Familiar Tones Bring New Life to Spider-Man on the Internet

When Marvel and DC give creators carte blanche on their properties, good things tend to happen. DC’s Solo gave 12 artists an entire issue to publish stories that included original characters and played with house toys. Strange Tales, the mini series, is filled with members of comic’s independent scene, showing that the sense of humor Stan Lee used to build classic titles never went away.

Thanks to parody laws and loop holes, sometimes people decide to use characters they don’t own regardless of permission. One example is Air Pirates Funnies, an underground comic Dan O’Neill organized to see how far his group of cartoonists could get using Disney properties to tell stories with drugs, sex and everything else the ’70s could drum-up to irritate the house of mouse. With the Internet being used as a means for creators to offer original and fan art to the public, it’s important that these loop-holes and parody laws can protect artists out there, because some of it is very good.

Hannah Blumenreich starts off her digital comic, Spidey Zine, with a disclaimer that reads: This is fan art and not official Marvel or Disney or what-ever and I’m going to shout this at every single person who handles this little comic collection because DEAR GOD if there is one thing I fear, it’s Disney Lawyers™. If her message doesn’t save her from the threat of legal troubles, it serves up a good laugh and sets the tone for a collection of short stories that pays tribute to the comic relief Spider-Man bring to comics when fighting villains or battling personal problems. Blumenreich’s short stories remind readers that Spider-Man was a teenager, trying to fit in, understand girls, figure out how to fight crime, and deal with Aunt May and a troubled past before he started to age, deal with clones and get rebooted.

The collection brings together seven stories that use one to four pages to show slice of life scenes that play with Spider-Man characters and their history. Most are built around jokes or uncomfortable moments that make you laugh, like a splash page with an in-costume Peter sitting on the couch with Aunt May while he holds her yarn and yells at The Gilmore Girls as she knits and tells him to sit on the cushions. Though the show he’s watching might date the target audience, the scene reminds readers that Spider-Man started off as a teenager, the Marvel super hero the audience could see themselves in, the relatable kid with nerdy interests and super powers.

These nerdy interests kick off the zine with Spidey swinging through the city while singing Leonard Nemoy’s “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”. Watching a science nerd sing Spock’s ode to a character from the hobbit shire, drawn with classic action shots, easy lines and fluid pacing make “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” a quick ride with the perfect trifecta of nerdom comedy.

What makes the lives of Peter Parker and Spider-Man different from others is that he’s always facing girl troubles no matter if it’s with the mask (Black Cat) or without it (Mary Jane). In Spidey Zine, the main character gets his share of girl troubles. There’s a comical re-imagining of Peter’s introduction to Mary Jane in “Face It, Tiger”, and a story where he creates a missed connection by spending too much time talking about television to a girl that wants Spider-Man to get her home safely on Halloween in “Walk Home”.

Family is another important theme to Spider-Man stories, and Spidey Zine doesn’t neglect that element. “Uncle Ben” shows how words aren’t needed in comics. One of the bigger stories, “Uncle Ben” uses its panels to go through the losses in family Peter experiences to emphasis the importance of Aunt May. The lack of words paired with images that are filled with detail and information slow the tempo down and turn “Uncle Ben” into an honest story that starts off breaking your heart before leaving it mended and warm.

Because it uses a hot property, Hannah Blumenreich may not be able to charge you for it. But if you enjoyed her Not Quite Journal Comics, you may want to see her apply her sense of humor and stylish work with a pen in Spidey Zine. If so, you can download it for free or donate what you want by visiting her web store, and hoping it doesn’t see the same conclusion Air Pirates Funnies did, when it used Disney characters.