SPIDER-MAN NEWSPAPER STRIP PART 22

NOVEMBER 9TH, 1986 - DECEMBER 31ST, 1986
By Stan Lee, Dan Barry, & Floro Dery

After well over a year of uncredited pinch-hitters from the Marvel Bullpen handling the daily strips, Spider-Man finally gets a new regular artist as the final storyline of 1986 begins -- and he's kind of a catch, too. Beginning with the July 28th installment, daily art chores are handled by veteran newspaper strip artist Dan Barry -- best known as the artist of Flash Gordon for many years after originator Alex Raymond departed the series.

Barry's run on Spidey will turn out to be quite short, really only lasting the duration of this single arc, but it's notable nonetheless. As this is the final arc we're looking at for now, Barry is the last artist we'll see on the strip -- but following his departure, Larry Lieber will return and proceed with a remarkable run as artist from 1987 all the way through to the strip's cancellation in 2019!

As this arc begins, Peter and Mary Jane are in a good place. MJ knows Peter's identity, so he no longer needs to hide his exploits from her. They're dating, they're in love -- the only fly in the ointment is that Mary Jane still can't commit to Peter's marriage proposal. But the wall-crawler's concerns quickly turn from his love life when corrupt politician Howard Danton Hayes begins accosting Mary Jane's uncle, Judge Spencer Watson. Hayes wants Watson to go easy on a friend of his, mobster Abner Zilden. And with that setup, we're off into a storyline which provides a surprising and much-needed jolt to the recently boring newspaper strip.

(Although, while he handles the soap opera stuff masterfully and does some wonderful work with light and shadow, Barry never quite gets a handle on Spidey’s mask, consistently drawing the wall-crawler to look less like a superhero and more like some schmuck in a cheap, store-bought costume.)

Maybe it's because this arc only runs a lean four months, as opposed to the recent trend of sprawling, seven-to-nine-month epics. Or maybe it's the arrival of Dan Barry injecting some new blood into the proceedings. But whatever it may be -- and I'll mull it over a bit more after the summary -- this is the first arc in literally couple of years that has seriously engaged me in any real way.

The plot is, as noted above, fairly straightforward. A corrupt politician (and frontrunner for the governorship), Howard Danton Hayes, tries to pressure Mary Jane's uncle, Judge Spencer Watson, into going easy on recently arraigned mobster Abner Zilden. It seems Zilden has threatened to reveal his connection to Hayes if he's sent up the river. But Judge Watson remains unflappable. In the meantime, the judge also meets Spider-Man and asks him to become a youth advocate. Spidey agrees, and after a series of public appearances, juvenile crime in the city begins to decrease drastically.

Realizing Watson's endorsement of Spider-Man could be his downfall, Hayes spreads some money around the city's drug community, getting junkies and dealers alike to confess to the police that the web-slinger is their supplier. Spidey's stock drops considerably and Watson is forced to resign his judgeship. Everything looks great for Zilden, but he takes things a step too far when he decides to kill Watson for daring to go against him. Spider-Man rescues Watson, while Mary Jane convinces Hayes to come clean about everything. Hayes, who never expected to be an accessory to attempted murder, agrees and confesses, dropping out of the governor's race.

Like I said a moment ago, in part I like this one simply for its length. Stan had been in a mood for overly long and drawn-out storylines for a couple years, and while I think that's fine with the right subject matter, for me it just didn't seem to work with the plotlines chosen. Here, however, we're back to the length used by most arcs in the strip's history prior to around 1984 or so, and the story just feels faster paced and more interesting as a result.

The other reason I think I like this one better is that it's the first storyline in years (aside from the Klug Manton plot) that isn't "ripped from the headlines". Now, don't get me wrong -- Stan was always doing that sort of thing going back to the John Romita era, with terrorists, cults, muggings, and so forth. But they were all done in an over-the-top Stan Lee way, with lots of melodrama and cartoonish qualities -- the sort of things I like in Stan's writing! However the more recent stories with the Dar Harat terrorists, child abuse, etc. -- even the ridiculous ATM robberies! -- have felt more "realistic" (or at least more grounded), and I just don't think Stan handles that sort of thing well.

(And no, I don't think the above statement is at odds with my love of "primetime TV" type of stories... you can have a plot that feels like a low-budget episode of an eighties detective show but still present it in an over-the-top fashion.)

So here, we're back to a concise storyline with very little "ripped from the headlines". The bit about Spidey cracking down on delinquency fills that bill a bit, but it's a very minor part of the story, rather than being its driving force -- and in that way, I'm fine with it.

IDW's fifth Spider-Man newspaper strip collection continues into the next storyline at this point, but since it doesn't wrap up by the end of the book, I don't intend to go any further here. But suffice it to say that when and if the next collection is released (it's been over a year since book 5 at this point with no rumblings for a sixth volume), I'll pick it up and continue with these reviews. If you'd asked me a week or two ago whether I intended to do so, I'm not sure what my answer would've been. The strip had lost a lot of its charm. But at the same time, I've always said that I would be in up until at least the marriage of Peter and Mary Jane in 1987 -- and since the arrival of Dan Barry reignited my interest, I actually do want to keep to that idea.

Next week, I plan to post an "afterword" on these first ten years of the Spider-Man strip, and then a week after that, it'll be a little (related) surprise...