Spidey Writers Sunday: Roy Thomas

We had this thing in the previous version of the board; Sundays are when some poster starts a thread to discuss a specific Spidey writer, and Mondays are to discuss different artists.

I chose Roy Thomas for this week cause I've read a bunch of stories from him in the last couple of months, and whether it's Spidey or another character he wrote I feel the same way of his work, which I will relay in a later post.

I gotta admit though; if he was the one who saved Marvel from bankruptcy in the late 70s by deciding to allow for licensing [I]Star Wars[/I] comics then the man deserves admiration for his dedication to the craft and the company, so he was a deciding factor in us having the modern line of comics we either enjoy or love to rant about, and also paved way to making the Marvel movies, cartoons, and games of all kinds possible. So thank you for keeping the torch lit Roy.

His Spider-Man work was brief but important.

In four issues of Amazing Spider-Man, he introduced Gog and Morbius. And he wrote the debut of Marvel Team-Up.

I do think the six armed Spider-Man saga was pretty good. He also had a slightly more adult take on Peter Parker than Stan Lee did (when Gwen and Peter were talking about seeing a very risque Swedish film.)

Roy Thomas said that later that he didn't have any affinity for Spider-Man and that the title he really wanted to write was Fantastic Four. And I think that explains why his brief run on the character is quite weak. He introduced characters and concepts like Morbius and so on that should never have been introduced through ASM. The Savage Land two-parter aka Gwen-in-a-bikini aka ASM goes to Skull Island is especially bizarre and feels like something out of Jonny Quest (or for you younger folks The Venture Bros).

The Six-Arms Saga has a good plot and story...i.e. Spider-Man decides to remove his powers and accidentally gives himself six arms, that's very much a concept rooted in the character but the execution of that is just terrible, and ultimately it became an excursion to bring Morbius, his pet character, into Marvel. The entire concept of the story should be rooted in a personal story for Peter and the concept goes into the B-Movie roots of the character (i.e. '50s science fiction like The Fly and so on) but it doesn't fit.

Thomas' great runs for Marvel was the one he did on The Avengers, and some other peripheral titles, and of course Conan the Barbarian. But his ASM run is quite weak (and in that sense he anticipates Marv Wolfman and Dennis O'Neill who despite their success elsewhere had weak and unmemorable runs on the title). Sure Gog and Morbius have lasted but so has Calypso, Hydro Man and Madame Web introduced in O'Neill's run. Their presence hasn't elevated O'Neill's status. Don't see how it applies to Thomas.

spider-man fighting a vampire and a lizard man with six arms and then trying to murder an alien is king shit

Honestly, never been a fan of his work on anything he wrote. I don't know how long Kraven was supposed to have nursed Gog until that thing grew full size and was killed by Spider-Man, or when and how he first found the Savage Land, but it's a crap story.

The Gog story is so bad its a must read for any fan of Spider-Man, I think. Kind of more like you might expect to have seen in Spidey Super Stories, the series which infamously introduced the Thanos-copter, among other shenanigans. Not all comics have to be serious and heady.

[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;5152198]Roy Thomas said that later that he didn't have any affinity for Spider-Man and that the title he really wanted to write was Fantastic Four. And I think that explains why his brief run on the character is quite weak. He introduced characters and concepts like Morbius and so on that should never have been introduced through ASM. The Savage Land two-parter aka Gwen-in-a-bikini aka ASM goes to Skull Island is especially bizarre and feels like something out of Jonny Quest (or for you younger folks The Venture Bros).

The Six-Arms Saga has a good plot and story...i.e. Spider-Man decides to remove his powers and accidentally gives himself six arms, that's very much a concept rooted in the character but the execution of that is just terrible, and ultimately it became an excursion to bring Morbius, his pet character, into Marvel. The entire concept of the story should be rooted in a personal story for Peter and the concept goes into the B-Movie roots of the character (i.e. '50s science fiction like The Fly and so on) but it doesn't fit.

Thomas' great runs for Marvel was the one he did on The Avengers, and some other peripheral titles, and of course Conan the Barbarian. But his ASM run is quite weak (and in that sense he anticipates Marv Wolfman and Dennis O'Neill who despite their success elsewhere had weak and unmemorable runs on the title). Sure Gog and Morbius have lasted but so has Calypso, Hydro Man and Madame Web introduced in O'Neill's run. Their presence hasn't elevated O'Neill's status. Don't see how it applies to Thomas.[/QUOTE]

Fittingly, these all feel like plots you'd find in a FF comic.

The thing that saddens me though is that comments like these are why Spider-Man feels so limited nowadays. I'm still mad that they (not specifically Thomas) retconned the Tinkerer into being a normal human.

Roy Thomas have major props for following Stan Lee stories in Amazing Spider-Man quite well even if it was just for a few stories.
After a incredible clifhanger in Amazing Spider-Man#100 writen by Stan Lee to boot!
Gog and Morbius are characters that remained in the stories.The latter more that the former but Gog as can be seen in the current stories of Amazing Spider-Man is not a forgoten character by far.

I actually appreciate the “crazy” stories. It’s ridiculous that he supposedly lives in the city with the Fantastic Four and Avengers, and he can’t encounter the otherworldly stuff that they could just stumble upon.