old. Also, Winthrop happens to be married, but for the past 14 years – since his wedding night, in fact – Winthrop’s wife Melba has been a victim of “sleeping sickness.” Thus she is asleep in a hospital and has been so throughout the marriage; Lee plays up the melodrama of Vera wanting to be with Winthrop, but feeling he should be true to his wife, even if she’s asleep, and etc…all of it done in a satirical way, of course. 

Thus each strip ends with a big “shock” moment, usually with Vera putting her hand to her mouth in terror, but it’s always something goofy or dumb that causes this…like late in the book a limo keeps circling the house and “strangers” barge in, and Vera is terrified..but it turns out the strangers are from a TV show and want to make Vera a real-life soap opera star. It’s stuff like this throughout, but then again this particular subplot is a curious prediction of reality TV. 

The bit with the “sleeping sick” wife takes up the first storyline, then we have a random storyline where Aunt Gladys falls for a guy who claims to be from Beta-III and who wants to sell condos on other planets; he has a spaceship that apparently is a hunk of metal sitting on the Valiant lawn, but the black-and-white reproduction of the panels kind of prevents us from seeing what Frank Springer intended it to look like. There’s more lame, repetitive comedy with the joke that Gladys’s husband “ran off with a defrocked TV repair person.” 

As for the supposed alien, he too is presented as a meek looking CPA type; overall The Virtue Of Vera Valiant occurs in a rather bland world, with most panels taking place in the Valiant home. There is little of the escapism of a true soap, with rich characters in rich surroundings, and it’s altogether more of a threadbare, humdrum sort of affair. 

Then there’s the problem of Vera Valiant herself. She’s such a cipher she is hard to relate to, but then I’m not sure it was even Stan Lee’s intention that we would relate to her. She’s there to act as a spoof of the perennially-shocked and worried female protagonist common in soap operas, so her dialog is generally reduced to voicing concerns or gasping in surprise. Her brother Herbert meanwhile seems to have wandered in from an out-and-out comedy, and doesn’t fit with the vibe Lee is trying to create for the series. 

It’s interesting how Stan Lee seems to lose interest in his subplots so quickly, but again this could be his reacting to editorial demands. The subplot with the Beta III salesman is lame, and Lee himself seems to get sick of it; after spending so many strips on the storyline, he abandons it with Vera being sent to an insane asylum (a cop shows up and doesn’t believe her when she says that Aunt Gladys’s boyfriend is an alien), and the Beta III guy is never mentioned nor seen again. 

The next storyline is no less annoying, and just as long; Vera in an insane asylum, where the hunky psychiatrist seems to have a thing for her (he’s also treating Winthrop’s sleeping wife, by the way) and thus won’t let Vera check out. But Lee gradually loses interest in this plotline, too, with the abrupt reveal that Vera works in a library and is visited by a coworker, an outspoken feminist who rails that there are more men in the insane asylum than women. 

This takes us into the homestretch, where a dashing, older man who runs the network’s biggest soap operas (Martin C. Martin) shows up at Vera’s home, having seen her on TV (another gag has Vera being put on a late-night TV news program while in the insane asylum), and coming up with the idea of making a real-world soap about her life. 

That’s it for The Virtue Of Vera Valiant, but more of the storyline was soon published in the second paperback, which I’ll be reviewing soon. A curious note, which I’ll belabor in the next review, is that the second volume states that a third volume would be forthcoming, but one never was – so The Virtue Of Vera Valiant not only failed to secure a long newspaper run, but also failed to garner paperback readers. 

Here are some random photos of the book, but the photos suck because the binding of my copy is so tight I could barely hold the book open with one hand while snapping pictures of the pages with the other. At any rate, Frank Springer’s artwork is great throughout, fully capturing the spoofy pathos of the series and giving each character their own look. However, unlike the Spider-Man strip, there is little in the way of risque material; Vera wears a full dress throughout the series and there’s nothing in the way of sex appeal. It’s just not that kind of story, I guess, but still the creep in me wishes there was at least a little of it…but then maybe I was just spoiled by the T&A John Romita brought to the Spider-Man strip. 

The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Newspaper Comics Collection Volume 2 (1979-1981)

The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Newspaper Comics Collection Volume 2 (1979-1981), by Stan Lee and John Romita (with Larry Leiber)

No month stated, 2015  IDW Publishing

I was happy to discover this big hardcover collection of vintage Spider-Man newspaper strips. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, perhaps because it was so refreshing after the decade-plus of too cool (and, lately, too woke) Marvel Studios franchise, which has zero in the way of the geeky charm of the actual comics that inspired the movies. 

Perhaps that sentence didn’t make sense. If not, I don’t care. What I mean to say is, I was a comic geek when being a comic geek wasn’t cool. Indeed, I remember the days when you had to hide the fact that you read comic books from others, especially girls, lest you be ridiculed as a loser of the lowest order. It’s hard to believe, folks, but once upon a time you couldn’t buy about a zillion comic character t-shirts at Wal-Mart, or see people wearing comic character t-shirts at the office. There was a time when the average teenaged girl (the pretty ones, at least) had no idea what Spider-Man’s secret identity was, and for that matter they couldn’t have cared less. 

All those days are gone, and likely forgotten, and no doubt have been gone and forgotten for quite a while. I remember being in Miami in 2007 for a vacation or something, and we went to the mall, and at the bookstore I was floored to see a bunch of teenaged girls sitting there reading comic books. And they weren’t ugly girls either. (Not that I was checking them out, honestly I wasn’t: I’m just noting for clarity.) It was literally one of those times where I looked up at the sky and shook my head: “Thanks again, God.” 

This was before the Marvel Studio franchise even got rolling, and of course now we live in a world where these characters are more popular than ever…but, then, it’s the movie versions people now know. It’s debatable how well these fans of today know the actual original comic versions of the characters. It’s debatable that any of these modern fans know the geeky charm of Silver Age comic books, when the world of Marvel was a secret one that losers and geeks and nerds would escape to and dream about how they, too, could be just like Spider-Man or the Hulk or whoever. 

But then, there’s an entire generation that thinks Mary Jane Watson is a flat-chested, curly-haired, overly sarcastic girl of indeterminite race (and, perhaps, gender). They have no idea that Mary Jane Watson is supposed to fucking look like this: 

That’s another thing I liked so much about this book: it was also refreshing to see such unbridled and wonderful “toxic masculinity” in a product that was produced for the masses. It’s also hard to recall that there was a time when popular fiction and comics and movies were produced with a straight male audience in mind, and the male gaze was not subverted, but was catered to. Yes, it does seem like a million years ago, doesn’t it? 

Speaking of “a helluva long time ago,” I guess I mainly got into comics due to my childhood obsession with Spider-Man. I was such a Spider-Man fan that I even had a themed party, for my fifth birthday:

This party was likely on my actual fifth birthday – October 6, 1979 – as according to Google, October 6 was on a Saturday in 1979. But anyway, that’s obviously me standing in front of the Spider-Man cake in the first photo; I have no recollection of the names of any of the other kids at the party, save for the blonde-haired girl I smugly have my arm around in the second photo. (Don’t hate the player, hate the game!) Her name was Julie Bowen (not the actress!), and her mom was also a teacher, and in the years before we started school Julie and I were both watched by an old couple named Mr. and Mrs. Crohn (who, so far as I am aware, did not have Crohn’s Disease!). Julie moved away when we were in the Fourth Grade, I seem to recall…I also recall seeing Happy Gilmore in the theater in 1996, and when the name “Julie Bowen” came up in the credits I was like, “Could it be?” It wasn’t that Julie Bowen, of course, but the movie was great! In fact my brother (the older kid who is so unhappily holding my Spider-Man birthday cake in the above photo) liked that movie so much he’d rent the video every week or something at Blockbuster. Not sure why he didn’t just buy a copy. 

Well anyhoo, I go into this belabored backstory so as to set the scenery that I was a rabid Spider-Man fan as a kid…and, sometime around the late ‘70s, maybe in this same year of 1979, we took a family vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is where practically the entire East Coast vacationed in the ‘70s. When we were down there, my dad got the local newspaper…and I was shaken to my core to discover that there was a Spider-Man comic strip! 

There was no such strip in the newspaper back home. And yet, this one and only encounter with the newspaper version of Spider-Man made enough of an impression on me that I still recalled it, all these decades later…and, when I saw that some of these strips had been collected in hardcover, I dutifully ordered a copy from Interlibrary Loan. (Hey, it’s not like I’m going to shell out a couple hundred bucks for a copy! I mean, that’s hooker money!) 

Collecting three years of strips, the book is certainly hefty, running to 315 pages. Stan “The Man” Lee handles all the writing, and does his usual fine job, and John Romita (back before he was “John Romita Sr.”) handles the artwork, which is great throughout. Toward the very end of the book, Romita steps out and Larry Leiber (aka Stan Lee’s younger brother) takes over, and truth be told his art is so similar to Romita’s that you might not even notice the change. That said, there’s certainly more sex appeal in Romita’s work – if he isn’t sexing up MJ or Carole (another of Peter Parker’s conquests in the book), he dutifully inserts some random sexy chick in a panel: 

What’s cool about this newspaper strip is that it caters to the established Marvel mythos, but puts a bit more of a “mainstream” spin on it. As with the films of the 2000s, Spider-Man is the only superhero (at least in New York), he’s wanted by the cops, and the cast of villainous characters is much whittled down from the comic books. Peter Parker, in college in these strips, is no longer the nerd of the Lee-Ditko originals, and in fact does pretty well for himself with the ladies…perhaps the biggest change to accommodate the broader (and no doubt male-slanting) newspaper readership. 

In fact, I was somewhat surprised that Lee and Romita often let us know, in no unsubtle terms, that Peter Parker has gotten laid: 

I mean, “help me bone up?” Stan the Man! Sure, that’s what students said when they were trying to study (or at least they said it in the 1950s), but still…you don’t have to be a total sleazebag to assume there’s some serious hanky-panky occurring between those panels. 

Granted, Peter Parker’s still the sad sack of the comics, where nothing works out perfectly for him, or he’s caught in some Three’s Company-esque miscommunication, or whatever. But he’s a lot more sure of himself with the women…and, in the hands of John Romita, these women are smoking.  In fact, I kind of wanted to reach into the comics and punch Peter Parker, because he’s constantly running away from these women, even when they’re in the process of giving themselves to him. Time and again in these collected strips, Carole or MJ will make an advancement on Peter, and he’ll either have to run off because he’s seen some crook in action, or he’s riddled with some soul-searching over if he wants to keep being Spider-Man or some other shit. As for the former, it’s kind of laughable – but again refreshing – how Peter is so quick to jump into the fray when he sees bankrobbers, or muggers, or whatever; yes, altogether refreshing to see someone so selflessly ensuring law and order in our postmodern era of “fiery but mostly peaceful protests.” 

But at the same time, even here I was constantly pulled out of the action…thinking of stuff I never would’ve thought of as a five year-old. Like, Peter Parker apparently wears his Spidey suit under his clothes…and he’s always in pants and a long-sleeved shirt and a coat…even in the stories that are set in the summer! I mean, with a Spidey suit beneath all that? The dude must be broiling. That enough would make me quit the whole super-hero game, which Peter attempts to do in a few stories collected here, with predictable results. 

“Predictable” sums up many of the plots here…but you know what? That’s just fine. Stan Lee tells a story the way only Stan Lee can, that corny but earnest and altogether endearing style that is Stan Lee’s alone, and never once did I find any of it hackneyed. Okay, maybe the final story collected here tried my patience, where Peter Parker decides that Spider-Man himself will become a criminal, to finally get a taste of success…and predictably fails in the process. It’s a fine setup, but lamely delivered; Spidey steals a jewel, then tries to sell it to a diamond dealer (who turns out to be a gangster), and then Spidey has to figure out how to get the diamond back into the museum. 

Other than that latter gaffe, the other stories here are all fun, and kept my attention more than I thought they would. To be honest, I thought I’d just peruse the book and return it to the library, but I read the whole thing! There is not much variety to the format of the strips, which I think works for it and against it at the same time. For it, because it essentially becomes the comics version of what fat people call “comfort food:” the Monday-Saturday strips run three panels each, and are black and white, and the Sunday strips are full color, and generally run six panels. Only occasionally does this change. 

There’s also a lot of stalling. Forever in the 315 pages of this book we’ll have Peter Parker decide to do something…then a few pages later he’s recapping what he plans to do…a few pages after that he’s gonna do it, by God…and then a few pages after that he might get around to doing it. This does admittedly become wearisome after a while, but then I read the book over the course of a few days. I bet if you took your time with it, and read maybe an arc at a time, it might not be as egregious. 

As for the story arcs, there are a bunch of them: Spidey framed by a lookalike Spider-Man (courtesy the Kingpin); the Loomis Love Cult (a Jim Jones commentary piece that seems to go on forever, but is probably the darkest story in the collection); the Prowler (a guy who wants to make a name for himself as a clawed supervillain but has a heart of gold): Kraven the Hunter (who inexplicably tries to fool people that Spider-Man is an alien so that he can fight Spidey on TV and beat him); the return of the Loomis cult (even more annoying without their boss); the return of the Kingpin (not as fun as the first time); and even a guy in a hat who wields a whip and tries to lean on Aunt May (and also hits on MJ). 

Between all this we have soap opera stories where Peter Parker questions his sanity, or if he wants to still be Spider-Man, or if he should tell Carol Jennings that he’s Spider-Man because he loves her and wants to marry her(!), or if he should commit to MJ, or if he should go bad and reap the profits as a villain himself. Or even if he should go on a That’s Incredible! type show to make a thousand bucks. 

I had forgotten how funny Stan Lee is. Throughout the book his tongue is firmly in cheek, but there’s none of the postmodern, too-hip sarcasm of today; you can tell Stan believes in his creation (as well he should), and he treats everything with respect. Peter Parker is so earnest that you have to respect him, even though he generally brings most of his problems on himself…sort of like fellow newspaper strip protagonist Charlie Brown, now that I think of it. 

And speaking of topical references, the book is filled with it: the late ‘70s aren’t as exploited as I’d like, but all the guys wear open-collar shirts, have big hair, and the girls all wear revealing, cleavage-baring tops, and they go to a roller disco at times (though this isn’t brought much to life, either). John Romita takes a lot of relish in putting famous faces in the backgrounds of various panels, like this particular Sunday story, which among many others even features a cameo by my man Johnny Carson: 

I like it that the Spider-Man newspaper strip lives in its own continuity; Stan Lee and John Romita did a great job bringing the geeky comics to a more widespread audience, playing up the melodrama a little more than in the comics, and toning down on the costumed super-battles. Otherwise everyone’s mostly the same: Spidey himself is a motor-mouth, either expositing what he’s doing as he does it or tossing one-liners at villains as he fights them – and again, Stan Lee’s humor shines here. MJ is a flirty bombshell, J. Jonah Jameson is a Spidey-obsessed villain (he clearly has Spidey Derangement Syndrome), and all the villains have unique personalities. Only Carole Jennings, the other bombshell in Peter’s life, is lame…personality-wise, at least. Romita is sure to draw her in such a jawdropping manner that you figure poor Peter Parker must be in a permanent lust-filled daze when he’s around her:

IDW has reprinted the Spider-Man newspaper comics through the ‘80s, and I think I might check them out sometime – particularly the first volume, as I’m hoping it would be even more ‘70s-tastic.