Angst wrapped in a cape - Spawn #107 on the Family Values Tour

Spawn.

Yeah, that guy.

You take the look from Venom, the cape from Batman, the chains from Ghost Rider, whip them all together and BAM!, you have a "grimdark" character with an alarming amount of staying power.

I was not immune to his demonic charms. Spawn might very well be my first "indy" book, or at the very least, my first regular title to collect that wasn't published by Marvel or DC.

(Well there were some Sonic the Hedgehog comics I had from somewhere . . . and a random issue of Power Rangers, but I didn't go whole hog on those.)

When a young lad hits just that right age, and the cosmic forces of angst and self-loathing start to set it, a character like Spawn has a certain appeal. Could I relate to being a black ops soldier dude who was sold out by his bosses and left for dead? Not really. Did I feel like I'd been spat out of Hell every day on the way home from school? Sure!

Spawn #107 wasn't my first issue of the series or anything, I just came across it when going through some of my old, unsorted books. Pressed between two thick gaming magazines, it had been preserved pretty well for a comic without a bag and board. Inside I found echoes of my youth, and a pretty decent first chapter to a story arc I may or may not have ever finished collecting.

This one is kind of a by-the-numbers "act one". Heck, it's not even a proper act one for Spawn himself since the central conflict doesn't really rear its head. Shoot, I'll double back on that. This story isn't about Spawn at all; it's a backdrop for a father-son drama between a member of Spawn's supporting cast and his estranged son.

You folks remember Sam & Twitch, right? The Bullock and Montoya to Spawn's Batman, these two coppers would often weave in and out of Spawn's world and occasionally we'd get a peek into theirs. Marvel scribe and Jessica Jones creator Brian Bendis even did some journeyman work on their spin-off title. This issue starts a Twitch arc. A little over a year prior to this, Twitch and his problems at home had become the center point for a storyline involving pedophile-turned-demon Billy Kincaid, and I remember his reunion with his wife at the end of that arc almost moving little me to tears.

(Or maybe it was Greg Capullo's bodacious babes, of which Twitch's wife was one.)

So Twitch's family drama is set to return in this arc, with his son living like a couch surfer and falling in with what we're led to assume in this first chapter is the "wrong crowd". Don't panic, Spawn and several other groovy ghoulies appear aplenty to keep things from going all after-school special.

Alright, Sam & Twitch were hardly "obscure", but a show of hands for who remembers Wolfram, Spawn's hobo werewolf buddy. Anyone? I had forgotten about him too. It's all good though, because in this issue he meets his end thanks to a holier-than-thou monster slayer named Simon Pure.

(Simon Pure. I just know the younger me thought that was dope.)

What about the guy on the cover? With the guns and the blasting and the necroplasm stuff? He appears in this ish, taking on both sides of a mob war and getting his chain yanked by this Simon Pure fellow. Simon seems like the type who might try to read Spawn the riot act, but instead he alludes to a greater threat . . . something on the horizon, dun dun DUUUN!

Brian Holguin was writing the book at this time, with what I'm sure was pretty lax supervision by creator Todd McFarlane. I haven't read any non-Spawn work by Holguin, but I can't say he's a lousy writer or anything. He would have been just as at home cooking up punchy little pot boilers for Marvel's X-Men line or DC's Bat-books at that time. Unobtrusive stuff that speaks to teenage boys--man knows his audience and I can respect that.

Capullo had left at this point (I think for personal reasons) and we get Angel Medina as the main artist here. I've since read some Spidey's drawn by Medina, and while that 90's "Image style" isn't exactly my thing anymore, I can appreciate the detail on every page. These pages are overstocked, if anything.

This is a pretty typical setup issue that could also function as a first issue for new readers, or a "jumping on point" as publishers are wont to call them now. You get an explanation of what Spawn is and an example of what he does, a new enemy/rival in Simon Pure, and the introduction of a sub-plot that'll keep the soap opera suckers coming back to see if poor Twitch will get his son back.

If I sound a little "meh" about this issue, I think it probably reflects how I felt back then. Like I said, I don't know if I even got the rest of the arc. This is from a time in my personal reading history when aesthetics were becoming less important to me than story. And stories needed to be "trippy" for me to get into them. Cue Morrison's X-Men. Cue Warren Ellis's Planetary. Cue my first experiences with marijuana. I was morphing from one teenage stereotype into another.

So yeah, Spawn. That guy. I don't really miss having his adventures as a part of my monthly schedule, but I don't regret having read them either the way I regret the music from that era. (Jonathan Davis and Fred Durst have a lot to answer for.)

Thanks for reading!
Twitter: @ChrisBComics
E-mail: backissuechris@gmail.com
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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