Spider-Variant

Hey Terry, @cosmic-spider-man, did you buy this issue off the stands back in the day? I missed this one, but bought 148 and 150. Not sure why my collecting was so hit and miss until about issue 166, wherein I never missed another issue until 2009.

Yup, that's where I was leaning. Spidey looks bad in all blue.

It rhymes with Broke. Which is very apt for me.

Ok, a word was censored in my ASM 147 helicopter post. Odd word to censor, but I promise the word I used was not dirty.

Yes, that is weird. I don't even recognize the story, but it looks like John Buscema art, so I can place the time period.

Thanks Steve. I was laying in bed with my Marvel Essentials volume 7 by my side and just opened it up to that splash. I have always thought that bird was a little odd. I thought, well hell, Ross puts the name of the company that owned it right on the side, probably be an easy google to dig into.

Anyone every get curious about that helicopter Ross drew on the splash of Amazing Spider-Man 147? For some reason, I :censored: up this morning and decided to find out about it. As the story unfolds, Spidey is catching a ride on a helicopter to the city from the airport. He is returning from the Florida Everglades where he has just battled the Lizard and Man-Thing in GS Spider-Man #5. The story doesn't specifically identify the airport, but upon close observation, it can be identified as JFK airport. The helicopter is a NY Airways Sikorsky S-55, based on my quick research. NY Airways was one of a few companies in NYC where you could take a helicopter from airport to airport, or even to the top of the Pan Am building. The company went out of business in 1979 after a couple of fatal crashes. The weird thing for me was the floatation devices that Ross drew on the bottom of the aircraft. As I have come to find out after about three years of studying Ross's work, if he drew it, it was real. The flotation bags were required for flight over water with a single-engined helicopter. I'm not sure I would have trusted them though. Ross does a great job on the helicopter. I feel Ross drew a better plane or helicopter, than he did cars. Ross drew one giant floatation device on the very bottom, but it looks like it was actually split. The only other nit was Ross had the arrow in the Sky Bus logo the wrong direction, but hell that is really nitpicking on my part.

Score! I always wanted a Stan Lee signed copy. Never bought one. Spoiler Alert: Spider-Man and Superman win!

Of course the light blue/blue background of ASM 148 is another favorite.

I always found the covers with yellow backgrounds to be some of my favorite. Probably the contrast between the yellow of the background and red and blue of Spidey' suit made them pop.

Haven't bumped this in about 3 months.

Original Art from the entire Spider-Man vs the Prodigy! comic sold over on Hake's for $19.2K. There were 15 story pages that Ross laid out on 8 original art boards. So, about $2,400 per art board. There were some really nice pages Ross did for this book, but as it really isn't in the Spider-Man continuity, the book itself gets little love, which is ironic considering the story... Hmmm, did Spidey predict the future back in 1976 in that last panel?

I'm not much of a collector nor speculator these day but wanted to give your thread a bump.

$20 will almost get you two meals at McDonald's these days. That book is a better buy and much healthier for you. Good job!

Probably somewhere just over issue 200 or so, but I haven't put much effort into in years. Like I have opined, it felt like comics changed for me when Ross Andru left ASM after issue 185. I'm sure that's a minority opinion, but the book seemed different at the time back in the day. It seemed like the backgrounds were less detailed and just less in general. Now to be fair, I only collected a few series at that time, so I didn't have a great sense of what else was happening in the Marvel Universe.

Hey @rlextherobot, welcome to the Ross Andru thread. Yes, we posted that toward the beginning of this thread. There's even a real life recreation of the page Frank mentions in that letter in this thread as well. Keeping posting cool finds.

, forgetting how old we collectors are becoming.

Haven't looked at this list in years. What happened to Amazing Spider-Man 121 and 122? Surprised to see ASM 101 above both of those. What about the 35 cent variant Scooby Doo?

I would totally wear this, if Steve would let me borrow it, lol.

Hey @Get Marwood & I and gang, July 21 (which it already is across the pond) marks the fifth year of us posting about Ross Andru and the Amazing Spider-Man comics we loved as kids. I just wanted everyone to know that I have enjoined the last five years chatting with all of you. Steve started this thread originally as an ode to ASM 176 through 180, but we quickly expended it to include Ross's entire run on the series. I admit I have even snuck in other interesting, non-Spider-Man art as well. Here's looking at another five years!

Better without the hatchings on the roof? I think it makes Spider-Man pop off the page.

This splash looks so much better in black and white to me, almost like the quality of Marvel's printing at the time detracted from the art. I don't like the hatchings on the roof either, but I love this so much more in black and white than colored.

I found this cool scan of the original art for Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 splash page. If you look at the bottom of the art board, there's no room for the indicia below the end of the art and it almost looks like it was glued over some of the art. But if I look at a scan from the actual comic, the indicia fits just fine. But look at the splash itself, it's tilted slightly to the right, where Ross's upper boarder is straight across. It looks like perhaps Marvel reduced the original art page slightly and then added the indicia below it, but they were a little careless and the page ended up tilted. Why these little quirks fascinate me, who knows.....

And even more humility from a man I feel would be a "rock star" in the comics industry if he were alive in the age of Internet and large comic cons.

Here's another letter from Ross Andru to Joey Thingvall (the actor and comic book collector). It proves what we Andru fans had already deduced, that Ross Andru was an unassuming man.