SPIDER-MAN, FIRESTAR AND ICEMAN AT THE DALLAS BALLET NUTCRACKER SPECIAL
Quick Rating: Fair
Spider-Man and his amazing friends take in a little culture!
Writer: Jim Salicrup
Pencils: Jim Mooney
Inks: John Tartas
Colors: Stan Goldberg
Letters: L.P. Gregory
Production Supervisor: Sol Brodsky
Cover Art: Jim Mooney
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Scouring the quarter bins of comic shops across America can really unearth some hidden… well, “Gems” may be too strong a word for this comic book, but it’s certainly an interesting enough book to be worth the 25 cents. This was a one-shot giveaway comic that Marvel published to be released by the Dallas Times-Herald newspaper back in 1983. This book put together the cast of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends for a rare comic where they actually hung out together (the friendship was basically manufactured for television).
Angelica (Firestar) Jones is moving to Dallas, and her buddies Peter (Spider-Man) Parker and Bobby (Iceman) Drake join her a few days after Christmas to celebrate the move. (Which I know makes it sound like they were just happy to get her out of New York, but I didn’t write it.) As they get ready to enjoy a seasonal performance of The Nutcracker, they see a group of workers in the loading zone packing up a moving truck - which strikes them as odd, as tonight is the final purpose of the ballet, so why would they be packing up already? They guys leap into costume and jump on the burglars, only to run across their boss… the greatest supervillain in comic book history…
…Daddy Longlegs.
Sadly, Iceman, he is not.
Daddy Longlegs, you see, was a Ballet dancer who was too short to get work. In desperation, he attempts to replicate the formula that turned Hank Pym into Giant-Man (a reference that you just know all of the Times-Herald readers understood). I’m not really sure how this was supposed to be a bonus - sure, maybe five feet is too short to be a ballet dancer (or maybe it’s not, I don’t know), but where did he think they would find costumes for a 12-foot giant? Ah well… it doesn’t matter either way, because instead of turning into a nice, proportionate giant like ol’ Hank does, Daddy comes out looking like Mike Teevee after Willy Wonka sends him through the taffy machine. Now, bent on revenge (because it was the ballet’s fault that someone who failed at his dancing career is also a failure as a biochemist), he’s trying to ruin the run of The Nutcracker (by attacking the last show, rather than disrupting the show when it began its run).
Well, our heroes beat up on Daddy using a variation of the ol’ “you distract him while I tie his shoelaces together” routine - seriously - and settle in for a performance of the ballet, after first giving us this brief culture lesson…
I hear Firestar got dibs on Moe.
Here’s where the book really gets bizarre. You see, this is only the halfway point of the comic. The second half of the book is actually a full-on comic book adaptation of The Nutcracker, the story of a little girl who falls in love with her Christmas doll and winds up shrinking down to join in a battle against the insidious Rat King. If only she knew Spider-Man and his amazing friends were in the audience, it may have saved her some trouble.
The adaptation was fairly entertaining, but definitely odd. I mean, we’re used to movie adaptations in comic books, and they’ve been adapting novels since Classics Illustrated, with a new renaissance in that subgenre brought on recently by the Dabel Brothers. But a comic book based on a ballet… well, that’s a new one on me.
The comic is fun, and the kitsch factor is increased by the fact that the book is packed with ads for what are obviously Dallas-based businesses, rather than the nationwide ads you usually see in a comic. Even though I’ve never lived in Dallas, I find it amusing to see Spider-Man trying to sell me a refrigerator from Walt’s TV and Appliance Supermarket, an ad for the Channel 21 cartoon line-up (including Superman and Batman) and the news that you can buy Marvel Age magazine from Lone Star Comics and Science Fiction for only 25 cents. My favorite ad, though?
“BUY AN RCA STEREO VIDEODISK PLAYER… GET 6 FREE VIDEODISC ALBUMS.” Am I amused by an ad for this forgotten precursor to Laserdisc? Am I amused by the fact that the choices include “hit movies, the best of TV, sports, children’s favorites, rock concerts, the fine arts” and “how-to programs”? Do I just find it funny that “Videodisk Player” is spelled with a “K” and “Videodisc Albums” is spelled with a “C”? The world may never know
I’ve got to imagine this is a fairly rare comic, since it was only distributed in Dallas and you’ve got to imagine most of those copies got thrown out with the paper or used to wrap Christmas ornaments as they were put away to be used the next year. This was the last of five specials Marvel and the Times-Herald released together over a two-year period, and if the others are as good as this one (including two issues where Spidey fought the Hulk, one where Spidey and the Hulk met the Dallas Cowboys and a previous Christmas special where Spidey fought the Kingpin), I’d like to find them just for kitsch value. This is as unusual a comic as I’ve read in a long time.
Rating: 6/10
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