The Web of the 1960s was probably the most interesting of a not-very-interesting collection of revivals and revamps of Archie Comics’ superheroes.
“Here’s an idea; superhero as browbeaten spouse,” wrote Rik Offenberger and Chris Squires in The MLJ Companion.
“With a conceit lifted straight out of the day’s inane TV situation comedies (as in plots centered on dishonesty, secrecy and resentment), writer Jerry Siegel resurrected the Web as suburban, middle-aged husband John Raymond who begrudges his domestic duties and suffers the disdain of a stereotypically nagging mother-in-law. He also happens to consistently lie to wife Rosie, a marital partner who justifiably worries about the aging professor getting injured during his outings as a costumed crimefighter.”
John Raymond his own doubts about his aging, aching muscles. Just as we readers dreamed of a life of superheroic adventure, so did Raymond — the difference being that he’d actually had one 20 years before.
The Web had been one of several Nazi-punching masked bruisers published by MLJ Comics during the 1940s, but he was now confined to fighting inattentive students and crabgrass. His wistful longing for what he’d lost was understandable and relatable.
Superheroes are almost universally urban, and placing one among the placid, manicured lawns of the suburbs made for an interesting contrast that was also characteristic of the postwar era. In America, 1950 was the first year that more people lived in suburbs than elsewhere.
Yes, the Mighty Comics features were groaningly camp, but this one had an angle that might possibly have amounted to something, in other hands at another time.
“Nothing epitomized the conflict between concept and execution more than the Web,” observed John Wells in American Comic Book Chronicles. “The intent was surely to evoke the personal conflicts experienced by the likes of Spider-Man, but the ongoing nagging of Rose Raymond was more shrill than funny. That’s not to say the feature didn’t have its moments.”
“The 1965 movie How to Murder Your Wife had the strip within the movie where the private eye hero becomes the hen-pecked hubby, as does the artist himself!” Ron Thomas recalled.
“I agree out of the Mighty Comics, this was probably my favorite, because I had never seen it before,” Mark Herr said. “You know, I have a friend when he got married, his wife made him cut down on the amount of softball he was playing. What wife wouldn’t try to get him to be a superhero less and home more?”
“I have a very powerful, specific memory about the mid-Silver Age MLJ run of the Web,” Johnny Williams wrote. “I remember quite distinctly a page showing John Raymond trying to brag to his wife about some of his former superhero exploits and she interrupts him with a command to take care of ‘something important’ first, which turns out to be a mundane chore. The last panel was our erstwhile crimefighter doing pushups on the floor next to he and his wife’s (marriage) bed surreptitiously so as to not wake her up, thereby incurring her wrath. There’s so much to unpack there.”
“I was SOOOO disappointed by the Archie superhero books,” Paul Zuckerman said. “The Fly and the Jaguar had been done straight. They may not have been the most exciting books on the market, but they took the heroes seriously. Jerry Siegel — what was his pen name at Archie? — had done some good work at DC in the past few years and he could be quite funny, or serious, but these books were just awful.
“Even as an adult reading them trying to accept them in the spirit that they were intended, they just fall on their faces (if comics had faces, that is.) Reinman’s art was far from his best work. The story and art was just flat and the henpecked hero — presumably emulating Peter Parker — just got tiresome and old pretty quickly. You are right about Rose — she was just a shrill voice in the background, not a sympathetic character at all. What was Jerry trying to tell us!”
I think one could write a long essay about how Siegel’s later superhero stories reflect his profound disappointment with the course of his life.
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