Marvel Essentials We'll Probably Never See No.4

As with life in general, things started to go wrong for Marvel in the mid-1980s. 

Not that it seemed so at the time. In fact, things seemed very rosy indeed. A sharp rise in specialist comic retailers (catering to collectors and die-hard fans) and improvements in distribution allowed the company to target audiences and experiment to an unprecedented degree.

This can now be seen as the top of the mid-1990s slippery slope that led to Marvel almost single-handedly causing the comic industry to self-implode by inundating an increasingly irritated readership with over-exposed characters, multiple covers, trading cards and holograms. Some unique and wonderful things did happen, though.

One of which was Star Comics, a Marvel imprint aimed at younger children. Which was a good thing, encouraging reading and a love of comics in readers of both sexes who weren't that interested in super-heroics.

In amongst the usual movie and toy merchandising tie-in titles (Care Bears, Masters of the Universe, Muppet Babies, Star Wars: Ewoks etc etc), we got this guy here...

ESSENTIAL PETER PORKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-HAM Vol.1

Debuting in a punningly-titled 1983 one-shot called Marvel Tails (geddit?) Peter Porker was an unassuming spider who was bitten by a radioactive pig. Mutating into a porcine youth with the powers of a spider, Peter was adopted by the very pig that bit him - May Porker - was employed as a photographer by J. Jonah Jackal and attempted to win the affections of Batty Brant and Mary Jane Waterbuffalo.

And let's not forget his Marvel co-stars, such as Captain Americat, Deerdevil and the Fantastic Fur, to name but a few.

CAN YOU SPOT THE SUBTLE ANTHROPOMORPHIC HUMOUR YET?

Marvel never had a great track record with self-parody comics, and always struggled to make them genuinely witty and amusing. But ironically, targeted primarily at children and using an inventive angle, this was one Marvel humour title that actually sort-of worked.

("Bitten by a radioactive pig"... damn, I'm really proud to have written that).

Peter's solo series was one of Star's flagship titles, and lasted 17 issues. Star Comics was dissolved and absorbed by Marvel soon after.

And I am unable to show you a sample issue this time, since nobody downloads them anyway and my file host is deleting all my unused files.

Which is your loss.