Celebrating The Arrival at New York Harbor in the solar storm ravaged summer of 1859, this is where The Chronicles of FARO begins.
Now on to Comics in the Classroom,
Our end game for this grand educational task is a finished graphic novel script ready to produce with an array of amateur artists that we will recruit and select together as a class before making a submission and proposal to the head muckity mucks at Mickey Mouse Mansions. With an average class of 20-25 students and with a typical graphic novel falling into my goal of a 90-120 page range, averaging 3-6 panels a page, each student will be responsible for at least 20-25 panel sequences. Not a bad way to get an A+
So we have agreed as a class that if we are going with our own take on The Spider-Man then they want to go with the black costume, a costume that we will connect to Peter Parker's time in Africa, where he will be trained by Kraven the Hunter. Nothing more exciting then seeing our plans start to come together.
The original appearance of The Chameleon in Amazing 1 shows him as a spy working for the Russians. Now we can keep Chameleon as a spy, but the question is why would he be targeting the Parker parents? Kicking around ideas in class, we came up with the idea of having Richard Parker working on an update to the super soldier serum which was first introduced in the Captain America movie. The super soldier serum was destroyed when the scientist who created it was killed after successfully injecting scrawny Steve Rogers in the waning days of World War 2.
The super soldier serum was brought up again in the legendary remake of The Incredible Hulk,
It was revealed in the 2008 movie that Dr David Banner was working on an update to the serum when things went haywire and made him green and angry all the time. The serum was eventually used on the movie's villain Emil Blonsky aka The Abomination. Great movie, but since my sophomores are working on The Hulk script we have to get back to The Arach-Knight. So now that we have added a little more back story to Peter Parker's father, without further ado, lets Enter the Sandman,
At the time this issue was published, the USA, UK and USSR all signed a Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, American test pilot Joe Walker achieves sub orbital spaceflight, The Great Train Robbery stuns England, uprisings take place in Vietnam, Singapore and the Congo and Martin Luther King delivers his immortal I Have A Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial. In the midst of an era of inequality and civil rights, Marvel Comics introduces the X-MEN.
As our tale begins, J Jonah Jameson is still making things impossible for the wall crawling hero, smashing him with constant editorials as his paper has become full on Anti-Spider-Man. Spider-Man is considered such a menace that when he attempts to foil a bank robbery, the criminals are calling the cops for help to use the public's confusion against him.
As a measure of revenge, Spider-Man swings over to Jameson's office and leaves a little web present for him.
After a mood changing swing around the city, Spider-Man flies into the middle of high speed cop chase. Watching the suspected fugitive scale a building Spider-Man leaps down with hopes of foiling the crime and being a hero to the city. This is where he first encounters The Sandman.
We first saw The Sandman in the God awful Spider-Man 3 movie portrayed by Ned & Stacy's own Thomas Haden Church. While it was a horrible movie, Church looked and definitely fit the part, and The Sandman's special effects were definitely one of the few highlights in the film. Either way, we won't be using him in our graphic novel, but let's enjoy this tale either way :)
The Sandman aka Flint Marko, was an inmate at Riker's Island until a daring escape through a drainage tunnel led to a massive manhunt by local police and the FBI. Desperate and running for his life, Marko hid out on the practice range of an Atomic Device Testing Center, (maybe it was the same one that Dr Octopus worked at)
Similar to the origin of The Hulk, Marko hides out on the testing range but is at ground zero when a nuclear test explosion blasts right through his perimeter. Miraculously he survives, with a very unique side effect. When Marko was hit with the nuclear blast, he was standing on the sand, and the molecules of his body merged with the molecules of the sand, making him a freak of nature and a bonded member of Spider-Man's rogue's gallery.
In their first face off, Spider-Man is ill prepared for The Sandman's unique abilities, which include changing the molecular structure of his body swiftly from soft to hard and handing Spider-Man a firm butt kicking. In the battle, Spider-Man's mask is torn off and he is forced to flee from the fight, leaving Sandman to roam free along the city searching for more banks. Able to reshape his fingers to fit any key hole, Sandman goes on a financial tear through Manhattan and the cops are powerless to stop him as their bullets go right through the Sandman's torso. Meanwhile, our superhero is back home sewing up his own costume and resting up for another day, another brawl.
Back in his persona as a mild mannered high school genius, Peter Parker is off to school where due to his obsession with catching The Sandman, breaks a date he set up with his rival Flash Thompson's main squeeze, Liz Allen. Here we a perfect segue into how dual lifestyles can affect the things that are important to us in terms of social life, family, academics, etc. The question to propose to the class is,
If you had a secret identity, how long before you told someone and who would you tell?
So with all the discussion abound in class, we forget that the dangerous Sandman is still on the run from a huge net of police canvasing the city until they are hot on his grainy trail. Ducking out into Queens, The Sandman attempts to take refuge at a local high school, the same one coincidentally housing young Parker.
In a stunning display of raw guts, Principle Davis stands up to The Sandman when he demands a diploma. Vowing to hold off The Sandman so the kids can escape to safety, he is about to get pummeled when he is saved by The Spider,
Cheered on by the same classmates who loathe and ridicule Peter Parker, Spider-Man and The Sandman engage in an epic brawl throughout the school. Sandman turns his hands into giant concrete blocks and proceeds to smash every wall and staircase in the school as Spider-Man uses his superior agility to evade his attacks. Like the T-1000 in the awesome film Terminator 2, Sandman turns his body into an oozing mass of liquid sand and wraps Spider-Man up like a ball in an attempt to suffocate him. The two bodies smash wall to wall before bouncing down the stairs and crashing into the janitor's closet.
Spider-Man breaks out of The Sandman's shell and goes for a power drill. Once Sandman goes soft again to avoid Spider-Man's attack, he slides over to the industrial sized power vacuum cleaner in the janitor's closet and sucks in The Sandman with 800ccs of prime hoover power. The Sandman is caught, Spider-Man grabs some pics and the school is safe, albeit loaded with some major destruction that should give the kids some unscheduled holidays.
So with the day saved, Peter takes a chance at resetting his date with Liz Allen, who much to his dismay has already made a new date with Flash Thompson. After some good natured ribbing, Peter and Flash nearly come to blows, where Peter is finally about to attack Flash before he frantically stops himself. He realizes that if he loses it and doesn't hold back, his proportionate strength may seriously injure Flash, maybe even cripple him. While tempting, Spider-Man can't lose control, remembering the words of his Uncle Ben,
"With great power must always come, great responsibility,"
While Peter is sad about losing his date with Liz, little does he know that his dream girl is on her way to town. Opening our next discussion in class, we will start debating who will be our Bond Girls in our first installment of Spider-Man. While everyone loves Mary Jane, I was always more partial to Jameson's secretery Betty Brant, who I envision as a Miss Moneypenny type to play with in our script. Of course it's the class' decision ultimately :)
Until next time folks, thanks again for tuning into another fun installment of Comics in the Classroom,
Vocab Word Web
1- Phenomenal
2- Proprietor
3- Larceny
4- Delinquent
5- Coward
6- Incorrigible
7- Molecules
8- Cordon
9- Vigil
10- Mischievously
11- Adhesive
12- Commotion
13- Braggart
14- Coax
15- Cahoots
16- Inflaming
17- Liable
18- Grudge
19- Pulverize
20- Bewildered
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