Spider-Man & Friends (Toybiz Promo)

Background

This comic book looks innocent enough, but it's a relatively pricey and hard-to-find little item.

As of 2025, a VF/NM copy will set you back close to $200. Let's have a look inside and see what all the fuss is about.

Story Details

Slightly undersized for a comic book, this measures in at 6.6" x 9.9". There are 32 pages, of which 20 have content, and the rest are advertisements for other Marvel books and toys.

The illustrations are in the "Spider-Man & Friends" style made popular around 2002 by Paradise Books Inc.. The text is taken from the lyrics of the songs on the Spider-Man & Friends CD (Spider-Man 2003).

I've reproduced the first double-page spread for you, so you can get a taste of what we're dealing with.

Spidey and friends!
They will be friends
right till the end!
One for all and all for one.
When they get together
they have lots of fun.

Lyrical clichés shamelessly stolen of course from Queen "Friends will be Friends" and from Shakespeare, by way of Alexandre Dumas' "Three Musketeers".

General Comments

That single example should give you the gist. It doesn't get any better from that point onward, I can assure you.

Overall Rating

A sickly-sweet message of "friendship" used as a shameless vehicle to sell products to children. Could anything be more "American" than this?

Unfortunately, there's no redeeming side to this book. There's no self-awareness or deeper message. This promo comic has bent the knee to corporate America — willingly, hungrily, shamelessly.

In fact, it has bent both knees. It has "assumed the position".

Half a web.

Footnote

I'm going to have to go read a couple of Calvin and Hobbes collections to clear the fetid, lingering odor of this servile pap from my optical palate.

Yes, I'm aware I've mixed three different senses in that metaphor. It's not my fault. I'm still suffering a deep-seated nausea.