Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: climate change, dan jurgens, environmentalism, marvel, recycling, spider-man

Eco-Conscious Marvel Recycles 90s Art for Spider-Man Variants

Published Fri, 19 Nov 2021 08:50:12 -0600

With the world heading toward an extreme weather apocalypse, some people feel that corporations aren't doing enough to stave off climate disaster, which is why they're moving to convert all of their assets to NFTs before the drought, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes sweep them all away. But one comic book publisher is proudly standing up for the environment and doing everything they can to prolong human civilization, and that publisher, of course, is the House of Ideas, Marvel Comic. And the way they're doing it is by recycling… some old Dan Jurgens art into a variant cover for Ben Reilly: Spider-Man #1, in stores in January. Thank you, Marvel.

From the press release:

This January, fans will get the chance to return to the era when Ben Reilly was the one, true Spider-Man in BEN REILLY: SPIDER-MAN, an all-new limited series by iconic Spider-Man scribe J.M. DeMatteis and explosive artist David Baldeón! To celebrate these untold adventures of Ben Reilly, Marvel is proud to unveil another hidden piece of Ben Reilly history: legendary artist Dan Jurgens' unused Ben Reilly costume design!

Jurgens' original design sheet and sketch art from 1995 will adorn BEN REILLY: SPIDER-MAN #1 as variant covers, and this bold costume may also play a surprising role in Ben Reilly's saga by the end of the new series…

In truth, Ben Reily: Spider-Man is a comic that could serve as a model for environmentally-conscious comic book publishing in the future. Everything about the comic is recycled. It takes place back in the 1990s, recycling the aura of comics' bygone era as well as recycling the Clone Saga storyline. And now this old Dan Jurgens sketch will be recycled twice for both a color and black and white variant cover. Sure, technically, variant covers encourage people to buy an entire comic book just to put it in a bag and never read it and probably buy a second, regular cover copy to read, so fine, if you're going to be pedantic about it, it's technically even more wasteful. But when it comes to the environment: it's the thought that counts.

Here's what Jurgen's had to say about saving the world:

Back in 1995 when we were launching the new SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN series with Ben Reilly taking over as Spidey, we decided to tweak his costume. Mark Bagley and I each took a swing and Mark's classic design—quite appropriately—was the winner. I filed the art away and pretty much forgot about it until the new series came up in a recent conversation and I happened to think of it. Definitely cool now that, after all these years, this other version will finally see the light of day as one of the variants to BEN REILLY: SPIDER-MAN #1. It's even more cool to be drawing Ben again, with regular variant covers for the duration of the series!

Check out the covers, and other covers, below, true believers!