Spider-Woman #50 – The Most Expensive Comic Cover Ever Made! Part 2

Or

The Clambering!

Here, take another look:

Upper fire escape: The Enforcer: Vince Waller, Werewolf: Bob Sharen, The Needle: Mike Carlin, Taterdemalian: Mark Gruenwald

Between fire escapes: Gypsy Moth: Belinda Glass

Lower fire escape: Tigra: Anne Nocenti, The Grim Reaper: Brian Postman, The Shroud: Bob Camp (?), Poltergeist: Jack Morelli, Locksmith: Ralph Macchio

On the bricks: Spider-Woman: Lynn Luckman

Of note: Some of these names might be familiar, some not so—Vince Waller and Bob Camp are elaborated on below, Bob Sharen one of the hardest working colorists and, as you can see, below in the un-retouched image, ran around half-naked for us! Belinda Glass was Mark Gruenwald’s first wife and good sport.

Artist, Illustrator, all-‘round nice guy, Bob Larkin, indeed “added” to this spectacular photo cover. What he didn’t have to add was the look of fear and chill blains we all experienced that night.

Here’s a pretty nice pic of Bob with Stan holding up a big ol’ Conan print. You might know that print, it’s kinda famous. So when Bob says he “retouched” the photos—take a close look at Lynn’s costume. He eliminated all the wrinkles, smoothed the colors, added both a mask and an enormous amount of hair – with highlights! and then added a separation line around her and the wall. And that was just her. I was astonished at the amount of work he done—I got a quick look at the assembled cover. “Retouched.” Yeah, with an awe-inspiring amount of sheer talent.

Let me back up a little. New York City has a broad, general detail that is passed over when considering what it is famous for. Courtyards. You see, looking at a random city block there are buildings on all four sides. But they do not fill the block entirely. A standard residential lot size in a place like the island of Manhattan is something like 25-feet by 100-feet. Often, the building is built to 25×75—leaving some space in the back for things like air and light. Sometimes “back door” deliveries, shipping docks and the like. Or a tree.

On this cover, is a pretty gritty New Yorky look of one of those courtyards. Featuring a truly pigeon-dropping encrusted, painted-a-couple-of-times-since-Prohibition, rickety fire escape. How did we find one of these? Who was crazy enough to let us cavort on a fire escape and dandle our lives so carefreely?

The story so far: Editor Mark Gruenwald, his Assistant Editor Mike Carlin were in the full throes of creating, engineering, sweating The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe (OHOTMU, aka: the Marvel Universe). They’d been doing that almost since the day Marvel moved its office downtown (from Madison Ave/57 St. to Park Avenue South/27 St.) in April, 1982.

Mark n’ Mike also had a full slate of regular comics to edit and cough up every month. One of them

was Spider-Woman! This title seemed a “natural”—a distaff response to one of the major “core” characters, Spider-Man. Sadly, SW#50 was to be the last issue. Knowing it was coming meant one could have a big send off! Tie up story lines! Bring grace to the character and treat this one with respect.

Even a big photo-cover extravaganza! (ExtravaGruenza—my invention, go ahead use it freely.)

We shot the first “half” of the cover on November 3. We let that sit for a while as a maelstrom of comic world activity swirled around the office… We would shoot the other “half” on December 15. In the meantime—perhaps a dozen other comic books were edited, assembled and shipped off to the separators. Marvel Universe #4 was taking shape but with the usual shocks to the senses (take a look at original edition #4… pretty well stuffed!). Even Spider-Woman #49 shipped on Tuesday the 16^th of November.

Now, back to who would let us have access to such a picturesque place? We all raveled back our unraveling senses long enough to attend a grand party at Bob Camp and Vince Waller’s loft on 37^th St. That was way back in October, Friday the 15^th. Outside the gigantic loft we breathed fresh air and loved the rattling fire escape and deep well of darkness. That association was made in Gruenwald’s brain and the backdrop of Spider-Woman #50 was secured!

A final detail that tells you how crazed we all were—Cover Production Guru Ron Zalme hammered and tonged over that cover for 10 days. Then it was wrested from his still-steely grip by Bob on November 22—just a few days before Christmas! At that point the rest of the Marvel Universe team were still working day and night up to, on and after Christmas. (Mike and I had our Xmas goose and returned to the office to conference with Mark who was back home in Wisconsin—he gave us notes!) When Bob returned the finished cover is not noted specifically. But since SW#50 went out January 14, 1983—I’m sure he only waited for the paint to dry and lugged it back ASAP.

Oh, did I mention that party over at Camp & Waller’s was a costume party? That’s Letterer Supreme Jack Morelli (who in photo-cover land, portrayed Spider-Man!) who has been made up to be Prince Namor! Me, I had on some flight overalls and a flying mask. Just what stuff anyone has lying around. I was really tired.

Who are those guys—well, you probably know their work better than their names. Bob Camp was a fine arts illustrator who specialized in animation but knew Larry Hama. Which is all the talented need to do when Larry knows there’s an opening at Marvel. Staff Correction Artist John Tartaglione took a leave of absence to do The Pope comic book and we needed someone to fill in. Vince was Bob’s longtime childhood friend, also an animator artist—“lanky” is the most modest word to describe him. Striking good looks are another few. They both put in a serious amount of time working on Ren and Stimpy (you might recall that stupefyingly popular cartoon? They worked on dozens of the shows!) Bob is toiling at the convention circuit (go get a sketch—you won’t be disappointed!) and Vince is some kind of very highly placed creative executive person at Nickelodeon, turning the wheel of pain that is Sponge Bob SquarePants!

Now this was more like it! Getting a balanced exposure was one of those, guess-the-f-stop, fire off the strobe and utter a prayer to Kodak, the Yellow God… Alas, Mark hustled me off to the side, as seen on the cover and in the next shot. What that did was allow the camera to see the 500Watt bulb I had installed in that window. The people on the cover did not cover up that bulb which “blinded” the image. Thus did Bob Larkin earn his salt “retouching” that cover!

Getting the “right” look to having only one strobe unit to hand was another guess and pray maneuver. If you held open your off-camera eye, you could see what the strobe light illuminated. I suspect one of the reasons I have so few of these outdoor shots is because they made a whole bunch of large blow-ups to see what they had (and failed to return the chromes!).

This was either a grab shot or an accidental trip of the shutter. It does give one an idea of the vertical drop and grim courtyard shaft we were all in. Me? I was hanging off the side of an opposing fire escape. I hope I brought along a tripod—can’t remember. But I was used to placing my camera on something steady, which I probably did.

One reason I didn’t get any shots of people before they were in costume or putting on costumes—is because Mark had me up on fire escape while he threw clothes on them. Then they all ran. Well, afterwards, I came in to shoot Belinda. Finally, here is Belinda posing as though flying around as Gypsy Moth!

Kids! Don’t take pictures of beautiful women with a wide-angle lens! You can only push that “good sport” thing so far…

Last shot of the night! A little something to remember it all by…