Number 860


The Fantastic Spider


I don't know a whole lot about the background of today's subject.

I know very little about comics from the UK, and I don't want to expose more of my ignorance than is necessary. I'm interested in UK comics, but I just don't get to see many of them. I'm interested in the character The Spider because I read that many of his stories were written by Superman creator Jerry Siegel. I also have a couple of 1971 Spider digest-sized comics in French, called Spiderman.


Spider was once a villain who turned hero. You can read more about him here.

This story from the 1977 Vulcan Annual reads like Jerry Siegel and the work he was doing for the Archie Comics revival of their MLJ heroes in the mid-1960s. The unidentified artist drew it for black line printing, and it seems much moodier than most American comics of the era.

It's my understanding that the comic, Vulcan, was a reprint comic, no longer being published.

I found these Spider scans on, appropriately enough, the web, and want to send out thanks to the anonymous scanner who posted them.