Yeah, that´s right. Here´s Peter Parker, the OGSM ( original Spider - Man ) letting it all hang out. I had the material for this post all prepared after all the Brou - ha - ha about Milo Manara´s infamous Spiderwoman cover.
Or to be specific, Milo Manara´s VARIANT cover for Spiderwoman. It´s not even on the regular comic that gets sold in comic shops. It´s on the variant edition and anybody who has ever been in a comic shop trying to get a specific variant cover he didn´t order beforehand or the comic shop owner didn´t save for him knows how difficult it is to get one of those.
But it doesn´t matter in these times because just about everything gets blown out of proportion never mind how ridiculous the accusations are - as long as it gets some press coverage. One of the arguments protesters made was that first of all it was impossible for a human being to strike the pose Milo Manara drew. Never mind that Spider - Man has been drawn for decades in poses with his legs over his head that were humanly not possible - anybody remembers Todd McFarlane´s bendable Spider - Man ? - cosplayer Ivy Doomkitty by that logic is more than human or inhuman.
There were a lot of other ridiculous points made, most of them countered in Joseph Carro´s NOT SAFE FOR WORK post In Defense of Milo Manara .
I don´t want to repeat all his arguments but we are talking Milo Manara here. While his art is not only about sex and naked woman - despite what some people might think - it has always been a big part of it and Milo has never denied it. In fact that was one of the main reasons why Marvel hired him to do variant covers in the first place. While some people will tell you that the role women in comics have has changed a lot over the last years the way they are drawn has certainly not. And to lay all that at Manara´s feet is a bit ridiculous since he rarely draws american comics.
But no, the state the american comic industry is in regarding the way super heroines are drawn in their publications is all Milo Manara´s fault. Another argument was that he was just recycling old LE DECLICK covers.
But I don´t want to go into all the details why all these accusations were ludacris and instead concentrate on one particular argument : that male superheroes would never be depicted in such a way as Spiderwoman.
Strangely enough Joseph Carro and some other people on the internet found over a dozen covers where Spider - Man was. So that got me to thinking if that was not a thing with Spider - Man. And there was a whole plethora of covers I found from all series where it´s all about the butt.
Yep, Spider - Man is shoving them spider cheeks in the readers face any chance he gets but because he´s a guy you don´t hear anything about it in the press. And we all know it´s totally okay to sexually objectify men.
Or maybe it´s because Spider - Man is sneaky like on the cover of adjectiveless SPIDER - MAN 32, where he´s partially covered by the logo. Probably because he´s afraid what the Punisher is going to do when he finds out that he´s wiggling his whatsit behind the Punisher´s back.
And that´s not the only instance where Spider - Man is sneaking up to the guest star to show his gluteus maximus. Long before there were things like smart phones and photo bombing Peter invented cover bombing.
And Spider - Man is fearless. He even cover bombed Captain America. And we´re talking the real deal here not somebody of the dozen of other guys who have donned the stars and stripes tights over the decades.
No, man, Spider - Man got cojones. He even cover bombed the incredible Hulk on the cover of WEB OF SPIDER - MAN issue 69 ( which if you think about makes it appropriate ) who was not amused to say the least.
But Spider - Man did not only target heroes. No one was safe from these attacks as The Rose found out here. A butt by any other name .....
And here it is the Shocker who ends up being shocked for a change.
But Spider - Man does not always single out the villains he´s gonna cover bomb. Here he is getting the drop on three of them at the same time.
You know, in some of these covers you can´t help it but wonder where exactly does his webbing come from ? Is this still from around the mechanic webshooters period or are we already in the biological webshooters phase ? And where DID his webbing come from back then ?
But we are going to ignore that question. Here he has trapped more evildoers with his patended webbing so he can squat his backside.
Now I don´t know if Straczynski was especially fond of these butt covers but there were quite a few of them during his run. Or maybe that was just because he was on the Amazing Spider - Man for such a long time.
Speaking about a long time, you might get the impression that drawing spider butt was something the new turks came up ( like most younger people think THEY invented everything important ) but here´s a classic SPIDER - MAN ANNUAL were Spidey shows his foes where to shove it.
Here´s another classic Spider - Man and his butt pin up.
Or what about the classic AMAZING SPIDER - MAN 100 anniversary cover ?
That was reused a few times like on the cover for issue 539 and you will see many versions of this iconic cover pop up in future DEJA VUE posts.
As you can see Spider - Man is wearing the black costume above which besides looking all kinds of cool had the added bonus that he could shake his tailfeather without people noticing as it blends perfectly into the background and you only see the silhouetted outline of it anyway.
Here´s another costume that seemed to be designed to hide the butt.
Although it surely didn´t look like that when Mark Bagley drew it.
Speaking about Mark Bagley, he had quite a few of these butt covers during his record breaking stint on THE ULTIMATE SPIDER - MAN.
Some of them in even more humanly impossible poses than what Manara did with Spiderwoman but you didn´t hear any complaints back then.
And speaking about impossible poses here is the OTHER ultimate Spider - Man, Mark Morales demonstrating that showing the butt is something every Spider - Man does no matter which universe you are in. Now that I think of it maybe it´s worth it to get SPIDERVERSE just to see if other variants are also keeping the buttshot real. In any event I want to see them doing a similar simultan butt / crotch shot with Spiderwoman.
Heck, even Doctor Otto Octavious couldn´t resist to flash some cheek.
So what have we learned ? That while Spiderwoman had ONE unfortunate cover Spider - Man is the real king of showing his buttocks on the cover.
He shows his buttocks while webbing his spiderwebs.
He shows them to a giant Green Goblin head ( or to the Black Cat ? ).
He shows them when he´s facing off against the villains you all know.
He shows them when he´s fighting the villains you DON`T want to know.
He DEFINITELY shows them when he´s on a cover with Johnny Storm.
He shows them when he´s on a cover with John Jonah Jameson.
Or at least what looks like John Jonah Jameson. Damn shape shifters.
He even shows them with the giant sized Man Thing ( pun intended ).
He shows them when he´s facing a peed off rampaging, incredible Hulk.
He shows them fighting with Doctor Doom against demons with mohawks.
He shows them in the Bronze Age to Misty Knight, Collen and Iron Fist.
He shows them while he is hanging upside down from the ceiling.
Sometimes he shows them while walking down a wall upside down.
Sometimes he hides his buttocks in the shadows so nobody sees them.
Sometimes he has a big spotlight on them ( at least in french comics ).
Sometimes he wiggles his backside on a creepy graveyard at midnight.
He also shows his buttocks ( is he in freefall here ? ) on Halloween.
He even shows them when he´s not himself but his enemy ( literally ! ).
He sometimes shows them sideways when he´s on the cover of his comic.
He also show them inside the comic on splash pages and the likes.
Now this post has gotten a mite bit longer than planned but I didn´t want anybody saying : " Oh, anybody can come up with ten covers where Spider - Man shows his butt. That doesn´t prove anything. " You could still say this with twenty covers. Or even thirty covers. But with fourtyfive covers that is a bit more difficult to do. Especially since these covers are not all the Spider - Man butt covers I found, only a best of selection from them.
Now it would have been easy to put all the classic butt videos like RUMPSHAKER or BABY GOT BACK into the video section of this post. Instead I went with videos that correlate with Today´s post topic.
The last two Spider - Man movies I saw were really disappointing and it seems the only good versions of a real life Spider - Man can be found in fanfilms. This version would not work in a comic because that needs larger than life characters, flashy colors and bright primary colored costumes so the whole hoody thing - I´m just sick of it. People draw hoody versions of characters and think that´s revolutionary. Anyway, a few of the Spider - Man covers were from Spider - Man´s MARVEL KNIGHTS series so here is the MARVEL KNIGHTS : SPIDER - MAN short which looks better than everything you have seen in movies lately.
I can´t say that I´m a big fan of the new animated Spider - Man since all characters get younger and younger to the point where Peter is older than Luke Cage and Iron Fist. One of the things I like about the new cartoons is that they feature offbeat characters like Spider - Ham or Squirrel Girl.
I mentioned Todd McFarlane´s Spider - Man in the post so I´m going to use the opportunity to post another video from THE COMIC BOOK GREATS. This one is with Todd McFarlane and is 50 minutes long.
This whole thing started with Spiderwoman so here is another episode from LA MUJER ARANA : LA ARANA KONGO in which a movie producer puts her and Spider - Man in dangerous situations so he can shoot a movie. Do these plots ever work out the way they are supposed to ?
To close things here´s another tv show from my youth that Terry Hooper might remember : the kids show RAPPELKISTE which was specially aimed at Schlüsselkinder ( kids who have their own key to the house and who have to fend for themselves because both parents are working ). I´m not sure if they make kids entertainment like this in Today´s day and age.
New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best
4 comments:
Rappelkiste. That was, what -1973 or 74? Nope,I was 15 then and back in the UK. My German TV memories would be 1966-1972 at best with holidays back there. On the farm (school ended at 1300 hrs in the village) no one locked their doors unless everyone was going to be away and that included the villagers! Dalborn was so small that most people drove through it without realising! Mainzelmännchen they used to be fun. There is a compilation on You Tube...or used to be!
And you got all those covers to prove a point? JEEEEEEEEEEZ you have more patience than me. That written I note that the newer covers are lifeless compared to the old ones. So you've proved another point!
Well I was halfway through the post when I realized that I had enough covers for two posts. But I didn´t want to do two posts and I was too lazy to file the covers in a folder and then look for them again.
Yep, the older covers are much more exciting. Probably because they were made to sell the comic not let the artists express their feelings or such crap.
Yep, I really found a DVD from Rappelkiste at amazon. I´ll have to watch the video to remember the show though. It has been a long time since the 1970s.
How much does Hooper know?
Pretty much everything. Don´t try to mess with him.
Post a Comment