Fat Spidey can’t save Aunt May? Published by DC? What craziness brought this on? Dark Mark dives deep into the shallow end to give you the story behind this one, folks!
You may have seen the comic with a fat Spider-Man staring at a broken web, but were thrown off by the familiar checkerboard header and the DC logo.
This brilliant piece of art comes from the mind of Kerry Callen. He’s an artist and loves to reimagine comic book characters. In the past, he used to do work for Mad Magazine and did this little origin of Spidery-Man.
But we didn’t come here to see that. We came here to talk about the covers and fat Spidey. So Callen is going with the 1960s DC cover styles. The covers on many of this decade’s books are absolutely crazy. Marvel was rising in the sales and DC was flagging and the editorial staff couldn’t believe it was because Marvel was actually better. They figured that kids were stupid and being mislead by covers. One idea was the kids we not aware that they were actually buying Marvel comics, so Irving Doenfeld, son of one of the founders at DC, decided to use Go-Go Checks (his name of the taxi-like checkerboards) across the top of DC comic books so that kids would know which were DC Comics. Carmine Infantino was not a fan and famously said, “It was the stupidest idea we ever heard because the books were bad in those days and they just showed people right off what not to buy.”
Doenfeld also tracked what the covers of the best-selling comics were and made his creative teams go from there. If covers with apes or dinosaurs seemed to sell better, then they had to put apes or dinosaurs on the covers (and subsequently in the stories). This made for some really weird scenes which led to really weird comic stories. Which brings us back to Callen. He probably got the idea for Fat Spidey from Fat Flash (The Flash #115)
He did not only do a Spider-Man, but this Captain America one:
He also did a Ghost Rider and Heroes for Hire too and you can see them on his blog.
While you are there, check out his other work and let me know in the comments which one you think is a good one.
Sources:
Callen, Kerry. “What If DC Published 1970’s Marvel Characters in the 1960’s?” Kerry Callan Does Stuff, 29 Nov. 2010, kerrycallen.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-if-dc-published-1970s-marvel.html.
Callen, Kerry. “What If DC Published Marvel Characters in the 1960’s?” Kerry Callan Does Stuff, 1 Nov. 2010, kerrycallen.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-if-dc-published-marvel-characters.html.
“DC’s Checkerboard.” Comic Book Spinner Rack, 7 July 2005, moocowcomics.blogspot.com/2005/07/dcs-checkerboard.html?_sm_au_=i7Vq2Zj6t7ZMSN4qp8tcvK7LHF7Qc.
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@Evan: Mary Jane loses both of her slippers during the bridge scene at the end of the first Spider-Man. Maybe that was it?
@Mark — Gee, I wonder whose shoe I was thinking of. See, these are the big questions. Thanks for re-watching part of Spider-man 2 on my behalf!
@Mark – Not your BFF!
@Hornacek – Well, if Doc Ock took over your body, then I can’t hold it against you. I only have room for one grudge and that spot is already held firmly by another one on the Crawlspace….
@Mark
Hornacek: “That wasn’t me! Doctor Octopus took over my body! He’s the one that said that to you!”
Mark: “I don’t care, I still hate you! This has inspired me to become the male version of the Queenpin of (Crawlspace) crime, whatever that would be called.”
@Evan, @Hornacek, and @Sthenurus
Evan – Well, being a more open-minded person, I don’t go around assuming people’s genders. OK, I fixed it. I don’t know why I had it in my head that he was a she. Thanks for fact-checking me. Wouldn’t want to be accused of making stuff up around here!
For you, I went back and watched the Doc Ock/Aunt May scene and paid way too much attention to May’s feet. She does not lose a shoe.
Hornacek – I fixed the link. It somehow attached the link to this post in with the like to his blog. Weird, because I didn’t have the link to this post when I typed this article up. Sounds like Chi-Town’s sabotaging my article in an effort to make himself look better by making it look like I would make a mistake.
“Wait, I’m defending Dark Mark? I’ve become everything I hate!” That hurts, Hornacek. That hurts.
Sthenurus – Right you are – that is Earth X Spidey! Head of the class!
Just noticed that May is missing one of her shoes. Nice touch. Hopefully no one was hit by it. Didn’t one of her shoes fall in Spider-man 2, as well?
@sthenurus – If that’s true then that cover is what JR would look like in a Spidey outfit, since he often says he would look like the Earth X Spider-Man.
@Evan
If i am not mistaken the Spider-man on that cover is actually from Earth-X (he has the name Spider-man on his one pack area because it’s actually an Halloween costume)
@Evan – In Mark’s defense, for years I thought that Kim Manners (a frequent director on the X-Files) was a woman. It was only years after the show ended that I learned he’s a man. My own biases at work.
Wait, I’m defending Dark Mark? I’ve become everything I hate!
The “on her blog” link (after the Cap/Bucky image) doesn’t work (at least for me). It displays a page saying:
Sorry, this page doesn’t exist.
Please check the URL or go back a page.
404 Error. Page Not Found.
@Mark — P.S. — I wonder how DC was able to get away with using the name Spider-man in that very first image. It’s interesting to me that this character made it into that initial Spider-verse event, if I correctly remember that initial painting with all of the variant Spider-men and women and animals on it. I assume that Morlun killed him off (and maybe slept for several hours afterwards), but I can’t remember.
@Mark — I loved this article, but I want to point out quickly that Kerry Callen is a man. At least, last time I checked.