Amazing Spider-Man Annual Assessment -- Ending Phase 1

In order to celebrate his first successful year on the job, Marvel issues The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, a way of putting together a yearbook of Spidey's adventures and a chronicle of how he came to be.  Adding some story to the fluff was a tale in which Spider-Man feels like he's losing his powers at a time when a circle of his most brutal villains decide to band together in the name of shameless cross promotion.  I used this issue more as a fun subject for the class today, as a way of cooling things off after such a rigorous comics loaded session of summer school.

The annual's feature story is mostly an opportunity to show off the vast world of Spider-Man and the many regular characters that inhabit his comic world.  The story also takes the opportunity to tease at the cavalcade of superheroes that inhabit New York City, as this issue is chock full of cameos by the upper echelon of the Marvel Universe such as Thor, Dr Strange, Captain America, The Fantastic Four, Ant Man, Iron Man and even the X-Men : First Class all pop up in the Spider's Web.  While the story consisted of a gauntlet style matchup where Spider-Man had to brawl WWE style against The Sinister Six, there was nothing here that furthered along the chronicles of Peter Parker.  How it does serve as a great yearbook with outstanding pin up style art and close ups and makes the perfect issue to wrap up Phase One of Comics in the Classroom.

When Betty Brant and Aunt May are captured, Peter Parker quits moping around the city wondering about his risk taking lifestyle when he is driven to slip back into the red n blue to take down The Sinister Six. Meanwhile the hexagon of hellions can't seem to get along but still manage to formulate some ludicrous scavenger hunt style game to play with Spider-Man in order to finally do the one thing they couldn't do solo, take the boy down.  So they feel that if he makes it through all six members of the gauntlet, he will die fighting or at least develop a series of awful blister.

Spider-Man swings past the numerous cameos and hops around New York in a menagerie of beautiful splash pages.  One by one, he relives The Sinister Six of their cheat cards and consciousness, hitting Electro at the Stark Power Plant, Kraven in Queens, Mysterio at a movie studio, Sandman in the park, the Vulture in the sky and eventually Dr Octopus in the deep dark lair of a large castle outside of the city, I'm guessing it was Scarsdale.

All in all the story plays out like a video game, and ends with a happy ending with Betty Brant back in his arms and The Sinister Six all going Shawshank style into Riker's for the remainder of the year.  The issues finishes out with a art gallery of Spider-Man's villains and co stars as well as a historical timeline of his rise to teenage mega stardom.  Concluding with a profile on the creators and you've got yourself an excellent idea for the class. 

Instead of making their own Spider-Man yearbooks, the students opt to map out a 5 year plan for The DC Cinematic Universe, which ended up being a fun oaktag style class project and invoked numerous debates about who should play Wonder Woman.  Of course once the topic turned back to Spidey, we began laying out the curriculum for our master script.

With 22 issues in the can, we have covered Amazing Fantasy 15 -- Spider-Man's origin, as well as the first 20 issues of Amazing Spider-Man before capping it with Spider-Man's first yearbook.  We have gathered enough material from the comics and our class debates to layout the origin of our darker version of Spider-Man.  We will now use half the class to work on the screenwriting software to start putting the foundation into our graphic novel script.

We will spend the second half of class focusing on developing our villains, making a prime connection to our hero's origin in order to really capture not only the homage to the 60's and it' unique impact on superheroes and storytelling.  Instead of continuing to comb through Amazing Spider-Man in order we will be jumping ahead to focus on all stories featuring Kraven the Hunter.  No great superhero story is complete without a supreme villain and we want to make sure to show respect to all interpretations of the Golden Age version of my favorite all time Spider-Man villain. 

I've compiled a list of 32 comics, which cover several titles besides Spider-Man and include X-Men, Kazar, Daredevil and several of the old horror anthology titles from Marvel's run in the 60's and 70's.  Our goal is to have finished draft ready to be shipped to the bigwigs at Disney.

Well before the fun, begins, I'm heading off to Comic-Con this week to promote my new Kickstarter Campaign for The Chronicles of Faro.  I hope if you've been enjoying this entertaining and educational blog that i can invite you to be a part of my amazing series about a time traveler who adventures back in time, gets seduced by The Devil and prevents the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  Check us out at the link below :)

James Bond meets Quantum Leap

Thanks again for taking part in Comics in the Classroom

Amazing Spider-Man 13 -- Spidey Thinks He's Going Fight Club -- Man w Fish Bowl 4 a Head

In a violent month for the world, anti-Vietnam protests continue in America while martial law is declared in South Korea, Turkey and Greece argue over Cyprus and Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in Robben Island Prison.  Through this hazy smoke of violence and despair, Jim Bunning of the Philadelphia Phillies pitches the first perfect game in the National League since 1880.  As summer approaches, Spider-Man battles the latest addition to his glorious rogue's gallery, the fish bowl helmeted master of movie magic..........

MYSTERIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our tale begins with what looks like Spider-Man in the middle of a bank heist.  He steals a wad of cash, climbs the walls, webs up the night watchmen and leaps off the roof before parachuting to safety.  When the news of this hits the press, the city is in shock, so are the students at Midtown High, who all start turning on Spidey left and right, with the exception of his biggest fan, Flash Thompson.

When Peter gets wind of the news and considers the evidence and timing, he actually begins to believe he is becoming a split personality ala Tyler Durden, committing crimes at night as Spider-Man while he believes he is peacefully slumbering as Peter Parker.

When another crime is committed as Spider-Man, Peter turns anxious and desperate and decides to visit a shrink in his Spider-Man garb.  So now this episode goes from Fight Club to The Sopranos.  Even though both movies are violent and probably not appropriate scholastic material, you cannot deny either's impact on pop culture.  The students want to use references to the Sopranos or Fight Club in our script, or maybe the next one.  We have decided that we aren't going to tackle intergalactic aliens or major terrorist plots in our first script.  The Arach-Knight Begins is going to be your good old fashioned origin/revenge story.

I still get this great idea of doing a Spider-Man graphic novel with

The Kingpin as the main villain and having the model for the character the late, great James Gandolfini.  Bringing in Kingpin will be a great way to also bring in Marvel hero Daredevil, who I always considered a poor man's Batman but loved the title when Frank Miller was involved.  Either way, it's hard to talk sequel when we haven't started our first movie script yet.

While he wonders if he's a sleep walking criminal, Peter Parker has to be careful about where he goes as Spider-Man since he is now a wanted man.  This puts a damper in Peter's photography career, which is bad timing since Aunt May is low on funds and they have a mortgage payment due.  Once again we open discussion up to the floor about the ethics of having superpowers and what limits you would take to use them in order to take care of your family.  With the powers to go on a one man crime spree, why doesn't Peter just rough up some thugs and pull a Robin Hood act?  The students all agree that sometimes ethics and morals are thrown out the window when the bills are due.  What made Spider-Man stand out above the rest was the fact that he always managed to find a way out when that solution would become the only option.

As Jameson basks in the glow of Spidey's fugitive turn, the Daily Bugle is visited by a costumed crusader who claims he is the man for the job of taking out Spider-Man.  He calls himself Mysterio and wears a giant fish bowl on his head, looking like something out of a bad 50's monster movie.  I go over the vintage horror genre with the students as we continue to discuss whether Mysterio has the proper credibility to be a usable Spider-Man villain in a story.

With the Internet still just an idea in the mind of a infant Al Gore, the newspaper was still the king of all media.  Mysterio has Jameson put a post in the paper challenging Spider-Man to a confrontation on top of the Brooklyn Bridge.  When they face off, Spidey is amazed at Mysterio's bag of tricks.  Underneath the fish bowl helmet and flowing cape, Mysterio has magnetized boots and can throw clouds of smoke that seem to make him look like he's teleporting.  When Spider-Man tries to web him up, Mysterio shoots mist from his gloves that vaporizes webs

Locked in another large cloud of smoke, Mysterio is virtually invisible and gives Spider-Man a good enough beatdown where the wall crawler is forced to regroup and retreat by jumping off the bridge.  Webbing himself an air tight helmet, Spider-Man swims underwater to safety while police helicopters search for the fugitive at large.

So while Mysterio receives a small parade for defeating the criminal Spider-Man, Flash still defends his hero while Jameson sets up a deal for exclusive rights to Mysterio's secret identity.  When Peter is introduced to Mysterio by Jameson as his photogrpaher, Parker takes the opportunity to slip one of his custom spider tracer devices into his cloak.  

Following old Fish bowl, Spidey tracks Mysterio to a movie studio where they engage in combat once again.  Besting him for a second time, Mysterio then breaks the rules of the cliched villains handbook when he reveals everything to Spider-Man, figuring he's going to kill him in about 5 minutes anyway.  We learn that Mysterio was a former movie stunt who became a master of setting up special effects.  A mad genius in his own right, Mysterio was fascinated by Spider-Man and obsessively decided to study him for months to learn everything about his powers and abilities in an attempt to mimic him, as he had done for so many others on the silver screen.  Suddenly Mysterio's character becomes more interesting, even somewhat usable for a future story.  

One of the students brings up the movie Seven, a psychological thriller starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as detectives trying to take down a major league serial killer with a revolting literary theme.  The way the killer studies the detectives and puts together his intricate plan patiently and methodically is reminiscent of how Mysterio goes about becoming Spider-Man, using everything from suction gloves and boots to using nylon chord as fake webbing, acid spitting gloves, tinted helmets and smoke ejectors from under his cloak, doing just about everything Spider-Man does naturally, only artificially.  Mysterio put a lot of time into his plan but then became obsessed with getting above just imitating Spidey and creating a super hero persona of his own, being able to take credit for stopping the crime wave he started.

More angered then flattered over Mysterio's obsession, Spider-Man decides not to hold back any more and slugs the stunt man so hard he sends him through the wall and right into the middle of a live movie set.  While the directors and crew scatter and scramble, they miss out on filming some incredible live action as Spider-Man and Mysterio brawl all over the studio set until Spider-Man gets the upper hand and knocks Mysterio unconscious.  He delivers his body to the cops for a full confession, and delivers the pics and story to the Bugle to clear his name while playing one last jolly prank on Jameson for good measure.  Just like that the mortgage is paid and our hero gets his occasional happy ending.

So we see in today's lesson how looks can be deceiving as Mysterio started out as a joke villain and turned into a character that myself and the students are looking forward to seeing once again.  All in all, another fine day of Comics in the Classroom.

Vocab Word Web

1- Psychiatrist

2- Hastily

3- Subconscious

4- Controversial

5- Cautiously

6- Dissolving

7- Vaporizing

8- Invertebrate

9- Billowy

10- Conceited

11- Thwarted

12- Overwhelmed 

13- Plunge

14- Concealing

15- Vindicated