When Spider-Man was “The Spiderman”

Posted by: Scott    Tags:  , ,     Posted date:  July 31, 2011  |  3 Comments


I’ve always prided myself on knowing in my bones that it’s Spider-Man (with a hyphen) and Superman (without), and I recently gave somebody I know a smackdown for leaving out that all-important hyphen. But I see now that even Marvel itself got mixed up at first, as this page from Amazing Fantasy #15 (Spidey’s debut, remember?) proves.

The third paragraph refers to the web-slinger not just as “Spiderman,” but as “The Spiderman”—something that as a former Marvel Comics proofreader makes my skin crawl!

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the last time Marvel messed up … but at least now I understand why others might get it wrong, too.





3 Comments for When Spider-Man was “The Spiderman”


Matthew Surridge

I can distinctly remember, when I was, oh, about 5 or 6 — that’d put it about 1980, or just before — looking at a piece of Spider-Man merchandise, and I want to say it was a puffy sticker, that called him “the Spider-Man.” And I couldn’t figure out at the time why it struck me as so wrong, since it was literally just “the Amazing Spider-Man” with the “Amazing” taken out. It was the same logo as the book used, in fact, just without the adjective.

Joe S. Walker

Here’s a British publisher printing stories of “The Spider-Man” in 1970:

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2008/02/road-to-marvel-uk-part-3.html

With some rather radical revisions – including having Spidey deciding to retire and meaning it!

    Scott

    Interesting! And also fun to see what the British books looked like before I joined the Marvel Bullpen and started editing them in 1974.