SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 10

MAY 25th, 1980 – AUGUST 31st, 1980
By Stan Lee & John Romita

It’s bizarre, but somehow Stan Lee and John Romita seem to have decided that Mary Jane and Carole just can’t coexist simultaneously in the ongoing SPIDER-MAN newspaper saga. Carole only developed into Peter’s girlfriend while MJ was out of the picture with Kraven. When MJ returned to town, it coincided with Carole leaving to hide out from the Loomis Cult. Carole eventually returned to New York and she and Mary Jane shared maybe a week’s worth of time as supporting characters before MJ just sort of dropped off the map as Peter picked things up with Carole again.

On one hand, I understand that Carole has been positioned at this point as Peter’s main squeeze, but it’s just bizarre to write Mary Jane out (or simply ignore her) whenever Carole’s around. It’s not like there’s precedent for this. Back during their legendary run on THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, Lee and Romita had Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy both vie for Peter’s affections, and once Peter settled (fairly quickly) on Gwen, MJ stuck around as a member of the gang. They didn’t just send her off into limbo when Peter and Gwen got serious.

Though I suppose this speaks to one glaring problem with the newspaper incarnation of Spider-Man: there really isn’t a “gang”, at least not in the same way there was in the comics. Sure, Mary Jane is around somewhere. So are Harry and Flash. But for the most part, none of them put in appearances unless the current story arc calls for it. MJ was the catalyst that got the Rattler storyline going way back when. Harry and Flash only pop up when their disco is needed as the backdrop for the ongoing drama. It’s not like the old days, where Lee and Romita would check in on everybody once an issue or so just to remind readers they existed, whether or not they had any ongoing sub-plot of note.

This is probably due to the nature of a newspaper strip versus a monthly comic — in a daily strip, there’s not a lot of time to toss in cameo appearances that don’t further the plot, while a 22(ish)-page comic book does have that luxury.

Anyway: Our next storyline finds Peter head-over-heels crazy about Carole. Their relationship hits a few bumps, however, as she demands to know his connection to Spider-Man. Peter hems and haws about it; he loves Carole, even wants to marry her, but he’s unsure about revealing his secret. Eventually, however, he decides to go for it: he’ll tell her he’s Spidey and pop the question in the same night.

Of course things don’t go as planned and Peter winds up in jail for a few hours as a result of some secret web-slinging while Carole sits at their restaurant table waiting for him. But Joe Robertson gets him out and he visits Carole, walking up a wall to prove his secret to her. Naturally she faints, and when she comes to, she’s so rattled that she believes she hallucinated the whole thing. Peter plays along and decides he must maintain his secret — but he still plans to marry Carole, even if he must hide his identity from her for the duration of their matrimony.

Incidentally, I know comic book Peter planned to marry Gwen pretty early on, but it’s kind of weird to me that this version of the character is so easily lovestruck that he wanted to marry Tana, who he barely know, a year or so back, and now he has plans to propose to Carole, too. I guess he’s a young, emotional guy, but it still feels like odd behavior for Peter Parker — even this iteration, who we’ve already seen is a bit more outgoing and hip than his comic book counterpart. Still, though, he’s not finished with grad school and he doesn’t have a steady job (plus, as he learned not long ago, he’s pretty much unemployable at this point). You’d think he’d want to table the wedding plans until he’s straightened that stuff out.

Anyway: Peter’s blissful relationship with Carole is soon shattered once more as the Cult returns. This time looking for revenge on Spider-Man for sending Loomis up the river, the ragtag remnant captures the web-slinger and attempts to kill him with poison gas. Spidey escapes and brings the final cultists to justice, but this close call makes him realize he can never marry Carole as long as he has enemies. With heavy heart, Peter appears at Carole’s apartment and breaks up with her, laying things on so thick that she will never want to see him again.

It’s over-the-top and heavy-handed, but it’s totally something Stan Lee’s Peter Parker would do, so I’m okay with it. It’s a shame to see Carole dismissed so perfunctorily, though. I don’t believe we’ll see her again for the duration of this Lee/Romita run, and that’s too bad. I genuinely like her as a character and as a love interest for Peter/foil for Mary Jane (not that we saw her much in that role as discussed above).

But on the plus side, hopefully this will put a damper on comic strip Peter’s incessant need to put a ring on every girl who smiles in his direction!

And now, since I only covered one arc this week and since next week will bring the end of this Spider-Man newspaper retrospective with John Romita’s final two storylines, I’d like to speak a bit about the artwork on this strip as a whole. I’ve talked about it here and there over the past several weeks, but mostly I’ve just focused on the story.

To put it plainly, John Romita’s artwork on this comic strip has been spectacular. I love his run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN from the sixties, but when you come down to it, not much of that stuff is pure Romita. Early on, he mimics Steve Ditko to ease the artistic transition. Later he develops his own style, but he spends a lot of his time on the series merely doing breakdowns or finishes. And through pretty much the entire run, he’s inked by other artists.

This strip, on the other hand, gives us Romita penciling and inking his own work. It’s true that former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter claims he provided thumbnails for Romita to work from (Shooter maintains he plotted the first several years of the strip because Stan Lee only wanted to script the thing), the IDW books clearly show Romita’s process started with breakdowns. So even if he was working from Shooter’s loose guides (which seems likely since subsequent penciler Larry Leiber says Shooter provided thumbnails for him as well), the work is about as close to pure Romita as can be.

One of the criticisms I’ve seen leveled at Romita’s Spider-Man over the years is that, due to his romance comic background, he made the characters too glamorous. And next to Steve Ditko’s quirky work, that’s probably true. But, speaking for myself, I prefer the glamor of Romita’s characters over the (probably more realistic) versions drawn by his predecessor. And so for me, this strip is about as perfect as you can get. Stan wanted a soap opera, and Romita delivered, filling the strip with handsome men and gorgeous women.

But my favorite part about Romita’s work here has been seeing him adapt his style to the aesthetics of the swinging seventies. All the characters are perfectly on-model; Peter, Aunt May, Mary Jane, and the rest look one hundred percent correct, as if they stepped out of a Romita comic from the late sixties — but he’s updated their clothing to reflect the garish fashions of the era, and, as noted a while back, he even grew out Peter’s hair to look a bit more trendy (and to fit the less buttoned-down demeanor Stan apparently wanted for this version of the character).

I’m a big Romita fan, so coming into this strip I was prepared to be impressed. But the truth is that Romita’s work here actually exceeded my expectations. Much as I love the Lee/Romita run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN from the sixties in terms of story, I really think his four years on the comic strip represent Romita’s crowning achievement in terms of Spider-Man art.