Freak Comics

Looks like Michael Turner has dome some cover art for Fantastic Four #544, which seems to be featuring a new FF team consisting of Storm, Johnny Storm (no relation of course), the Thing, and Black Panther. Marvel’s ploy to sell issues has worked on me… I’ll be picking this issue up and if it’s any good I might add Fantastic Four to my list.

Spider-Man is one of the greatest super heroes ever created. Geeks can relate to him. He embodies rebellion and youth. He has a smart-mouth and cool super-powers, yet maintains a feeling of an average guy who just can’t seem to catch a break.

Lots has changed for old Spidey in recent times. He’s got a new costume and he’s revealed his secret identity to the world. Now everything is exposed and open. The world knows what we’ve known all along, that Spider-Man is really Peter Parker.

But here’s something you don’t know about Peter Parker, and it’s rather disturbing: Peter Parker was molested as a child… it’s true!

Before I get to the details, let me start at the beginning. I went to the comic shop to buy my latest issues and struck up a conversation with the workers about public service comics. One of them said “have you ever seen the one were Peter Parker gets molested?”. I hadn’t. They had two of these issues on hand. After hearing a brief synopsis dictated to me by one of the workers, I slapped down a dollar bill and became the not-so-proud owner of Spider-Man and Power Pack, a PSA comic on child abuse.

Public service comics are nothing new. The unique thing about this particular comic is that Marvel allowed Peter Parker, their greatest creation, to have a past in which he was molested… by an older guy none-the-less.

It goes down like this:

Geeky Peter Parker becomes friends with an older boy named Skip who lives with his Mother (go figure).

The two hang out all the time until one day Skip shows Peter some dirty magazines.

Then skip makes a move on Peter, who is “too frightened to leave…”. Yuck!

While this comic was created with good intentions in mind, it made me uncomfortable to buy and read. On one hand I say it’s a nobel effort, on the other: a terrible marketing move and really disturbing. It’s also pretty pathetic that kids have to be told these things in comic books, because their parents don’t bother educating them.

A lingering question I’ve had since seeing this is, does this comic have a bearing on continuity? In other words, in the actual Marvel Universe are we to believe that Peter Parker was actually a victim of abuse in his past or was this to be taken outside of the Marvel Universe’s continuity?

There is a pretty interesting student documentary dealing with the comic book culture on You Tube by Robin Harman.
It is a little heavy on the Marvel side of things but it does have an interview with Glenn Fabry (an artist who has done work for DC Comics among others) and the end credits are kinda cool. Over all it’s worth the watch if you have some time to kill.

Comic Book Culture Part 1

Comic Book Culture Part 2

Comic Book Culture Part 3

A short time ago I asked you guys whether or not I should keep posting news articles. A few people replied and said no. While I agree that having news posts in the main section of this site is rather dumb (this site is supposed to be all about original content) I really do want to provide the latest news to my readers. This has been a problem in times past due to time constraints.

Well, I’ve come up with a solution: Freak Comics News is a new website I’ve started that automatically tracks news from Marvel, DC and Image comics. There are also a few extra features in there, such as feeds to my site as well as some Flickr photos.

This new feature / site is pretty sweet, however there are a couple of things that I will be working on producing immediately following this release. These include an RSS feed that encompasses all news shown there, more sites linked, as well as some other cool features that I can not share with the public at this time. I will keep you up to date of these changes as they occur via this weblog.

It is my hope that my readers will benefit from Freak Comics News by getting all of the latest comic book related headlines in one place.