CBR Live! Archive
The Spider-Man Half Face
- by Brian Cronin
- in General
Guess how many issues of Amazing Spider-Man went by before the famous Spider-Man half face was used on the cover?
Answer after the fold!
It was not until 1993's Amazing Spider-Man #366 that the half face made its (full 
) Amazing Spider-Man cover debut!
That said, the first appearance at all was on Amazing Spider-Man #8's cover.
Amazing Spider-Man #8 had a small Spider-Man half face in one of the insets...
Thanks to Chris McAree for picking this one out.
Besides this small inset, the half face it made its bow on the Spider-Man titles period with 1982's Spectacular Spider-Man #67, with this rather odd Ed Hannigan take on the half face.
Mark Beachum gave a more standard take on the concept with 1986's Spectacular Spider-Man #120.
It's amazing how infrequent one of the most famous visual tricks in comic history was used on comic book covers!
- Posted on August 24, 2008 @ 09:03 AM
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14 Comments
Jason
August 24, 2008 at 9:32 am
Peter's lips visible with the mask still mostly on . . . that's not a good look. And is it wrong that I thought of the last strip shown here?
Chris McAree
August 24, 2008 at 9:35 am
Hi Brian,
been reading your blog for ages now, but I've only started to write comments in about the last week. Really enjoy some of the topics you've touched on recently.
Think the first half-face was from Amazing Spidey #8-ish though, with Peter fighting Flash.
M Bloom
August 24, 2008 at 9:41 am
That Hannigan cover looks like Peter went to a carnival and got some really ironic face painting done.
Rich
August 24, 2008 at 9:49 am
Chris, good call. There it is on ASM #8, on the bottom right.
Blackjak
August 24, 2008 at 11:12 am
Even if ASM#8 is the actual first half-face on an ASM cover, 358 issues is a remarkable amount of time before the second one!!
I was thinking "Nah, can't be!" - then scrolled down and surfed around and sure enough, the covers I was thinkning of were Spectacular or Web of, not ASM...
Amazing!
Brian Cronin
August 24, 2008 at 11:17 am
Ha!
Thank you, Tim, my thoughts exactly!
John Trumbull
August 24, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I'm not quite getting why #366 counts but #8 doesn't. Just because #8's half-Spidey is smaller & not the main focus of the cover?
Justin Hilyard
August 24, 2008 at 3:31 pm
After being corrected, he's saying #366 was the first full appearance, as in the first appearance that wasn't an inset.
wwk5d
August 25, 2008 at 3:54 am
Wasn't there an alternate cover to the wedding...er, sorry, relationship-celebration-before-he-and-MJ-decided-to-move-in-and-live-together-in-sin annual that featured him in 1/2 costume?
Lord Paradise
August 25, 2008 at 5:19 am
If I were Spider-Man, I would actually get a half-costume. Then I'd get a two-headed coin with a web shape scratched over one side. And a jetpack, of course.
Chris McAree
August 25, 2008 at 5:38 am
"If I were Spider-Man, I would actually get a half-costume. Then I’d get a two-headed coin with a web shape scratched over one side. And a jetpack, of course."
And a Spidey-mobile....
that's strange, I'm feeling that something apart from a wedding has been completely erased from my memory!
Blackjak
August 25, 2008 at 8:41 am
The Spidey-mobile just re-surfaced in Wolverine... Don't know if it's the classic one or a future one though...
The Hannigan one looks more like facepaint than a mask!
Richard J. Marcej
August 25, 2008 at 10:43 am
Boy, that Deb Whitman could sure cry buckets!
Michael
August 25, 2008 at 1:42 pm
"Boy, that Deb Whitman could sure cry buckets!"
This was, essentially, her entire characterization.