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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2020 19:14:09 GMT -5
Wikipedia and various Google phrases aren’t helping me so here goes...
Someone told me that SPIDEY SUPER STORIES are Spider-Man tales that are fictional within the “real” Spidey’s world. Is meta-fiction the term I am after? I think so. Has this explicitly been stated, I certainly don’t think they can be considered canon?
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 10, 2020 19:21:09 GMT -5
Wikipedia and various Google phrases aren’t helping me so here goes... Someone told me that SPIDEY SUPER STORIES are Spider-Man tales that are fictional within the “real” Spidey’s world. Is meta-fiction the term I am after? I think so. Has this explicitly been stated, I certainly don’t think they can be considered canon? A note on the first story in issue #1 at the GCD says, "This is a juvenile version of Spider-Man, not attached to mainstream Marvel continuity." I don't know if mainstream Marvel continuity acknowledged these stories at all.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2020 19:22:23 GMT -5
My limited experience of them made me smile. There was one where a bricklayer (I think) had an accident on site, a wall fell on him, possibly during an explosion. And it somehow turned him into a “living wall” or something. And those details may be wrong, but that’s what I remember.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 10, 2020 22:28:59 GMT -5
Wasn't Spidey Super Stories connected to Electric Company somehow?
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 11, 2020 0:43:54 GMT -5
Wasn't Spidey Super Stories connected to Electric Company somehow? It was. This note is on the GCD's series record: "Produced in conjunction with the Children's TV Workshop (Electric Company)."
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2020 0:53:49 GMT -5
Wasn't Spidey Super Stories connected to Electric Company somehow? It was. This note is on the GCD's series record: "Produced in conjunction with the Children's TV Workshop (Electric Company)." It was also right on the covers... -M
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 11, 2020 11:30:37 GMT -5
Yup. The Electric Company featured segments with Spider-Man (someone in a Spidey suit), done like a comic book page. The Spidey Super Stories were aimed at early readers and had more simplistic language to aid in that. Violence was also held down, compared to regular books (but more than tv cartoons). They often featured guest stars, as I saw a couple that had Storm and Nova in them, respectively. The comics also featured apeparances by the Electric Company character Easy Reader, who was played by Morgan Freeman. That's Easy Reader by the bookmobile (which brings back childhood memories). Each issue had a main story that usually involved other Marvel characters, while the other stories were similar to the segments on the Electric Company. This page is from issue #15, which features Storm, in the main story.... while the back ups featured more humorous tales, like the first page I posted, which is from a story about Spidey racing the Spidermobile.... All that's missing is Speed, Spritle and Chim-Chim! If you look closely at Car #2, it might have a familiar design element, as it is driven by.... Notice the word balloons are kept short and simple, for the young readers. Also, crowds and characters are deliberately multi-cultural, to reflect the tv show and their desire to help educate inner city kids, which was the original mandate of The Children's Television Workshop and Sesame Street & The Electric Company. Both featured urban environments and people of color and various ethnicities. The villain in the Storm story is African-American, though one of the heroes is African; so, you get a balanced view of both good and bad. Marvel did a pretty good job with these and they published 57 issues, which is a respectable run for any comic, particularly one with an educational mandate.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 11, 2020 11:39:30 GMT -5
ps Easy Reader uses the Bookmobile to stop Shocker! Literature for the win! I think this should be the plot for the next Spider-man film, complete with Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader. When I was a kid, I grew up in a small farm town. We had no public library, only our school library. However, the Decatur Public Library had The Rolling Prairie Library System and brought a bookmobile to small communities, like mine, each week (on different days). It was like stepping into a magical land, as you climbed aboard a bus, filled with bookshelves, loaded with all kinds of books. That is where I discovered Dr Seuss, Robert McCloskey, and, later, Phillip Jose Farmer's Tarzan Alive!.
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 11, 2020 11:51:46 GMT -5
I've read that in contrast with most comics which try to make the story clear visually, in Spidey Super Stories they tried to make it impossible to follow the story just by looking at the pictures. They wanted the kids to want to read the words.
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Post by MDG on Aug 11, 2020 12:25:05 GMT -5
I've read that in contrast with most comics which try to make the story clear visually, in Spidey Super Stories they tried to make it impossible to follow the story just by looking at the pictures. They wanted the kids to want to read the words. That seems counterproductive--seems it would frustrate kids more than encourage them. Especially things like that last panel where JJJ is saying "Good job, Parker!" and his face is saying "you idiot!"
It also looks like they were trying to "dumb down" the art in general. Win Mortimer is usually clear and very "open" in his art, but I can't imaging him being as sloppy as he is here unless that was some kind of editorial decision (maybe to signal to "real" Spidey fans that this is kid stuff, not canon).
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Post by chaykinstevens on Aug 12, 2020 6:39:57 GMT -5
The Wall featured in Spidey Super Stories #8. My favourite issue was SSS #39, which featured Spidey and Hellcat versus Thanos, who was taking a break from stellar genocide to try his hand at bank robbery and had apparently used the cosmic cube to create himself a yellow helicopter with his name written on the side.
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Post by Cei-U! on Aug 12, 2020 7:32:04 GMT -5
That's not Hellcat (a name the CTW would never have signed off on). It's the original Cat, the one later became Tigra (note the black hair instead of Patsy's red).
I recently indexed Spidey Super Stories and was fascinated by the changes they made to the "real" Marvel Universe. Spidey's origin, for example, makes no mention of Uncle Ben's murder. There was also no mention of the X-Men or mutants (a concept probably deemed too complicated for the target audience), with only Beast, Iceman, and Storm making guest appearances. And some of the alterations are hilarious, like Hulk living in a hobbit hole-style cave (complete with front door, albeit a normal rectangular one) beneath Central Park.
Cei-U! I summon Easy Reader!
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Post by beccabear67 on Aug 12, 2020 21:31:55 GMT -5
I need to see Thanos deciding not to annihilate all life in the universe because if he did he wouldn't be able to enjoy those flakey wholesome Hostess fruit pies! He's was probably just irritable because he hadn't had anything to eat that day... except for this stolen tofu...
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Post by beccabear67 on Aug 12, 2020 21:44:53 GMT -5
fictional within the “real” Spidey’s world. Here is the "Marvels" comic they put out showing what a Spider-Man comic inside the Marvel universe is like... It is authentically based on the reports of people who contacted the Marvels offices describing what they personally witnessed! Likewise with Dare-Devil... but for the Fantastic Four comic they made an arrangement with the famed group to supply them the info...* * Sea-Baboons not exactly as shown.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2020 7:42:04 GMT -5
Those are cool. And new to me. Why the hell wasn’t I notified about these back in the day? Thank you.
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