Posted in: Comics, Speculator Corner, Spider-Man | Tagged: Characters, film, marvel, spider-man: homecoming, spoilers

Spider-Man: Homecoming And The Quarter Bin Comics Heading For The Wall – Speculator Corner Special

Published Thu, 29 Jun 2017 09:30:23 -0500

Last updated Tue, 04 Oct 2022 12:17:32 -0500

Spider-Man: Homecoming features plenty of recognisable characters. Spider-Man, Aunt May, The Vulture, Iron Man, Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, Flash Thompson, Liz Allen and many more. But reports coming out of screenings seen by comic book fans have revealed plenty more. And there are lots of villains from Spider-Man that keen fans will be identify by their names, as well as the confirmed Shocker and Vulture – we're talking the rest of the Sinister Six, and more. We'll probably talk about that in other Easter Egg-spotting articles.

But right now we want to concentrate on lots of side characters pulled straight out of very specific Spider-Man comic books.

The big two are Untold Tales of Spider-Man created by Kurt Busiek and pencilled by Pat Olliffe from 1995, set in Peter Parker's earlier career as Spider-Man, in which the film also takes place. And also from Busiek is the Amazing Fantasy series of Spider-Man stories from #16 to #19, set directly after the character's 1961 appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 but before the character got his own title with Amazing Spider-Man #1. These few issues were also published in 1995 by Kurt Busiek and Paul Lee. And then there's Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, initially created by Peter David and Mike Wieringo, in 2005 and handily just recollected in trade paperback form. "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" gets said a lot in the film. Setting up the name of the sequel already?

As much as Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original comics, these three series seem to have provided much of the impetus, tone and character base for the new movie, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration that collectors for whom first appearances of characters who then appear in movies might pick up pretty much every copy of these series and then work out exactly whose first appearance is in which comic book afterwards.

But here are a few to start with.

Sally Avril appeared first in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1961, but her character becomes the superhero character Bluebird in the Busiek/Lee issues that followed thirty-five years later. Spoilers, the character gets killed in a car accident in Untold Tales, and another unnamed character in the movie is the student who drove the car. The teacher Mr Harrington is a character from Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man who, in the comics, gets involved with Mysterio. And Brian McKeever is a classmate who first appears in Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #1.

And beyond these comics, there's also a possible first appearance of Cindy Moon, the character who was retconned into being a classmate of Peter Parker and who was bitten by the spider subsequently, and became the superhero Silk. Her first appearance was a little more recent, Amazing Spider-Man Vol 3 #1 as Cindy and #3 as Silk.

And another classmate is Seymore O'Reilly who was also in Amazing Fantasy #15. But in Marvel Knights Spider-Man #7, the character was revived to be killed by Venom. Could he be turning up again for the same purpose in a film starring that character?

All these issues (apart from Amazing Fantasy #15) are available on eBay for less than two bucks. Often a lot less. And sets that bring the prices down even further.