February 1967: The Superannuated Man

The Web of the 1960s was probably the most interesting of a not-very-interesting collection of revivals and revamps of Archie Comics’ superheroes.

“Here’s an idea; superhero as browbeaten spouse,” wrote Rik Offenberger and Chris Squires in The MLJ Companion. 

“With a conceit lifted straight out of the day’s inane TV situation comedies (as in plots centered on dishonesty, secrecy and resentment), writer Jerry Siegel resurrected the Web as suburban, middle-aged husband John Raymond who begrudges his domestic duties and suffers the disdain of a stereotypically nagging mother-in-law. He also happens to consistently lie to wife Rosie, a marital partner who justifiably worries about the aging professor getting injured during his outings as a costumed crimefighter.”

John Raymond his own doubts about his aging, aching muscles. Just as we readers dreamed of a life of superheroic adventure, so did Raymond — the difference being that he’d actually had one 20 years before. 

The Web had been one of several Nazi-punching masked bruisers published by MLJ Comics during the 1940s, but he was now confined to fighting inattentive students and crabgrass. His wistful longing for what he’d lost was understandable and relatable.

Superheroes are almost universally urban, and placing one among the placid, manicured lawns of the suburbs made for an interesting contrast that was also characteristic of the postwar era. In America, 1950 was the first year that more people lived in suburbs than elsewhere.

Yes, the Mighty Comics features were groaningly camp, but this one had an angle that might possibly have amounted to something, in other hands at another time.

“Nothing epitomized the conflict between concept and execution more than the Web,” observed John Wells in American Comic Book Chronicles. “The intent was surely to evoke the personal conflicts experienced by the likes of Spider-Man, but the ongoing nagging of Rose Raymond was more shrill than funny. That’s not to say the feature didn’t have its moments.”

March 1966: The Weary Web of Middle Age

Think of 1966.

The young creators of the comic book superheroes were by then middle-aged, paunchy, with their dreams of glory replaced by worries about the mortgage and dental bills. And one of them was the 52-year-old Jerry Siegel, the Cleveland-born co-creator of Superman.

He and Joe Shuster had sold away the rights to that feature for $130, By 1966, wearied by financial worries and failed lawsuits to regain the rights to his creation, Siegel was taking writing jobs where he could find them. One of those places was Archie Comics.

Artist John Cassone had created the Web in 1942 as a bespectacled criminology professor who prowled the darkened streets in a green and yellow costume, a jingoistic bruiser who tackled brutal, fanged, hatchet-hurling Axis menaces.

In his first recorded adventure in Zip Comics 27 (July 1942), the Web rescued his student Rose Wayne from the Black Dragon, a Japanese torturer. In defiance of comic book convention, Rose immediately recognized her masked professor John Raymond.

Two decades passed. MLJ Comics renamed itself in honor of its most popular character, and then developed an offshoot, Mighty Comics — an awkward attempt to surf the wave of superhero revivals popularized by DC and Marvel.

So in Fly Man 36 (March 1966), in a story written by the pseudonymous Siegel (“Jerry Ess”), Rose and John are revealed to be placidly married and the Web is long retired. The series turns on the fact that he wants to return to a life of adventure while his wife is determined that he stay put.

In his teens, Siegel had co-created the world’s most influential superhero, a multi-media superstar who proved to be a money machine for his publishers. In his 50s, eking out a living as a freelancer, buffeted by a string of defeats, the embittered Siegel was writing about a superhero long past his prime who daydreamed about recapturing past glories.

Somewhere beneath all that heavy-handed humor sits a sad irony. 

November 1965: When the Mighty Go Camping

In January 1966, the overnight success of the Batman TV program led to a miscalculation in the entertainment industry.

The archly comical ABC show created to be “camp,” a term defined by Merriam-Webster as “…something so outrageously artificial, affected, inappropriate or out-of-date as to be considered amusing.”

The early TV stories, virtually lifted right from the comic books, didn’t sit so well on actual human beings in tights — even though it was fun to see Adam West address each crazy scheme involving puzzles, umbrellas, Rube Goldberg death traps and brightly colored knock-out gas as if it were the imminent detonation of a hydrogen bomb.

A 12-year-old then, I understood that the show was laughing at Batman, not with him. And I didn’t appreciate it one little bit when that same attitude backwashed into superhero comics — not just the Batman comics, but many other bandwagon riders.

Take the revived Archie Comics MLJ superheroes, for example. Subjected to the faux-Stan Lee writing of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and the indifferent art of Paul Reinman, 1940s stalwarts like the Web, the Shield, the Fox, Steel Sterling and the Black Hood became goofballs as the Fly-Man title turned into Mighty Heroes in 1966-67.

Only the Web — now a henpecked, middle-aged superhero making a comeback attempt — had the seeds of a real story, touching on themes that would be developed in superhero stories 20 or more years later.

But finally, once all the publicity dust settles, things that are said to be “…so bad they’re good” are usually, after all, just bad.

The Batman show, and the comic book superheroes that copied it, all quickly fell victim to the problem that afflicts every camp melodrama.

You can’t generate concern about the fate of characters after you’ve encouraged the audience to laugh at them by making them appear ridiculous. The ticking time bomb can’t be suspenseful when we know it’s really a jack-in-the-box.

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.