Side Gig: The Spidey-Mobile!!!

Dusty Abell reached out to me, via his work comrade, Mike Carlin. Dusty who—right? Well, I didn’t know who he was either at the time. But a friend of Mike’s is a friend of mine. He mentioned one big job he was in the middle of, Ben Ten, animation stuff which I kind’a knew (not my demographic… ).

He was a major animator person, doing Character and Production Design in animation. Plus just lots of regular old art all over the sites devoted to artists doing whatever they want. This was back in 2008-ish What is relevant here is that he was a fan of my work and really into the Marvel Universe [So much so, that he did a tribute version of MU for his own line-of-books-on-the-side, Invincible! Which I also contributed work to—Pan-Dimensional Brown] and wanted to interview me for Back Issue Magazine.

Back Issue is one of those well-put-together packages of art, creators and hordes of insiders telling all—but better. It’s insiders for insiders and anyone who wants to dip a toe in the deep end of the pool. Highly recommended.

Then Dusty said, I really missed seeing the Spidey-Mobile in a tech page by you. Would you do it for the cover? The Spidey-Mobile? One of those crazy ideas that has a deeper story. Stan was approached by maverick outfit, Corona Motors, who had a wild new engine made for dune buggies…

Okay! A dune buggy is a light-weight, over-powered, big-tired, open-to-the-sky vehicle made to drive on sand. The concept was a big deal in the 1960s and on. You had to be there, more go-kart than car, it’s main audience was surfers and beach-going teens.

You have to know that Stan was one of those guys who believed he could sell ice to Inuit Peoples and thought he could have his swinging cat creation, Spider-Man, drive one in the books. And he did it! I hope there was a suitcase full of money for Stan because that’s the way I think. In the meantime the rest of us had a glimpse into a nutty, side road of comic history.

Thus it came to pass—I can feel regular series writer, Gerry Conway’s arm twisting up behind him from here! Regular artists Ross Andru and Frank Giacoia revealed the Spider-Mobile in Amazing #130!

©Disney

In my youth, I had been a pretty cool dude, laying back and hanging ten in sunny California (I was 11 and a rudely transplanted New York City street kid, so I did no such thing), I knew that I needed to look up the Meyers Manx. That was the tippy-top of hot dune buggy-dom. The internet was young but it yielded up a bunch of stuff—

I have to say, I think I found this odd assemblage—but it could have been Dusty. And look at this mess. There’s about 500 body styles. I guess good Mr. Andru knew what he was doing…

All the technical elements were there in and around the story. The story went like this—Spider-man asked his buddy Johnny Storm, noted rebellious teen and hot rod enthusiast, to help build a dune boggy with this engine in mind. This was done in the FF Headquarters so I assumed everything a complete car-body fabricator would need is already in there. So I did this:

Within the origin ish and subsequent, there was a holographic projector that aped the belt-buckle Spider-Signal, there was an Aston Martin DB-5-ish ejection seat – like all Marvel craft and vehicles, way, way too much darn stuff.

I got out my big hammer, no the big one, and stuffed it all in.

Here’s some Eliot-centric info—my evolution as a tech artist went from hard-corps isometrics in MU to loosey-goosey sliding perspective renderings in the G.I. Joe Order of Battle #4. With Joe hardware, I had to make time with some big drawings. So I got some large-sized ellipse templates and teeny-tiny ones too and made up a new look for me.

That new method served me well for the Spider-Mobile. I could start looser and tighten things up as I went along. That helped a lot. At the time, I had not drawn anything for about ten years—so I had to chisel my tech fountain pens out of their hardened ink and make them work again. That took a while.

Another thing that changed after all that time slid by was that I could do my own labeling and arranging pointers. Coloring… was still not for me—to that end, I had one Dusty Abell, PhotoShop Magician—

I think this is a mutual copyright—Dusty Abell & Eliot R. Brown. This was a “rough” to show me how darn smart he was—okay; to show his progress.

Let me try to praise Dusty enough. While I was whining, mewling and puking about how hard it was to color on the computer, Dusty was done. He also did a rather cool “blueprint” background made up of snagged B&W art from the Marvel Universe books. He threw that together as easily as you or I throw an egg in a skillet.

©TwoMorrows Publishing, courtesy Dusty Abell

I’m rather proud of the ejection seat concept. Not the seat itself, which is buffoon-level giant spring, but the bouncing ball. Y’see, here you are whizzing around through a tunnel. Action time, you need to eject a person, blammo—straight up to the ceiling of the FDR Drive. Ewww. But—if you have air-bag technology bastardized into a personal cocoon, then you can bounce off the ceiling! Or on-coming traffic, or Hammerhead—whatever! I figured Reed “Mr. Fantastic” Richards would have done that for the Fantasti-Car and so Johnny “The Human Torch” Storm, who was building this hot rod for Spidey, swiped one. And the holographic projector, because the kid may be good with a welder but holographic projectors… not so good.

One odd detail was some sort of “disguise-o-method” to hide the Spider-Mobile when parked in a dark alley. So someone, perhaps writer Conway, whipped up some kind of shape-thing in the form of an old style car. Was it the holographic projection? I sure hope not, as that’s just misappropriating good sounding technology. Was it an unfolding cardboard box? That sounds like my Spider-Man. But, no—I figured, we had Sue “The Invisible Girl” Storm, ready to bake cookies for the boys and make an inflatable 1950s Rambler or some such. She was craft-oriented and in the midst of a high-tech fantasmagoria workshop! So she ultrasonically welded up an inflated version of an old car that would pop out of its hiding place and more ridiculously, pop back in (with winches) when it was not needed. [Sue did attend the same scientifically oriented college Reed and ahem, Victor von Doom did… what was she doing there if not being the original STEAM enrollee? –“Fairness” Brown] Take note of the “Hang 10” chrome gas pedal—details… details!

©TwoMorrows Publishing

And say, friends! Mosey on over to TwoMorrows and pick yourselves up a mint-mint copy of this brain-tingling page-turner! You never know what you’ll learn! Check out all their other wonderful mags! Something for everybody.

Have I mentioned that I still hate drawing tires? I feel compelled to be really neat doing them and that’s what makes me hate them.