Disclaimer: Real horrible comics below not for children.
This spec comes from a friend with 50 years of following Spider-Man. There’s two highly controversial Spider-Man books from the late 70s and mid 80s worth a cheap pickup. Up first Spider-Man gets molested.
This book Spider-Man and Power Pack from 1984 was a free give away not sold in stores. It was given away in a few newspapers around the country. There’s a few different variations of this cover some saying what newspaper the book came from, some say free on the cover some don’t. This is the most horrible non adult comic I’ve ever read.
It starts out with Spidey swinging in a window to stop a boy being molested by his babysitter. Spidey then goes on to tell a story presumably about him a young boy in glasses who lives with his aunt and uncle that was raped by another older boy.
I’ll only post one panel so you can read this gem for yourself. But apparently the biggest baddest Spider-Man villain is a guy named Skip. The Power Pack part of this book is about runaway children not nearly as bad as the first half of the book.
Up next we have the 1978 classic released with Planned Parenthood The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Prodigy. No this isn’t the metal techno band Prodigy from the UK, its a alien with the power of suggestion named Prodigy. This alien goes around using his power to suggest to teens they have unprotected sex. He does this so he can steal the babies and enslave them on his home planet. Again another highly controversial book that would never be released today.
I think both these books have potential, controversy sells and they were freebies from decades ago not sold in comic shops making them not very common to find. Both are real cheap the first book can be found for a couple bucks to $10 for higher grades. The second book goes for a bit more and will set you back $10-$20. I never knew about these until recently and they are a must for every Spider-Man collector to own a copy of these.
I think there was a national campaign that year using Spider-Man to teach about abuse. We had a school assembly and a guy dressed as Spidey talked to us about kidnapping and unwelcome touching. I remember some kid asked him to climb on the walls, but I don’t remember how he waved that away. We didn’t get to keep copies of the comic, either.
…an alien needed to convince teens to have unprotected sex? Aren’t young people always trying to hump as it is? I get Planned Parenthood was trying to promote safer sex as opposed to sex-shaming and only promoting abstinence (as a former sexual health professional I can tell you abstinence-only education doesn’t work), but that’s just a wonky plot.
Controversy sells…if the controversy happened today. I don’t think there will be too much controversy about a book that was published 40 years ago, and is not in print today, imo.
Having said that, WTF are these books? Peter getting molested? Jesus Murphy. Poor editorial choice? Lol
I have seen some arguments. I’m not sure how much is a good faith argument and how much is a bad faith argument. I have been enjoying the mini-series but I have not read this issue yet. Therefore I cannot offer an opinion on its content and simply say if controversy helps it sell I’m gonna swing by the comic shop and get some more copies.
I mean, it would be kind of cool to see captain America fighting vampires. He doesn’t necessarily have to be Blade. I swear there’s this one Captain America anniversary issue Gene Colan illustrated where he actually fights vampires and it was really cool.
