ANDY FISH

ANDY FISH is a comic book artist

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

JJJ Discovers Spidey's Secret ID! Huh?


Ah the comic book!
Or more specifically the era of Comic Books from which I come.
There's a lot of silliness there.

J Jonah Jameson, fearless publisher of the Daily Bugle and all around hater of all things Spider-Man is confronting poor ol' Peter Parker apparently in his Aunt May's dining room and telling him that he knows CONCLUSIVELY that he is indeed Spider-Man-- and he has the Photo's to prove it!

I remember this cover when I was a kid-- and even as a seven year old I looked at this and went "He does?"

Because the cover shows Spider-Man carrying a body in a sack, and then for some reason Webhead decided to pose with the corpse in the bag for one last bye bye shot and said corpse appears to be Peter Parker himself.

So wouldn't this be conclusive proof that Peter Parker is NOT Spider-Man?  Because he's in the picture with Spidey?

JJJ could say "I know you killed Peter Parker and have taken his place Spider-Man!!"   Even though the pictures don't exactly prove that either.

I believe all one could surmise from this photo evidence and the fact that Peter appears to be alive and well is "I know Spider-Man occasionally carries you around in a sack, Peter, while you're napping, and I have the pictures to prove it!"  Although I think that would be more strange than dramatic.

I have a suspicion that originally the artist (John Romita Sr) was drawing this cover with the intention of JJJ telling Pete he knows he killed the real Peter Parker but for some reason that defender of American Youth the Comics Code Authority put the nix on it after it was drawn so the lettering was adjusted.

They probably figured the kids wouldn't even notice that it made no sense.
Only we did.