The gang over at Moonstone has done it again. Writer Martin Powell and artist Pablo Marcos serve up an eerie, cool & atmospheric adventure of the Master of Men in The Spider #1. I’ve read plenty of the original pulp magazine stories of Doc Savage, The Avenger, The Shadow, Tarzan, etc., but I haven’t read a single Spider tale. This means that although I am somewhat familiar with the character, I was able to read this issue without predispositions. You've just gotta love that awesome Dan Brereton cover too!That worked to my advantage and it allowed me to appreciate Powell’s story on its own merits. If you like zombies, two-fisted adventurers who prefer to kick ass and take names and to hell with the consequences, The Spider #1 might suit you. Pablo Marcos is well established in the industry and he brings to bear some topnotch visual storytelling cues that propel this half of the book to its bone-chilling conclusion. I also really appreciated the three color look of this books coloring. It added a great deal of wallop to the overall tension of the events playing out on the page. If I’m not mistaken, The Spider was always a bit harder edged than some of his pulp-era contemporaries and that dynamic is evident here, although perhaps softened ever so slightly to appeal to a more diverse readership that has certainly become somewhat jaded on hardcore violence over the last couple of decades due to the influence of entertainment media.
Thus, the simple straightforward manner in which the lead character and his supporting cast are introduced, works even better by simply getting down to the business of telling a "kicking" action yarn. I hope that The Spider works his magic on readers, so that he sticks around for a while. Recommended!
4 comments:
Is this a comic or one of their illustrated stories?
I'm a little leery of trying it. The short-story collection and prose "comics" didn't really grab me. The Spider is a hard character for modern writers to grasp. It's easy to see the violent aspects and capture that, but a lot harder to capture the character's passion or the insanity of the world around him. And, I think that's even harder to do in a comic as opposed to the total immersion into the character's thoughts, motivations and story that the pulp stories offer. All modern takes I've seen have portrayed a character that comes across as being psychopathic when there should be quite the Romantic Hero in him as well: love of his fellow man to act and take on the troubles of the world and willingly accept the label of killer and criminal in the eyes of the Law and civilized society.
I’m a fan of the classic pulp characters of the 30’s and 40’s and like yourself I’ve read many of the original pulp novels in paperback reprints of Doc Savage, The Avenger and The Shadow. In the early 90’s Eclipse Comics published two mini-series of The Spider by writer-artist Timothy Trueman. I love Truman’s art and he did a nice job of conveying the dark feel of the Spider character. It also inspired me to read some of The Spider novels which were reprinted in paperback by Carroll & Graf about the same time. The Spider as written in the novels is a very mysterious character, similar to the early Shadow novels. I have yet to try any of Moonstone’s comics, but The Spider sounds like a good one to pick up. Thanks for recommending this one, Chuck!
Cash, this is a full-on comic and it actually looks more like the stuff you would have been buying back in the 70's & 80's, so it's safe to sample this one if you wish.
I'll look out for it. My old LCS didn't have it, but the store near my new residence carries more of the Moonstone stuff.
The guy at my old store knows I like the pulp stuff, so he got me a book with Lester Dent's Lee Nace aka Blond Adder series, a gadget inventor detective Dent wrote about before he did the Doc Savage stories.
I'm currently reading a Spider pulp, one of the Nostalgia Press doubles. Just finished "The Mayor of Hell" which even for the Spider is an intense and vivid story, not one I'd recommend to readers just beginning to read him.
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