So my 4-year old son is absolutely, completely, ridiculously obsessed with Spider-Man. I feel this is probably some sort of punishment for my sins as a comics critic. In any case, it has its ups and downs. Specifically, the downs are when he throws himself at my legs every, oh, 15 seconds, shouting, “I’m Spider-Man!” causing me to lurch chinward towards whatever piece of furniture is placed nearby. The ups are when he explains as he’s sitting on the toilet that Spider-Man doesn’t poop real poop; he poops webs.
But actually, the real worst part is the children’s books. Has anyone ever seen these things? There are several series of them. One’s published by DK Readers, and is written and I guess drawn by someone named Catherine Saunders. I’m sure she’s just the front name for a whole committee apparatus, but I must focus my ire somewhere, so I will hate her on general principles. Christ these things are horrible. The art is just ridiculous; the anatomy is so completely fucked up that even my son makes fun of it (one picture where Spider-Man’s leg ends in what appears to be a traumatized zucchini always causes him to look up at me hopefully and ask, “That’s a foot, right Daddy?”) And furthermore — and this is the kicker — there’s no story. None. I guess they just couldn’t be bothered with little things like plot, so instead it’s set up as a kind of Thrilling Encyclopedia of Boredom . “Spider-Man usually works alone, but sometimes even he needs help from his Super-Hero friends.” Now try reading that. A. Hundred. Times.
There’s another series based on the third Spider Man movie put out by HarperCollins which does in fact have a moderate effort at creating a story, and that’s a little better though, really, not much. My son does love them…but why do they have to be so, so bad? He likes Spider-Man videos too, and those are perfectly watchable; decent animation, entertaining action, etc. etc. Why do the books have to be such pieces of crap? I’ve actually been reading some of the old Lee/Ditko comics to him; he loves those too, and reading them doesn’t make me want to scrape out my eyes. If Marvel wants to get parents on board…or, for that matter, kids on board for the long haul…maybe they might consider putting a little imagination, or at least thought, into their customers first contact with their product. I mean, if they can’t find any artists, why not use some of Ditko’s original drawings? Please?
“Thrilling Encyclopedia of Boredom”
And that’s why you’re a superstar. Solid.
DC actually has done a much better job of adapting its characters to children’s books. Some of these are published by Dalmatian Press. My son is 7 now, but when he was around your son’s age, he had several of the DC ones which I gladly read to him over and over. Don’t know why the Marvel ones are so much worse.
DK also does a series of “official guides” to some comic characters which are pretty well done but might be aimed at older kids.
My nephew had an adaptation of the second film, and one thing that startled me — besides its excruciatingly shittiness — was that the two little black kids who marvel over Spidey’s web-capture of the bad guys’ car are depicted in the book as two little white kids. Now, it may very well be that the book was produced during filming and the editors had no idea the two kids would be played by black actors, but it added to the bad taste in my mouth from just looking at the thing.
DC also has a series of “informational” books which vary in quality, but are actually interesting to kids who like to get lots of, well, information. There’s an Aquaman guide to water and sea creatures…Green Lantern’s book of inventions, Batman’s guide to detection, and I’m sure Superman has one too. They have “information” about real world things in the main text and then the margins are filled with asides and info about the superhero and his/her amazing friends, enemies, etc. They’re not bad, since they actually do contain some informative snippets, while supposedly tricking the kids into caring by showing us lots of superheroes in the margins. There’s also a pretty good “story of Wonder Woman” which just gives you the origin story… We got one Marvel one on the Fantastic Four but it scared my daughter so I never got the “chance” to read it to her. One downside is that the art in most of these tends to be from ’90s and ’00s comics and comics artists. No Curt Swan or Neal Adams then, for unknown reasons
When your daddy is a comic book critic, you might as well read the kid Proust – anything related to your daily work is never going to satisfy. You should hear my grumblings to 6-month old Amelia about the baby-music CDs. I’ve taken to playing her recordings of John Cage prepared piano sonatas, just to clear my head.
all hail newman!