SPIDER-MAN COMICS WEEKLY COVER GALLERY - PART NINE...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

SPIDER-MAN COMICS WEEKLY was a slightly odd name when you think about it.  As well as being a bit of a mouthful, two words were redundant.  We knew it was a comic that came out weekly, so why labour the point?  AVENGERS mag wasn't called The AVENGERS COMICS WEEKLY, neither were any other U.K. titles similarly named.  True, in 1979, when DEZ SKINN grasped the editorial reins, MWOM and SMCW were renamed MARVEL COMIC and SPIDER-MAN COMIC, and HULK COMIC featuring ol' Jade Jaws popped up not too long after, but at least the names were consistent.

Looking at the black, white and grey pages below, you may be wondering why I've been critical of them in previous posts, but I've cleaned and brightened up these pages for their presentation here, so they actually look better than in the published issues.  Though it's not so much the tones that I objected to, but the printing quality, which rendered them muddy, murky and completely unattractive.

The TALES Of ASGARD pages from #25 don't seem so bad, and had they been printed in a U.S. b&w monthly mag, they would've looked far better.  After all, it was the same team who applied the tones to the British mags as the American ones (which were softer on the eye) so it's fairly obvious it was the cheaper printing on the U.K. titles that let them down, not the application of the tones themselves.

Eventually, Marvel sorted things out and, for a while at least, managed to subdue the tones somewhat, before eventually doing away with them altogether.  When they did work, they worked well, but, as a glance through various back issues attests, too often they didn't work at all.  Never mind though, they're now part of history and, to many kids who grew up in the '70s, these grey-toned tales are meant to look that way.  Are you one of them?  Then who am I to say thee nay?!