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  1. #1
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    Default Datasheet of High School Spider-Man in the Lee-Ditko Spider-Man

    I recently put together a post on my blog that I think might be worth people's time here.
    https://elvingsmusings.wordpress.com...spidey-really/

    For more than a week I've been reading every issue of Lee-Ditko Spider-Man, especially the time when Peter was in high school. This time I went panel-by-panel and page-by-page. The good thing about the L-D era is that it's short enough that you can actually go deep.

    The post is quite long and much of that explains and clarifies how I put the data together and what it does and doesn't do.

    For those who don't have the time. Here's the datasheet covering the first 30 issues of the Lee-Ditko era (and the 2 Annuals, AF#15).

    Each of the columns clarifies how many panels each issue features High School, features the Daily Bugle, features the Home setting:

    Panel Vector Datasheet.jpg

    Here's a High-Res:
    https://elvingsmusings.files.wordpre...atasheet-1.jpg

    If you have questions about this, go on the page-link above and I think I covered most of it. Please add comments, likes, and subscribes and so on.

  2. #2
    Extraordinary Member Jman27's Avatar
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    so only 30 issues. Peter they need to let you grow up buddy nostalgia been holding you back big time
    "He's pure power and doesn't even know it. He's the best of us."-Matt Murdock

    "I need a reason to take the mask off."-Peter Parker

    "My heart half-breaks at how easy it is to lie to him. It breaks all the way when he believes me without question." Felicia Hardy

  3. #3
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Very interesting. I didn't consider that the second annual didn't have Peter Parker appear in the main story.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jman27 View Post
    so only 30 issues. Peter they need to let you grow up buddy nostalgia been holding you back big time
    The most important issues, though. These were all reprinted a lot.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jman27 View Post
    so only 30 issues. Peter they need to let you grow up buddy nostalgia been holding you back big time
    Quoted for truth.They were pivotal, but still.

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    Moderator Frontier's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jman27 View Post
    so only 30 issues. Peter they need to let you grow up buddy nostalgia been holding you back big time
    Or at least more adaptions need to go like Spec and show him growing from high school to college.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    Very interesting. I didn't consider that the second annual didn't have Peter Parker appear in the main story.



    The most important issues, though. These were all reprinted a lot.
    So was the story after he graduated - ASM#31-33 which everyone says is the best and which Ditko clearly conceived for a grown-up post-teenage Peter.

  7. #7
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    Well Spiderman was about growth and progression then. I do not know where the stupid idea comes from that has to be young.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Naz View Post
    Well Spiderman was about growth and progression then. I do not know where the stupid idea comes from that has to be young.
    I read it was because of success of USM they felt he has to be young, but they had no source.It was from the Mr and MRs Spider-man blog IIRC.The one w/ most posts about MJ w/ big essays.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Naz View Post
    Well Spiderman was about growth and progression then. I do not know where the stupid idea comes from that has to be young.
    It comes from OMD and BND.

    This specific blog-post by then editor Tom Brevoort is especially the one that codified it.

    https://tombrevoort.com/2019/12/25/b...ah-blog-youth/

  10. #10
    I'm at least a C-Lister! exile001's Avatar
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    It never fails to surprise me how long Liz was actually gone.

    At graduation there were hints of something more going on with her (though that may have been her feeling she was losing her chance at Peter) and Molten Man had appeared by then, but she just vanishes. My faulty memory always places her returning and the Molten Man revelation a year or two later but it was actually about 8.
    "Has Sariel summoned you here, Azrael? Have you come to witness the miracle of your brethren arriving on Earth?"

    "I WILL MIX THE ASHES OF YOUR BONES WITH SALT AND USE THEM TO ENSURE THE EARTH THE TEMPLARS TILLED NEVER BEARS FRUIT AGAIN!"

    "*sigh* I hoped it was for the miracle."

    Dan Watters' Azrael was incredible, a constant delight and perhaps too good for this world (but not the Forth). For the love of St. Dumas, DC, give us more!!!

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by exile001 View Post
    It never fails to surprise me how long Liz was actually gone.

    At graduation there were hints of something more going on with her (though that may have been her feeling she was losing her chance at Peter) and Molten Man had appeared by then, but she just vanishes. My faulty memory always places her returning and the Molten Man revelation a year or two later but it was actually about 8.
    Part of that is that recently, they downplay the Betty Brant romance completely or the Daily Bugle at all. So Weisman's Spectacular Spider-Man, while a great cartoon and certainly quite accurate to the early Spider-Man runs in many ways, has Peter-Liz dating and Betty as a cameo. In comics, Peter and Liz never really dated or had a relationship but you see the opposite in the cartoon and in HOMECOMING.

    The major side-effect of the teenager-centrist reading of the Lee-Ditko run is that the Daily Bugle which was at the heart of the original run tends to be downplayed and diminished, Jameson is sidelined, as are the others.

  12. #12
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    [QUOTE][This specific blog-post by then editor Tom Brevoort is especially the one that codified it.
    /QUOTE]
    Tom Breevort wrote complete nonsense. Spiderman sold from 1968/1969 to 1994/1995 consistently until that foolish clone saga storyline. He seems to forget we do not live in the 1960s and 1970s. I cannot understand how Tom came to the conculsion that spiderman is about youth. As someone who read in the 90s as teenager it was about a guy trying his best to hold his marriege, his jobs and fighting villains.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Naz View Post
    Tom Breevort wrote complete nonsense. Spiderman sold from 1968/1969 to 1994/1995 consistently until that foolish clone saga storyline. He seems to forget we do not live in the 1960s and 1970s. I cannot understand how Tom came to the conculsion that spiderman is about youth. As someone who read in the 90s as teenager it was about a guy trying his best to hold his marriege, his jobs and fighting villains.
    There's a lot of talk in the industry about comics fans becoming writers that they tend to write as fans. But arguably fans turned editors are maybe more damaging...because a writer has obviously some amount of largesse in their personal taste and intepretations but an editors has to be there for all consumers, and all demographics, and accept the fact that a different take on the character has been popular and sold well in the past.

  14. #14
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    Impressive data you gathered, Jack.

    Like you mentioned in your conclusion, I don't know if we can quantify how "teenage" a character is. The show 6teen takes place entirely outside of high school at the mall where the protagonists work for a living, but the protagonists are teens and the show is more-or-less about teen life. The same can be said about Rebel Without A Cause, which is filmed mostly outside school, or teen-oriented Disney shows where half or most of the scenes are filmed outside of school.

    If there's anything that can quantify how "teen" a character or story is, it would arguably be the amount of time a character interacts with other teenagers in the story. And Lee/Ditko Peter frequently interacts with Betty, Liz, and Flash outside of school hours. Like you said, data is up for interpretation, so I don't know if that measures anything either. Just that if I had to pick a way to measure how "teen" a character is, it would probably be that.

    Also, while Peter spends more panel time at the Bugle, arguably a lot of that has to do with Betty, whom in the Lee/Ditko era was a teenager and Peter's girlfriend. Once Betty is aged up and no longer dating him, it's not logical for a teen Peter to always be at the Bugle, since he would just be dropping his pictures and collecting his cheque. All that Bugle time in the Lee/Ditko era could be just Lee and Ditko killing two birds with one stone by getting Peter to interact with a teen where you can tell a 'teen story' and tell the story of Peter the struggling working-class kid at the same time.

    These are just my quick thoughts.
    Last edited by Kaitou D. Kid; 09-17-2021 at 04:13 PM.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kaitou D. Kid View Post
    Impressive data you gathered, Jack.

    Like you mentioned in your conclusion, I don't know if we can quantify how "teenage" a character is. The show 6teen takes place entirely outside of high school at the mall where the protagonists work for a living, but the protagonists are teens and the show is more-or-less about teen life. The same can be said about Rebel Without A Cause, which is filmed mostly outside school, or teen-oriented Disney shows where half or most of the scenes are filmed outside of school.
    That's valid for certain. What teenage means or has come to mean changes decade by decade and normally speaking, if we could regard Lee-Ditko's run as separate from the uses (and misuses) made by Marvel Editorial, that could be seen as a broad-minded question since the idea of teenager as something apart or absent from growing up isn't a natural fit and Rebel Without A Cause is certainly a movie about teenagers struggling to grow up or as the director said, "It's about a boy who wants to grow up. Grow up fast" and over the course of the film rebel against their families by forming a counter-cultural family that also breaks up.

    Either case, the fact is that Marvel themselves have chosen the hill that "teenage" means high school/classwork and so on. You can see it by Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man, the Marvel Spider-Man cartoons of the last decade, the MCU Spider-Man. Lee-Ditko's Spider-Man is less "teenage" than that, evidenced by the fact that Jonah and Betty have far more diminished roles in those versions than before.

    Marvel's misinterpretations however limiting it is (not to mention condescending) has had real-time effects for some 20 years now and it's impossible to ignore or get past that when considering the question because Marvel bet the bank that their idea of teenage Spider-Man was at the heart of the Lee-Ditko era and if you look at it closely that's just not true. If you look at the Lee-Ditko run and break it down it's not in the least bit surprising the character grew up not only by the end of the run but continued to do so long after that. There wasn't any break between Ditko and the later writers in that respect.

    All that Bugle time in the Lee/Ditko era could be just Lee and Ditko killing two birds with one stone by getting Peter to interact with a teen where you can tell a 'teen story' and tell the story of Peter the struggling working-class kid at the same time.

    These are just my quick thoughts.
    That's true. The thing about Peter Parker is that he was a working-class superhero and a teenage superhero and both at the same time and Ditko emphasized both aspects. The more recent takes which emphasizes the "teenage" aspect downplays the working-class aspects to the point of it being non-existent.

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