Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: spider-man

Marvel's First Spider-Man? Human Spider of Man Comics 26, at Auction

Marvel's Man Comics #26 from 1953 features a Spider-Man prototype radiation-transformed human spider at Los Alamos Laboratory.

Launched in 1949, Marvel's Man Comics was a title without a clear identity, at least in the beginning.  The series began as a general adventure title that occasionally strayed into crime territory.  That all changed with the onset of the Korean War, with the title becoming a war comic book for Man Comics #9-25.  The series then came into an entirely different focus, following the interconnected Cold War espionage saga of father-son government "troubleshooters" and their family.  This reboot gets off to a fantastic start in Man Comics #26 as United Nations agent Lance Brant investigates a security breach at the H-Bomb project of Los Alamos Laboratory which puts him on the trail of a human spider.  The details of this story would seem to make this 1953 the first Marvel Spider-Man prototype.  It's an even better Spidey prototype than the much later Journey into Mystery #73, and the highest-graded CGC VF/NM 9.0 Off-white to white pages copy of Man Comics #26 (Atlas, 1953) is up for auction in the 2024 October 24 – 25 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40272 at Heritage Auctions.

Like the later Journey into Mystery #73, the Man Comics #26 story takes place at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico.  Lance Brant has arrived on the scene to investigate the theft of an H-Bomb related device called the H-Ray.  The investigation quickly leads him into the caverns of the New Mexico desert, where he discovers that a hermit who has become a human-spider hybrid has stolen the plans and created radiation-powered devices based on them.  The implication seems to be that radiation exposure, perhaps from experiments or testing in the region, has somehow transformed this recluse into a man with spider-like characteristics who can become a giant spider at will.  That overall transformational concept as the result of radiation exposure was certainly a science fiction theme of this particular early 1950s era.  In the end, Lance Brant muses, "Was he human, or spider? Guess I'll never really know."

Man Comics #26 is every bit the prototype that Journey into Mystery #73 is, plus it's eight years earlier and actually involves a human spider. The artist on this human spider story is John Forte, best remembered for his early run on Legion of Super-Heroes in Adventure Comics.  The writer is unknown, but Stan Lee is credited as editor, and this is obviously a very early example of a kind of story that would become familiar at Marvel.  This one seems to be surprisingly elusive: This CGC 9.0 copy of Man Comics #26 is the highest-graded and only copy on the CGC census.  It's also the first time that Heritage Auctions has offered a copy of this issue, and that copy is up for auction in the 2024 October 24 – 25 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40272 at Heritage Auctions.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!