July 1942: The Prof Who Packed a Punch

MLJ’s Golden Age “spider-man,” the Web, had a striking costume design, but a brief run. 

Nevertheless, his visual appeal alone was sufficient to insure that he’d be repeatedly revived.

“The Web wears a cape which is unique in that it is not of solid cloth; instead, it is of a loosely meshed web,” noted comics historian Michael E. Grost. “There are numerous holes in it between the lines of the web. Such a cape is unique among super-hero costumes.”

“The two sides of the Web's costume are in contrasting colors, yellow and green … The whole effect suggests a Harlequin figure.”

Created for Zip Comics 27 (July 1942) by artist John Cassone, the Web was John Raymond, an athletic and distinguished criminology professor who was inspired by the fact that his brother had fallen into a life of crime.

“Though he merely theorized about criminals by day, at night, in his green and yellow costume, he dealt with them in a more practical manner — trapping them, as he put it, in a web of their own making,” comics historian Don Markstein noted. 

“One suspects that Alex Raymond helped create a cultural ideal in his heroes — masculine, intelligent, courageous, highly competent and professional, not to mention very well dressed,” Grost noted. “One can also note the same last names in fiction character John Raymond and real-life cartoon artist Alex Raymond, and wonder if John Raymond were named in honor of the artist.”

In a reversal of the already-established superhero convention, the Web’s romantic interest — his student Rose Wayne — instantly saw through his disguise when he rescued her, and demanded to know why he was dressing up to fight crime. 

Two decades later she’d be Raymond’s domineering wife, and a nagging obstacle to his resumption of his crime-fighting career.

“(The Web) made only a dozen appearances in his original incarnation, but since then has turned up practically every time those old characters have been trotted out,” Markstein said.