Spider-Man in the Alternative Era: Reassessing McFarlane and Larsen / R. W. Watkins

Spider-Man in the Alternative Era:

Reassessing McFarlane and Larsen

R. W. Watkins

It’s hard to believe that it’s been some 25 years since Todd McFarlane took over the pencils on Amazing Spider-Man. Since his inaugural issue in March of 1988, the world has witnessed the implosion of communism in Eastern Europe; engaged and debated two Gulf Wars; experienced the rise and decline of ‘alternative’ rock music and ‘cutting-edge’ television; facilitated the personal computer and fostered the ubiquity of the internet; and endured the slings and arrows of religious fundamentalism and associated terrorism. A lot can happen in a quarter of a century. The hype and mystique surrounding an artist and his kind can, like the frivolities of youth, dissipate with the passage of time, and, consequently, an objective opinion emerge. For this reason, I thought now was a good time to revisit the Spider-Man of my university years and reconsider the contributions of McFarlane and his successor Erik Larsen.

To be completely honest with you, I wasn’t overly fond of McFarlane’s work on Spider-Man upon my initial encounter. The first issue I picked up was No. 316—a key early Venom issue. This was during the fall semester in my first year of university in late ’88. Now, keep in mind, at this time Marvel Tales was reprinting several of the classic Amazing Spider-Man story arcs from the late ’60s / early ’70s (e.g., Nos. 88-92, 96-98, 121-122). Let’s face it: it’s rather difficult for a relative newcomer like Todd McFarlane to hold up well against tried and true ground-breakers from the comic’s halcyon days like John Romita and/or Gil Kane.

So, in comparison, I thought McFarlane’s art made the characters look rather silly and unrealistic—especially when out of costume. Some people were saying that his style was a little like Steve Ditko’s, but I didn’t see it at the time. Maybe I was overwhelmed—Peter Parker’s facial expressions were particularly annoying. Furthermore, by the end of the ’80s I was sick of seeing women with big hair—Mary-Jane Watson being no exception. McFarlane’s argument for such bold changes was that he saw everything about Spider-Man as being “stuck in the ’60s”. Well, there were quite a few of us from Generation X who wanted every little hint of ’60s and ’70s culture that we could wrap our minds around by the end of the boring 1980s; so, for me, putting Amazing Spider-Man through an ’80s filter towards the end of the decade seemed a little like a last straw at the time.

Ironically, when McFarlane was granted his own ‘adjectiveless’ Spider-Man title in 1990, I was immediately hooked. Yes, the stories were rather weak at first, but at least they were now entirely his own. It appeared that in order for the characters to work most effectively at his hands, McFarlane needed to be completely in control of his own Spider project—or at least ‘his own’ in theory. Not unexpectedly, his writing style was immediately panned by critics for being inept and unprofessional. In an interview with Gary Groth in 1992, he responded to such criticism in the following manner:

“[...] I didn’t let some little thing like not being able to write stop me, so I didn’t really see where that should actually be that much of a problem. I just wanted to test to see how much balls people had.” (The Comics Journal No. 152, 1992, p. 46)

McFarlane went on to admit that he was not a good writer, but what made his comics work was the fact that “the whole is better than the parts of it” (p. 59). What McFarlane lacked in traditional literary skills he compensated for in visual atmosphere and a cinematic pacing heavily dependent on abrupt transitions and match cuts. Story arcs like ‘Torment’ and ‘Masques’ were discordant, hellish and Cronenbergian—not unlike the experience of being caught in a fever or bad dream.

As for his unprecedented style and unorthodox renderings of the characters, one could fairly easily isolate the Spider-Man title mentally—it seemed to exist in its own universe. McFarlane upped the ante on language and subject matter. Cocaine addicts, child pornographers, paedophilic goblins, child-killing cops—the Spider-world of Todd McFarlane gelled perfectly with the contemporaneous Twin Peaks of David Lynch. By comparison, the campus-haunting acid pushers and criminally insane Osbornes of Gil Kane and Ross Andru now appeared about as disturbing as an old after-school special featuring Kristy McNichol.

One can make a reasonably good argument, in fact, that Spider-Man in many ways also replaced or absorbed the classic horror comics of old. With its often grotesque imagery, paranormal characters (Calypso, Hobgoblin, Ghost Rider) and other supernatural elements, Spider-Man may have actually filled a void left by the 1970s DC ‘mystery’ titles in particular. (It should be pointed out, however, that this horror ethos did not entirely subside with McFarlane’s—or later Larsen’s—departure from the title. Supernatural themes persisted in the ensuing years, while the art of Jae Lee on Nos. 41—43 often brought to mind the jarring diagonal lines and long shadows of ’70s DC horror artist E. R. Cruz.)

Such deviation from earlier models of storytelling ultimately spelled the end of McFarlane’s tenure at Marvel, of course.

Also rather ironically, I thought Erik Larsen was a better fit at Amazing Spider-Man than his immediate predecessor. They were both rather ‘cartoony’, but at the time I definitely preferred Larsen’s work on the title over McFarlane’s. With hindsight, a lot of it had to do with the inking and the colouring. Inkers like Randy Emberlin and colourists such as Bob Sharen darkened up the blue elements of Spider-Man’s costume to the point where they often appeared purely black. Red and black are the traditional colours of anarchy, and the suit seemed to pay tribute to various stages of the character’s evolution at the hands of various artists. I’m not sure how much input Larsen had into such inking and colouring, but I remember thinking at the time, Why hasn’t someone done this before? Larsen and his henchmen seemed to be finally getting things right.

Larsen also played up the sexuality of the female characters, establishing himself as the Milo Manara of superhero comics without ever realising it. Characters such as Mary Jane and the Black Cat were often seen from behind—sometimes with their bums high in the air. He gave one the impression that he was an anal and dog-position enthusiast. Whatever the truth, such images were not exactly unappealing to the target audience of young males!

The majority of Larsen’s most definitive attributes persisted into the adjectiveless Spider-Man, when, in 1991, he replaced McFarlane for the second time. It was while working on this title that he also assumed the role of writer, scripting the six-part ‘Revenge of the Sinister Six’ storyline. This may very well have been the high point of his stint at Marvel. As he explained it in an interview a couple of years ago:

“The thing is, I left Amazing Spider-Man because I wanted to write. So I put in a pitch for doing Nova, and they just were taking their sweet ass time about it, and meanwhile Todd left the new Spider-Man book. They needed somebody on there, so they hired me to do that.” (‘Erik Larsen: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time’, interview by Jason Sacks; the Comics Bulletin website)

Of course, by 1992 both McFarlane and Larsen had joined forces with fellow Marvel discontents Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee in the formation of Image Comics. The artists who had been part of the problem were now making an unprecedented attempt to become part of the solution. Ultimately, of course, their seizing of creative control merely spelled the beginning of another, maybe bigger problem—albeit a very lucrative one. [That’s another re-evaluative essay for another occasion!] Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Frankly, in spite of their grotesque imagery and darker subject matter, I think McFarlane’s and Larsen’s success at Marvel had a lot to do with nostalgia, and the company getting back to its early days. As I’ve pointed out, McFarlane was initially compared to Ditko, and Larsen picked up where McFarlane left off. It’s obvious that someone at Marvel wanted references to Ditko and Marvel’s glory days of the early to mid 1960s. Tony Salmons’s pencils on the five issues that comprise the short-lived Dakota North series (1986-’87) were an early blatant attempt at this, I think. Salmons’s work more resembles Frank Miller’s than Steve Ditko’s, true; but his use of more/smaller panels and introductory character balloons on the title page immediately brought Ditko to mind. Exactly who’s idea it was and how far up the food chain it went is unknown. I contacted Tony Salmons regarding such an agenda, but he had not responded to my email at the time of writing.

David Wallace has stated that, “McFarlane’s fifteen issues of Spider-Man are now (perhaps slightly unfairly) held up alongside the likes of X-Force as the epitome of everything that was wrong with 1990s comics, and their cash-in approach to the then-booming speculator market precipitated the near-collapse of the industry” (‘The Complete Todd McFarlane Spider-Man’, David Wallace; the Comics Bulletin website). McFarlane and his Marvel contemporaries certainly benefited from the speculator market, true; but some question must remain as to the intentions of each individual artist. As McFarlane told Gary Groth in the aforementioned interview:

“[...] Take a look at the first issue of Spawn, you see how many variations there are on that book. One comic book, you get it, that’s it.

“I’m not really a big fan of multiple covers, if that’s what you’re asking, because I think it’s cheating the public. I think that you’re selling them the same product twice. [...]” (The Comics Journal No. 152, 1992, p. 54)

In other words, there’s no hard evidence that McFarlane himself (or Erik Larsen) had a “cash-in approach” to drawing and writing comics. In my opinion, the crash of the speculator market had as much to do with seasoned comics lovers growing dissatisfied with weak, hackneyed, multi-title story arcs as what it did publishers like Marvel exploiting youthful naivete with multiple covers and other machinations, and consumer realisation of such.

When all is said and done, McFarlane and Larsen represent the last grand gasp of Spider-Man as a viable comic-book entity—indeed, the last grand gasp of Marvel Comics in general, and maybe even mainstream comics as a whole. Clones, clones of clones, and bankruptcy ensued. Whatever genuine talents the Mark Bagleys of the world possessed were overshadowed by the hologram covers, polybags, and extended story arcs over an ever-expanding line of Spider titles. Add to this the introduction of glossy paper and computer colouring, and the artists become an even less significant cog in the machinery of the medium. To seasoned enthusiasts, the mainstream superhero comics of the past decade and a half don’t even look or feel like comic books to begin with. As for the literary side of the equation, a sense of narrative is quite often diminished or lost entirely under the weight of the overwhelming production values.

Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen were important to the Spider-Man titles because they were symbolic of a generational and sociocultural shift. Just like the elder John Romita during the flower power era, they were the right people in the ‘right’ place at the right time. They were drawing and writing the webslinger in an era when the underground art and unaddressed youth cynicism of the ’80s were on the verge of becoming the mainstream; and the grotesque imagery and dark, cynical themes that they brought to the character fit well with the work of those more closely associated with this ‘alternative’ movement of sorts. The Spider-Man of McFarlane and Larsen, the ‘alternative’ comics of Charles Burns and Dan Clowes, the films and television of David Cronenberg and David Lynch, the ‘grunge’ rock and inner city rap of Sub Pop and Def Jam—all seemed to converge at the same creative and thematic point for the sake of an angst-ridden yet maturing Gen-X audience. For a brief time, Spider-Man seemed to inhabit the same universe as Big Baby and Laura Palmer. One can be pretty certain that Hypnolovewheel, if not Soundgarden, provided the soundtrack to this strange realm.

By the early 1990s, the Miami Vice fashions and hair-metal power ballads had been reduced to little more than quaint and embarrassing relics for future ’80s nostalgia. We had a feeling we weren’t in Kansas anymore, and McFarlane and Larsen were there to reassure us Gen-X hipsters that the bleakness and cynicism were justified, and that a major mainstream superhero like Spider-Man could relate. Whether or not they were aware of this is largely irrelevant—not even Peter Bagge, apparently, was aware of Hate’s relevance to the grunge element of Generation X until the journalists and sociologists had told him of such. What truly matters was their ability to tap into the burgeoning zeitgeist that would shape ’90s youth culture and come to define an era. Given the admitted weaknesses of these two artists and the editorial resistance they encountered, that’s no small accomplishment.