Normal hands are overrated - Fond memories of Peter Parker: Spider-Man #81

When a company makes something, and you like, and they know you like it, they'll make more of it. I think that's how business and commerce and whatnot works. Once enough people like something, a culture might develop around it, and the unified love of something will eventually splinter off into subcultures.

(I'm going somewhere with this. I think.)

Amazing Spider-Man was Marvel's flagship book for a while, and depending on who you ask, it still is. While the Fantastic Four lost some of it's creative "oomph" in the period between Jack Kirby's run and the John Byrne stuff in the eighties, mass market appeal shifted over to ol' Web-head. Sure, the X-Men were hot stuff once Claremont took over and Daredevil wowed readers under the pen of Frank Miller, but Spider-Man had a Macy's Day float.

He had a float. As the kids say: Hol' dat, Wolverine.

Spidey was such a huge hit in the comics and burgeoning multimedia star that Marvel knew they had to get more content out the door, and fast. There were several sister books over the years, from Marvel Team-Up to Spectacular Spider-Man Magazine, all providing some variation on the themes of power and responsibility and everyone, I imagine, had their preference.

Fast forward to the go-go 1990's and I'm a chubby little superhero nerd following Spidey's adventures in Amazing whenever I saw a new one appear at the convenience store spinner rack or the magazine section of the local HEB. Amazing was my jam for a time, which is surprising to me now since the comics at the time were in the midst of the clone saga and Ben Reilly was the main character more often than not. This didn't sync up with the Fox Kids cartoon I was watching, but I guess the younger me didn't care.

I knew Amazing wasn't the only game in town. I'd seen blurbs in the issues for other titles like Sensational Spider-Man and Untold Tales of Spider-Man, but those didn't "count". Amazing was where the title began and that's the "real" one, right?

(Maybe that sounds silly now, but seriously . . . look at the hang-ups fanboys have about geek stuff nowadays and you'll see nothing has changed.)

My family moved. Not far, but far enough away that I couldn't get back to my usual "dealers". Comic book stores were a myth to me at this point. If there even was one in my area at the time I didn't know of it, and my pop damn sure wasn't going to take me anyway. I was left to scour a new network of store shelves and racks for my Spider-Man fix.

Then I met John Romita Jr. For the second time.

Well, I didn't really meet the man, I just came across his work. The first instance was my older brother getting me a copy of Spider-Man: The Lost Years #1. This one was a little heavy for me, and had very little actual webslinging in it, but I remembered the distinct art style and holofoil cover when I later found Peter Parker: Spider-Man #81 at a Circle K store near our trailer park abode.

Romita Jr.'s art might be the first style I tried to copycat as a young doodler. Something about the way he constructed his figures (Spider-Man's shoulders and calves for instance) really stuck with me and to this day any time I get a wild hair and decide to do some sketching, I still fall back on those basic shapes. I didn't know much about comics history at that time; that Johnny Jr's dad was one of THE Marvel artists of the silver and bronze ages, or that Peter Parker: Spider-Man was the continuation of the monthly series started by Todd McFarlane back in his heyday. All I knew was this guy drew a bad-ass Spider-Man and before long, I'd completely abandoned my Amazing roots.

About the issue at hand: this is a quick and dirty done-in-one issue where our titular hero gets embroiled in a Kung Fu-tastic feud between The Cat (I swear to D'jinn it's not Shang Chi) and his enemies Razorfist and Shockwave. There's a youngling that needs rescuing, a depressed Mary Jane Watson at home, the works. This is a time capsule comic for me. As in, you could drop this in a time capsule and future folks could dig it up and go, "Huh. So that's what Spider-Man comics were up to back in 1997!" I don't know if anyone would actually do that, but that also can't be the dumbest thing anyone's put in a time capsule either.

Another milestone in this issue (for me, anyway) was the appearance of the aforementioned baddie Razorfist. He has razors in place of fists. Younger me would have loved this handicap, wiping be damned! Writer Howard Mackie must've been a fan of Marvel's Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu.

In an attempt to bring things full circle, I'll say this: Peter Parker: Spider-Man #81 is not a remarkable comic in any way save for some cool art and a great Steve Ditko-esque "Spidey landing a K.O. punch" splash page, but it did introduce me to the concept of interpretation. It was no longer about the "real version" or the "canon" for me, it was about seeing Writer X and Artist Y do their take on a character.

Also, Razorfist. AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN!

Thanks for reading this nonsense! And if you liked it, I do this kind of thing in a few other places. Whether you're into pro wrestling, video games, or pretending to be a vampire, I got you.

Twitter: @ChrisBComics
E-Mail: backissuechris@gmail.com