David Liss Gets Pulpy With "The Spider"

[CBR News]

Writer David Liss discusses his work on Dynamite Entertainment's reboot of "The Spider" and reimagining the classic pulp hero for the 21st century of comics with a modern sensibility.


Full article here.

[Brandon McKinnis]

Based on his work on Mystery Men and Black Panther, I'm ready throw money down on just about any project Liss is on. This looks/sounds like it will be great.

[BugsySig]

I didn't realize Liss was writing this. I LOVED Mystery Men, but I am giving up any hope of seeing those characters again anytime soon. I may have to check this out.

[Umbra]

I'm All in...can't wait to read this.

[Professor Moriarty]

The Spider is my favorite pulp character and he's the character that got me into pulp stories.

i'm really looking forward to this.

[dbcb314]

imma try it just out of support of Liss and his BP run.

I don't know anyting about this character though

[emb021]

imma try it just out of support of Liss and his BP run.

I don't know anyting about this character though

The Spider is one of the major pulp heroes, along with The Shadow, Doc Savage, Phantom Detective, G-8, Black Bat, and Operator #5. He had over a hundred stories over a decade.

Girasol is currently reprinting him in double novel collections. Moonstone has published a new collection of Spider prose stories and is doing comics based on the proper pulp version.

The Spider is a sort of ultra-violent version of The Shadow.

Here is the ultimate site on The Spider: http://homepage.mac.com/cdkalb/spider/

[Professor Moriarty]

The Spider is one of the major pulp heroes, along with The Shadow, Doc Savage, Phantom Detective, G-8, Black Bat, and Operator #5. He had over a hundred stories over a decade.

Girasol is currently reprinting him in double novel collections. Moonstone has published a new collection of Spider prose stories and is doing comics based on the proper pulp version.

The Spider is a sort of ultra-violent version of The Shadow.

Here is the ultimate site on The Spider: http://homepage.mac.com/cdkalb/spider/

if you read hellboy, Lobster Johnson is a homage to him.

[Mr. Holmes]

The Spider is a sort of ultra-violent version of The Shadow.

So Garth Ennis's Shadow is basically the Spider?

This does look good though. Will check out.

[the4thpip]

I quite liked Moonstone's comics, when I could get ahold of them. That Black & White & Red coloring was interesting, too.

[Ed Love]

So Garth Ennis's Shadow is basically the Spider?

This does look good though. Will check out.

Liss summed it up well. The scale of the foes and action was very different for the Spider vs the Shadow. The Shadow fought some colorful villains, but their crimes tended to be geared to be more ruthless gangster and organized crimes type with colorful elements. The Spider's were more on the level of anarchists and terrorists, not merely ruthless in their efficient but sowing terror and mayhem for crime and conquest. Not merely cold-blooded, but sadistic. Likewise, the tone of the stories were very different. While both were willing to kill those the Law could not apprehend or contain, the Shadow's sense of justice was almost analytical and dispassionate whereas the Spider's was hot-blooded.

Which is where the two seem to be going wrong from the previews we have seen. The tone for Ennis' Shadow is more in fitting with the Spider, and the artwork for the Spider so far is completely lifeless and dull (ironically this is almost always true when the art relies on using posed models and photographs to draw from) that I'm not sure what it's more in-fitting for. A true crime comic?. Art-wise, the Shadow should be more Gene Colan while the Spider by Frank Miller

And making Nita Van Sloan a married woman is all kinds of wrong and missing the point. If she's just some unattainable woman that he loves chastely from afar, it misses what makes her and her relationship with Wentworth unique (of all female love interests to heroes, theirs is the only one that seems to have true passion and romance, where you can really see what would draw the two of them together). If they do have a romantic relationship, even if they don't consummate the relationship, it lessens the characters as it means they are adulterers, cheating on her husband. A big part of the stories is not that she's forbidden fruit, but that they have this intense, passionate relationship but sadly cannot settle down in domestic bliss because of his vocation. It's not from fear of making her a widow as much as the resulting scandal if he's exposed and put on trial as a mass murderer.

[emb021]

if you read hellboy, Lobster Johnson is a homage to him.

Not really.

Lobster Johnson is a pulp hero with elements of many characters. The only think he picks up from The Spider, is the claw he burns into criminals. Unlike the Spider, he is NOT ultra-violent, and he doesn't deal with the same kind of threat (weird menace). He's more methodical, which the Spider is not, with a decent number of aides (more like the Shadow). The Spider went it along, maybe with help from Rama Singh.

[emb021]

Would agree with Ed Love's assessment.

[Professor Moriarty]

Not really.

Lobster Johnson is a pulp hero with elements of many characters. The only think he picks up from The Spider, is the claw he burns into criminals. Unlike the Spider, he is NOT ultra-violent, and he doesn't deal with the same kind of threat (weird menace). He's more methodical, which the Spider is not, with a decent number of aides (more like the Shadow). The Spider went it along, maybe with help from Rama Singh.

yeah you're right.

[Mr. Holmes]

With these pulp heroes becoming so niche, you would think the creators interested in writing an ongoing in the first place would care enough to have a better understanding of these characters.