A couple of years back I submitted a proposal to Marvel Comics for a 4-issues series starring Spider-Ham and the rest of Marvel Comics’ “Funny Animal” characters. Working with me as the artist was the very skilled-in-his-own-right Jacob Chabot.
For those who understood about 8% of that sentence: Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham, is a cartoon pig version of Spider-Man. He, and other animal versions of Marvel heroes and villains, first appeared in Marvel Comics’ Marvel Tails, a punny/homonyminous take on their Marvel Tales title. Later, he headlined his own series as part of the Star Comics line which was aimed at younger readers. Since then, this funny animal take on Spider-Man has been a bit of an oddity/fan favorite.
Unfortunately, because a recent attempt at the time to use the character didn’t do very well, sales-wise, the interest in the series I’d conceived was less enthusiastic, regardless of content. The character, essentially, was “radioactive” for the time being.
That was two years ago. Recently, we gave it another shot, figuring enough time had passed for the fallout to have properly dissipated. And it had, because someone else was doing something with Spider-Ham.
A case of bad timing…twice over.
But rather than let it sit on a digital shelf where no one can see it, I’ve decided to share a “what could have been”. So click here and read the pitch as it was submitted…including a wicked piece of art by the aforementioned Jacob Chabot.
Man! I would have eaten this one up. I loves me some Spider-Ham (yum yum). You did an excellent job on bringing the Stars Comics characters back in the spotlight for a couple minutes with the X-Babies mini (MORE Stars, Please, I am a big ole softy for the comics I started with as a kiddo), and I’m sure this Marvel Tails mini would have been entertaining and fun! I do like that Spider-Ham showed up for a couple of panels in the X-Babies (along with Captain Kangaroo, Mr Rogers, and more little surprises… I love that small panel stuff). Thank you for that!
Thanks, Robert. I do sometimes wonder if this might’ve made a bigger “splash” than X-Babies…but I’m glad you enjoyed X-Babies; Jacob and I are certainly very pleased with how it came out (and I’ll let him know how much you dug the extra surprises he threw in time and time again).