A quick look under the hood of this bit of fumetti verité tells me that Argus-Eyed Editor Tom DeFalco OR Eagle-Toed Co-Editor Danny Fingeroth must have gotten a look at the In-Store Spider-Man costume. Imagination flowed, many words, many drinks and before I, or Scott Leva knew it, we were summoned before the Star Chamber that was Tom’s Spider-Man Editorial office.
The task was to find a way to have a cover that showed Spidey without mask and the photographer taking his picture. The plot of this story took advantage of Peter Parker’s freelance job as news photog. The story, “Trade Secrets” found him on assignment to a NYC airport where he would be unavoidably surrounded by other photogs. One thing about the paparazzi, those cameras are ready to fire within a second or less. The only hilarious detail of this story was the use of Assistant Editor Bob Denatali’s name for some Organized Crime boss. I’m sure Bob’s still chuckling.
I can relate these story elements now because I read up on them. At the time it was the slightest suggestion of seeing someone taking a picture of a half-costumed Spider-Man. That’s one reason I liked taking photo-covers so much. This happened to allow both Scott and I maximum freedom in imaging the cover. With such freedom, we have this super famous cover:
©Disney/Marvel
I say ‘famous’ because this photo-cover had a literal showing of Peter Parker. And me. I’ve also read some of the negative comments circulating around photo-covers over the decades. How it is something “real” and thus limiting. It suppresses the imagination. Perhaps. Sometimes taking a picture is quicker than trying to get the book’s regular artist—who rarely bit off more than he could chew (–Bob!) – to throw in a cover as well as write, pencil and ink (co-ink with Carlos Garzon) the interior. Of course, I am rib-elbowing Modern Legend Artist and Creator Bob Layton.
Scott Leva was a working stuntman who filled in the down-time by happily taking Marvel’s money for such simple acting as standing around and looking heroic (another actor back in the day was none other than Jonathan Frakes! Yes, as Captain America! But this is Scotty’s story…). My favorite story about Scott was his doing stunt work in the 1983 fantasy flick Krull. Scott claimed that in one scene, stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong allowed him to get tossed into a medium close-up and leave his face in the scene. Normally a stunt man tries to hide his face. But in this case, Scot so strongly resembled the male lead, Ken Marshal, that even in the final movie—there’s Scotty!
I have mentioned before the In-Store Marketing Program which had costumed people show up at your supermarket or comic shop. Scott was well-known as a good Spider-Man. And take a look at that face—close enough to Peter Parker!
So here’s a few alternate shots:
I hope you’re all sitting back and taking in a beverage of choice because here comes some techno-diving. The location for this was way in the back of the 10th Floor of Marvel offices at 387 Park. This was the proof roll storage room. All those rolls behind Scott are rolled up black & white versions of comics. A lot of them! These were made at the time of the regular book being printed. Originally, they were used as proofs and sent ahead before going to press so that an editor could look over the book and perhaps make some changes. My guess is that plan fell by the wayside long, long ago as the deadline pressures mounted. The proof rolls continued however—probably into the mid-90s, before digital copies took over. Since they were images made from the printing negatives, they were of a very high fidelity to the artwork. Good source material for future use!
In the picture above, you can see me “taking a picture.” Alas, at the time, I only had one camera. That was being used to take this picture. So what gives? Well, in a late evening decision, I made use of a prop to stand in for a camera. My certainty was that any flash pointing into the lens would blast out enough of a flare to hide most of my head and “camera.” Well… not quite…
A tape dispenser. With plenty of tape, too. Clutched in my hand is a second flash unit that I did have. In this exposure, I show up quite nicely. I sort’a show up on the printed cover and now you can search out all these details.
What really took place here, was me setting a self-timer on the camera and running like a nut, wiggling around the tripod, around Scott, into the doorway and striking a pose—while clutching the tape dispenser and flash just so—all within 10 seconds. Let’s just say, I was younger then and as agile as a coatimundi.
The other “funny-after-all-these-years” detail is that I only had a synch cord (synchronization) to fire off the main flash that lit up Scot and my flash that was supposed to obscure me—both at the same time. And there it is, hanging right off me, nicely visible in all exposures.
And there it is! Scott was feeling the scene and hit this ideal pose This was the slide used for the cover. One of the rare exposures that I got back from the separators! If you compare this to the printed version, you’ll see evidence of Tireless Cover Man Ron Zalme, painstakingly inking back in the Spidey lines on the costume. There’s no shortcuts to printed perfection, dammit!
And sometimes, there are just no shortcuts to putting your street clothes on over your super-hero costume…
Follow Up!
I was informed by my colleague Lynn Cohen Koehler — for which I give a big thank you to!– that Scott had achieved not just a tech Oscar™, but in addition, also had completely redesigned the entire ‘airbag” system from the ground up! That is no small technical feat. Here’s a lift from his website:
precisionstunts.com
“In 2005 Scott Received The Academy Award™, Technical Achievement Award for the design and development of the Precision Stunt Airbag for motion picture stunt falls.” Scott has been rather busy– designing anything to be used by people and ones that first fall 200 feet to use it, is a formidable task.
Check out that website and his FaceBook (how did I miss him– I usually search for people before I write about them) to see how a handsome devil becomes more handsomey and devilish. Don’t look at my pages.
I remember, at the time, some actor who never read the comics auditioning for the part of Spider-Man. All he knew was that Peter Parker lived in Queens, so he gave Spidey a thick Queens accent.
What a great behind-the-scenes article. Thank you for sharing this and letting us all in on the history. Love the additional photos!
As a rabid reader/collector of all things Spidey in the late 80s/90s, that cover had a huge impact on me. I absolutely studied it more than other covers because of the unique reality! To put a real (and unknown) face to a comic book character, without warning, zero explanation, one-and-done, was . . . AMAZING!!!
More amazing to me, is that through Spider-man and my stuntman dreams, I became friends with Scott Leva – and he let me try out his patented air bag! (Thanks, Scott!)
Any friend of Scott’s is a friend of mine. I remember how easy going and open Scott was that evening. Just a regular guy who jumps off buildings. As i so often go on and on about in these blogs, I wish i’d taken more pictures. But despite getting paid for the job (gee, was it $75?) I still paid for the film so I must’ve gotten a little squirrelly about how many shots I blew figuring out the ballet steps needed to get to the “position” from the camera. It seems I discarded (without a backward glance, which now irritates me) all the blown shots. This page has all of the images I saved and that’s not very many. Ah well, this was the perfect place to finally run the pic of Scott with the mask up– which I thought was really runny at the time. Also, that he had the gloves parked in his belt– just what Spidery would have done.
The best image: Eliot Brown trying to wedge is well over 6 ft frame through a literal gauntlet of props, people and camera equipment just in time to get the pic….several times over! What an Olympic class of series movements those must have been!
Thanks, chum! What’s not evident is that one inch to the right of the camera field of view was a weird wire-mesh door and wall to a cage room place– that actually had held some marketing toys and some of the expensive books. But it was right there– so almost no room at all to get by Scott. Funny.
Hi, did you ever make a poster and sell it because I just saw a poster of one of the images with “Photo By Eliot Brown” with webbing around your name in the upper left corner. Please let me know.
Thanks!
Nothing that I know or or remember. Sometimes, that happens. They tell me and I forget or they don’t tell me. Or, I have given a blanket okay for use of something. Try different search terms– one never knows.