The Surprising Spider-Mex!

Some news broke over this past weekend that I really wish could have broken one weekend earlier, because it would have made for the perfect Valentine’s Day post.

For those unaware, Twitter essentially lost its mind when someone posted about this alternate continuity of Spider-Man comics published in Mexico, wherein Gwen Stacy was not only never killed off… but married Peter Parker! As Gwen Stacy is unofficially…

Oh what the heck, let’s make it official: As owner, originator, and sole writer of this blog (in addition to being one of its two subscribers), I formally declare the comic book character of Gwen Stacy to be the patroness saint of this blog.

There.

Now… as official patroness saint of this blog, anything involving Gwen Stacy is going to get attention around here, but this was a lot bigger than just any ol’ news. We’re talking about an alternate world of comics where Pete married Gwen, just as God and Stan always intended. To say I was excited would be quite the understatement. My second most powerful feeling was confusion/bewilderment, as it seemed impossible that such comics could have existed without my knowledge. My third (and a very close second) most powerful feeling was the rabid desire to SEE THESE COMICS—particularly the one where Pete and Gwen get hitched.

But back to the beginning: Where did this all come from, anyway?

Tweeting Past the Graveyard

It started last Friday with a simple, innocent question posed to the Twitterverse, courtesy of one Chris Ryall: what never-before-collected comic series would you like to see collected into a new TPB? A user named David offered a quite-unexpected response the following day, setting off the Twitter storm:

EDIT 2021: The original responder has since changed their handle from David to Roger. END EDIT

As you can see in the image from the tweet, this “marriage issue” was El Sorprendente Hombre Araña #128. Like I said at the beginning, I was floored when the news reached me early Sunday morning. I suppose it also says a lot about me that I heard from literally every fellow comics-geek I have ever known that day, all of them excited to break the news to me and/or ask if I knew anything about it.

Well I didn’t know anything about it, which was very embarrassing, as I pride myself on being one of the foremost experts in the world when it comes to comics of the Silver and Bronze Ages—with even greater expertise when it comes to Spider-Man, specifically. (These may be useless categories in which to have expertise and thus shouldn’t be taken pride in, but I’m fairly shameless when it comes to my geekdom.)

So how could I have not known about this? And how do I correct this major gap in my knowledge? In this day and age, we all start (and usually finish) in just one place: To the Google-mobile, Robin!

Hombre Araña

I grew up reading comics in the 70s and 80s, during the original heyday of Spidey’s pal (and fellow ESU student) the White Tiger (El Tigre Blanco), so I’m well aware that the Spanish name for Spider-Man is Hombre Araña. But sorprendente translates as “surprising,” which I find more than a little odd. Why not use asombroso, the Spanish word for “amazing”? While Mexican comics would switch to the more properly-translated title of El Asombroso Hombre Araña by the 1980s, Spidey spent his first seventeen years south of the border primarily published (for reasons we English speakers may never understand) under the banner of El Sorprendente Hombre Araña—“The Surprising Spider-Man.”

The two best articles I found on the history of Spidey in Mexican comics are here and here—they’re in Spanish, naturally, but Google Chrome should translate the pages for you lickety split. There’s also The Amazing Spider-Mex page here. But the best source for our specific endeavor today would be the comics themselves.

EDIT 2021: The latter two links are dead as of November 2021. I’m going to leave them here for both historical purposes and also just in case they’re resurrected somehow. END EDIT

It took a while, but employing the web-searching skills I’ve honed for nearly a quarter century, I did find a digital copy of El Sorprendente Hombre Araña #128, the “marriage issue.” After reading the issue (plus a little further researching), it pains me to say that nearly everything the original tweeter claimed was false.

Let’s start with the assertion that the publisher, La Prensa (“The Press” in English), “did not believe Mexicans would read Spider-Man after Gwen Stacy died.” While this may very well be true in isolation, the fact is that La Prensa actually lost the Spider-Man license a relatively short time after Gwen was killed off in proper Marvel continuity. Might they have kept Gwen alive if they continued to hold the license for a more significant time after she was killed in North American comics? None of us can really say; this would be pure speculation.

Continuing on, the statement “They created 45 original issues after Spiderman 119 where she [Gwen] lives” is flat-out untrue. As I just said, La Prensa lost the pub rights around the same time of Gwen’s death, so they never really had to deal with much in the way of post-Gwen storylines. The main reason they were putting out so much of their own material was because they were trying to keep up with a weekly (by that point) pub schedule. In addition, most of these original issues weren’t all that original. (More on this later.)

For the record: The last regular issue of Amazing Spider-Man that La Prensa directly reprinted (according to this index) was #120 (not #119), in Sorprendente #175, dated August 17, 1973, according to the Grand Comics Database. As we know, Gwen was killed off in ASM #121 (June 1973), so it is true that they never reprinted the story where she died—but this just might be a coincidence. They only published ten more issues after that reprint in #175 anyway; far less than the forty-five claimed in that tweet. The final issue, #185, was dated October 26, 1973 (going once again by the GCD), so it was only ten issues and about two months later that La Prensa stopped doing Spider-Man comics altogether.

The tweet also left the impression (at least for me) that the Mexican comics kept Gwen alive and even married her off to Peter Parker as an act of defiance; perhaps even protest. Oh how I wish this were true; how I wish this all happened as a giant F-U to Marvel for their stupid decision to kill Gwen. But this is demonstrably false. Once again, for the record: El Sorprendente Hombre Araña #128 has a pub date of May 31, 1972—almost a year prior to Gwen dying in ASM #121.

Finally, referring to Sorprendente #128 as a “wedding issue” is quite misleading. While a wedding does take place in the issue, it occurs in Peter Parker’s imagination, not the reality of the story.

“The Marriage of Peter Parker”

Here are some story pages to give you an idea what was going on:

Some rough English translations, courtesy of Google Translate: “Finally dear reader, we present the story that you all expected, although it would be best if you read this page quickly so that you can learn what really happens…”

Gwen: “Oh Peter, I am the happiest woman in the world… we will never separate… but what’s wrong, my love? You don’t seem happy…”

Pete: “Eh-excuse me Gwen, I just got a little distracted.”

Pete’s thought balloon: “She can’t see that although I am also happy, I am afraid that if she discovers my secret identity our happiness will be over…”

Aunt May: “How happy I feel, my dear Peter has become a man… I know I will miss him, but it is the law of life…”

Title: “The Marriage of Peter Parker”

Caption: Yes, Peter Parker has managed to turn his dream into reality, but what about Spider-Man?

The story takes place with Gwen in England, where she went to live with her aunt and uncle in the wake of her father’s death. Aunt May laments the couple’s separation and, with the support of Anna Watson, writes Gwen a letter. Later in the story, Gwen appears to be on a plane with her uncle returning to New York, but we don’t see her again in the issue (apart from the fantasy sequence).

Meanwhile, the Green Goblin returns and kidnaps Aunt May, which eventually lands her in the hospital. Spidey then battles the Goblin and gets knocked unconscious, leading to a dream sequence where he marries Gwen and they live happily ever after.

I should point out that every figure of the Goblin in this story was swiped from either John Romita (ASM #39-40) or Gil Kane (ASM #96-98). More on the swiping to come.

Spidey ends up winning the battle by forfeit when the Norman Osborn personality reasserts itself. We end with Pete visiting Aunt May in the hospital, wishing his dream could be made reality. “But … as long as Spider-Man exists … Can Peter Parker make his dream come true? Only time will tell!”

Again, note that in the symbolic panel that ends the story, the Pete & Gwen figures were swiped from the cover of ASM #87:

…While the Spidey figure was swiped from the cover of Captain America and the Falcon #137 (wherein Spidey guest starred):

Swiped

I managed to find and view many more issues of the original El Sorprendente Hombre Araña series online. The bulk of the early issues are straight reprints translated into Spanish, with the “new” stories only coming out within the last year and a half (or so) of La Prensa’s run. I put “new” in quotes because while the stories are kinda, sorta new (as well as often being rather weird by North American comic sensibilities), most of the art is just swipes. Nearly every cover is also put together with (at least some) repurposed swipes—see for yourself.

Now, just for one example, let’s take a gander at El Sorprendente Hombre Araña #149 to get a deeper taste. The vast majority of the story is just swipes from Amazing Spider-Man #14 (with the Kingpin taking Ox’s place):

Page from El Sorprendente Hombre Araña #149…
Page from Amazing Spider-Man #14, source for the swipes seen above.

La Prensa was also doing a Spidey newspaper strip. Here’s one example:

…Again, mostly swiped art from Ditko. Honestly people, I did this all the time between the ages of six and nine, usually with tracing or carbon paper. Anyone wanna pay big bucks to see these “original” comics of mine? They’re pretty close to the same level of creativity as these issues of Sorprendente. Get in touch via crusty@paradoxcomics.com and I’ll be happy to provide my PayPal info.

Now there are occasions when we do see wholly original art in these comics, which (according to my research) was done almost exclusively by a talented gentleman named José Luis Durán. Said art is quite lovely at times, but there’s just not enough of it to make it worth pursuing, at least not for me. Even so, there no doubt remains a great deal of curiosity among Spidey fans for these foreign editions, so we can probably expect prices on such back issues to continue to rise.

While we’re on the subject, it should be noted that the writer of these new La Prensa stories was (as best as I could gather, again based on my research) a man named Raúl Martinez.

Back to the Beginning

Getting back to the original Twitter question: Should this stuff be reprinted? In a word, no.

First of all, you would need photostat proofs to reprint it, which I’m sure Marvel doesn’t have. I imagine they’re piled up in a Mexican office building somewhere, assuming they weren’t destroyed or stolen decades ago. Either way, this makes reprinting a practical impossibility.

Secondly, to reprint this material would be redundant. As I’ve shown, these so-called “original” stories already are, essentially, reprinted material—with art that’s almost entirely swiped. Such tales make for an interesting curiosity, but that’s about it.

And third, even if you had proofs and didn’t care that the art was largely swiped, we have another problem: some of that swiped art does not even belong to Marvel, so if they dared attempt to reprint it, they’d likely be sued. Let’s take a glimpse at Sorprendente #148 as just one example. Right off the bat (no pun intended), look at the cover.

That’s Vampirella. I don’t know precisely where the figure was taken from, but it’s clearly her. (By the way, we don’t see her, nor any other character that looks like her, in the story despite the cover appearance. Go figure.) The issue features Spidey fighting this group of costumed femme fatales called Las Satanicas (“The Satanics”). Sounds intriguing, right? Once again, the figures of these ladies are all swiped from Gil Kane—but not from any Spidey story he drew. No, I’m pretty sure these were swiped from an old Batman story of his, with the original figures being Batgirl, Catwoman, or possibly both.

Even if I’m wrong about the original source, there are other, more obvious examples of swiping from DC and other publishers. Just check out that one cover of Arañita #94 from the Código Espagueti link I provided earlier. The grim reaper drawing was clearly taken from an old Batman cover by Neal Adams.

Arañita #94

 

Batman #237 (Dec. 1971)

In this case it looks like it’s a freehand swipe, not a direct tracing, but still—I’m pretty sure this would be considered stolen art in a court of law.

Taking all this into consideration, I think it’s safe to say we’re never going to see any reprint collections of this material.

Wedding Portrait

But at least we have this awesome cover, right—with Gwen in that wedding dress and Pete in the tux?

It may very well be that these Pete and Gwen figures came straight from the pencil (or pen) of Señor Durán, but the longer I look at it, the more uncertain I become. Sunday night I posted this image to Facebook and jokingly observed: “Not only did Pete and Gwen get married in Mexico, but apparently Gwen was a Satan worshiper– check out those pentagram earrings!”

Having given the matter further thought, I think these figures may be swipes as well. I mean, do they have a Tom Sutton-ish flavor to them, or am I nuts? The Satanic connotations of the pentagram earrings also suggest the art may have been lifted from a horror story that likely saw print in one of those classic Warren mags like Creepy or Eerie or possibly even the aforementioned Vampirella. My Warren mag expertise is not on par with my comics expertise, so I can’t be completely certain, but I would be willing to bet some money on it.

That said, do I still think this image is awesome? Hell yeah. If someone were to make a poster of it, would I hang it on my wall? Again: hell yes.

Post-Prensa

Getting back to Spidey’s broader history down Mexico way, La Prensa lost the rights to the character in 1973, at which point Spidey moved over to OEPISA (Editorial Organization of Publications SA), which continued reprinting Spider-Man stories under its division of Macc Editors, along with reprints of material from Spidey Super Stories as Arañita Super Historias.

Sidebar: Speaking of which, can we get back to that Arañita cover for issue #94 for a sec? Why is Spidey shown facing the personification of death on the cover of a kiddie comic?

The webhead would then move yet again in 1980 to Novedades Editores. It was this group that finally reprinted ASM #121. Check out their cover.

It’s funny that the original, U. S. edition had all those faces on the cover as a sales gimmick—one of them was going to die, but you had to buy the issue to find out who. This version has all the same faces, but tells you up front, “La Muerte de Gwen Stacy!” Uh, why do we need all those other faces on the cover then? You just defeated the whole purpose of the design!

EDIT 2021: Over the course of editing and updating this post with new information more than two and a half years later, I find the situation is somehow even more confusing than I originally thought—and I already found it extremely confusing to begin with!

First off, I attributed that “La Muerte de Gwen Stacy” issue to Novedades Editores because they took over the license in Mexico in 1980 and this was the year I saw attached to the issue. While this was, in fact, the correct year for the publication of this comic, my error was that although this was clearly a Spanish-language comic, it was not published in Mexico but in Spain. The publisher was Comics Vértice (“Vertix Comics”) and anyone interested can find more info on them here, and on the specific reprint issue here, courtesy of the Tebeosfera (“Comicsphere”) website.

Secondly, in diving into my old research to sort this all out, I only just noticed in the notes (specifically note #4) from this index page referenced earlier that OEPISA/Macc did reprint ASM #121, and well before 1980—it was in 1974 to be precise. Here is what the note said, translated into English:

Starting at number 123, an irregular cycle of Spider-Man begins, drawn by Mexican artists, who paid homage to or “copied” artists like Neal Adams (there are a number in which a villain is identical to Deadman from DC Comics) or Gil Kane. The strangest thing about this stage was seeing Gwen Stacey [sic], Spiderman’s fragile girlfriend at the time, drawn in a more erotic style. Macc Division continued the publication of this title in 1974 with Amazing Spider-Man #124 (but in its third and fourth issues it goes back to publishing Amazing Spider-Man #121 and Amazing Spider-Man #122—with the famous story of the death of Gwen Stacey [sic] and the Green Goblin).

This spurred me on to even more exhaustive searching, which eventually paid off with the discovery of these comics. Here is the cover of OEPISA/Macc’s 1974 reprint of ASM #121, courtesy of Tebeosfera:

As the cover shows, this is indeed the third issue, just as the note said, and it’s got a cover date of July 7, 1974. You can find further info on OEPISA/Macc’s Spidey reprints here and more specifics on their reprint of ASM #121, specifically, here, thanks once again to Tebeosfera.

In the midst of all this, I also stumbled onto the Park City blog, which lends the perspective of an actual Mexican comics reader at the time ASM #121 got reprinted there in ‘74. If you’d rather not go through the trouble of translating the post, here’s the gist: he hated it, just like most readers everywhere (in Mexico, the states, and every place else) did at the time. He hated that Gwen was killed off at all, and hated how ridiculous the explanation of her death was even more.

Lastly, just for total clarity, it looks like when Novedades Editores did take over the Mexican license in 1980, they started their reprints from Spidey’s very beginning, with their first issue reprinting both Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1. Tebeosfera provides a fuller accounting of what they published here.

Further updates will be tacked on after the end of the originally-published blogpost. We now return you to your regularly scheduled text from 2019… END EDIT

In any case, Spidey has jumped between different publishers a couple more times since Novedades Editores, but by all accounts these outfits just did straight reprints with translated English; no funny business worthy of any further discussion.

Gwen-a-Mania Runnin’ Wild

So most of the info in the tweet that started all this was wrong, but there were a few kernels of truth. One was that Spidey was clearly very popular in Mexico and throughout South America. Another was that Gwen Stacy was very popular as well—or at least her badonkadonk was.

(For all of you deprived souls out there who have never seen Dave Chappelle’s inimitable Chappelle’s Show and thus have no clue what a badonkadonk is, it’s what you rest your mug on when you saddle up and ride.)

But the greatest truth revealed by the tweet had nothing to do with any of its content; it had to do with the larger reaction to it. As the crew over at comicbook.com put it, the fans went “nuts” over it.

On a more personal level, I can only shake my head in disbelief over how this has all unfolded. This blog was essentially born out of my love for the Gwen character and my dismay at her treatment. When I published my doctoral dissertation on Gwen in mid-2014, the character was a dead property with seemingly no future. Then Spider-Gwen was born shortly thereafter, and it’s like the sky has been the limit ever since. I ended that post with the following quote from Scott Brick: “She [Gwen Stacy] was a much-loved character who died according to the whims of her creators, yet she’s stayed alive seemingly according to her own.”

Right now it feels like the character of Gwen Stacy has more life than she has ever known before.

The Amazing Spider-Band

In completely unrelated news, I discovered some new (to me, that is) Spider-Man music courtesy of a post to one of my comic book groups on Facebook—check out The Amazing Spider-Band here:

Yet again I find myself humbled by my own ignorance, as this first came out in 2002 and I had never heard of it before. These are great renditions of some of the music used in the classic Spider-Man cartoon of the late 1960s. Give it a listen, I think you’ll enjoy them.

 

EDIT 2021: I only recently discovered this post on Tom Brevoort’s blog from earlier this year (2021, that is) wherein he seemed to repeat this idea that La Prensa put out forty-five issues of “new” material to somehow keep Gwen alive in Mexican comics. In his own words:

And so, for a time, La Prensa stopped printing the American stories altogether, relying on their new material to fill the pages with additional Spider-Man adventures, adventures still set during a period when Gwen was still alive. For a year or two, the clock stopped for readers in Mexico and throughout Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Peru. In all, 45 new adventures were created.

The tweet that originally inspired this post also gave us this same number, which I found bedeviling. As I said in the original post, La Prensa only published ten more issues after reprinting ASM #120, so where the heck is everybody getting this magic number of forty-five from? Against my better judgment, I went back to that full index of issues of El Sorprendente Hombre Araña comics, crunched more numbers, and further investigated sales dates.

Of course, this further research led me to another web article that had some misinformation in it— a “Comic Book Legends Revealed!” piece over at Comic Book Resources. They still painted the same false picture of the publisher trying to put off reprinting Gwen’s death and wanting to keep her alive (which, as I said in the original post, may be true in isolation, but there’s nothing in the objective data I’ve uncovered that offers strong evidence for this). Additionally, they really messed up the actual pub schedule of these comics. As the article states:

The fascinating thing is that they were now FOUR years behind the Marvel Spider-Man stories despite picking up their production schedule (again, I assume that they went back to the monthly schedule eventually but just kept the new format, as once you were allowed to tell original stories, why stop?).

In the end, they really did seem to try to put off the next story arc, which killed Gwen, as long as they could, with a number of new stories starring Spider-Man and, apparently, Gwen’s ass…

Okay, so first off, La Prensa was never four years behind Marvel. Based on everything I’ve read and seen, they were never more than a couple months behind them at any point. The problem is our ignorance (here in the states, at least) regarding La Prensa’s very unorthodox and irregular pub schedule over the ten years (1963-1973) they were doing Spider-Man comics.

The pub date for Amazing Spider-Man #1 by Marvel Comics was March 1963. The pub date for La Prensa’s El Sorprendente Hombre Araña #1, which reprinted ASM #1, was June 30, 1963—a relatively short time later. Sorprendente continued to align with ASM through their first eight issues, then began alternating ASM reprints with reprints of other Marvel titles, specifically Tales to Astonish and Avengers.

Going by this, I’m assuming La Prensa started out their Sorprendente series bi-weekly or twice-monthly, caught up to the ASM output by their eighth issue, then began alternating with the other reprints to maintain their rather vigorous pub schedule. Along similar lines, since they stopped reprinting other stuff with issue #45, giving us only ASM reprints from this point through issue #122, I’m assuming they went monthly during this stretch.

They then doubled their pace of production by moving back to a twice-monthly schedule with issue #123 (March 15, 1972). This was also the first issue to feature a “new” story, which is likely no coincidence. They would then double their pace of production yet again by moving to a WEEKLY schedule just a bit less than eight months later, beginning with issue #139 (November 3, 1972), a pace they would maintain through their final issue, #185 (October 26, 1973).

Between the twice-monthly and weekly schedules, La Prensa published SIXTY-THREE issues of El Sorprendente Hombre Araña between March 1972 and October 1973, which includes all of the “new” stories. This is what’s tripping everyone up, I’d guess. Since North American comic fans are so accustomed to a monthly pub schedule, we see/hear “sixty-three issues” and immediately think this would constitute more than a five-year span of work—but it was actually just nineteen months.

Let me take a moment to acknowledge how difficult a task this has proven to be. (And if you’ve been revisiting this post more than once over the first couple weeks of November 2021, you’ve likely noticed that I’ve continued editing and correcting this update several times during this span.) Trying to put all this together from the perspective of a U. S.-based English speaker, the best source I could find was that oft-mentioned index—but even this has proven to be less than 100% accurate.

Going by them, you’ll see that La Prensa really screwed up the reading order of ASM from number 33 through 38 (which corresponds to Sorprendente 53-57), including missing ASM #37 completely. A serious miss, because not only did it screw up the all-time-great “Master Planner” storyline, but by missing ASM #37 they missed the formal introduction of Norman Osborn and the major seeds planted that issue for the resolution of the mystery of the true identity of the Green Goblin, which had been running for two years. I was able to verify this through both the GCD (keep clicking the “next issue” link and you’ll see how out of order the issues are) and this Spanish-language blogpost.

So far, so good.

But the index also claimed that Sorprendente #145 contained “new” material, which was weird because the previous five issues (140-144) had all been reprints of ASM 110-114, all released in the proper publication/reading order. ASM #115 would have been the conclusion of a four-issue storyline and they missed it? But based on the magnitude of their previous gaffe, I just assumed such was the case. It was dumb luck that in looking over Sorprendente #172 I stumbled upon a La Prensa house ad that featured the cover for #145, which had the same cover as ASM #115. If it had the same cover then it had to be a reprint of that issue, right? Further research would seem to confirm this—the Grand Comics Database not only displayed the same cover I saw in that house ad, it also acknowledged the issue as a reprint of ASM #115, with Gerry Conway and John Romita listed as the original creators.

If you go by the issues listed in the index as new/original—which they credit as Cómic hecho en Mexico (“Comic made in Mexico”)—there are forty-six of them. Since I’m assuming they screwed up the credits to issue #145, which would appear to be a reprint of ASM #115, the actual number of “new” stories is forty-five. Of the forty-five “new” stories, I have only been able to find/see twenty of them, and issue #145 is not among them. As I haven’t seen the issue myself, I can’t speak with firsthand 100% certainty, but given the cover is straight from the cover of ASM #115, plus the verification we have from the GCD, I’m extremely confident it is a reprint.

So… over the course of the entire 185-issue run of La Prensa’s El Sorprendente Hombre Araña, there were forty-five issues altogether, IN TOTAL, that were “new” stories, and most were NOT created after Gwen died, nor were they created for the sole purpose of keeping the character alive. In fact, the bulk of these stories were created and published before Gwen was killed off in the U. S. comics in the Spring of ‘73. She was actually alive for the vast majority of the time these issues were published—and when I say “vast majority,” this is only relative to Marvel’s pub schedule in North America. In La Prensa continuity, she was technically alive the whole time, as they never reprinted any more issues of ASM beyond #120.

As I detailed earlier, in the original post: La Prensa had only reprinted Amazing Spider-Man #120 (their last full ASM reprint, which also happened to be and the last issue before Gwen died in ASM #121) in August of ’73 with Sorprendente #175, and were then out of the Spider-Man business by October, just two months (and ten issues) later with Sorprendente #185. Also again: all forty-five of the “new” stories came out within those sixty-three issues that were published over about nineteen months, from Sorprendente #123 (March 15, 1972) to Sorprendente #185 (October 26, 1973).

All told, 140 of the 185 issues of Sorprendente were straight reprints of Marvel material. Of these, 120 were from Amazing Spider-Man, while 20 were reprints from either Tales to Astonish (17) or Avengers (3). They reprinted nearly every issue of ASM through #120, though (as mentioned) they missed #37, while ASM #102 was reprinted across two issues, Sorprendente #121 and #122. The specific issues featuring “new” stories (as best as I can tell) are numbers 123-125, 128, 129, 135-139, 146-159, 163-173, and 176-185.

Anyone still awake out there?

If so, here’s the final tally, one more time (assuming anyone still cares at this point): Out of the 185 issues of La Prensa’s El Sorprendente Hombre Araña, 140 featured reprint material from Marvel; 120 of these reprints were taken straight from Amazing Spider-Man; and 45 were “new” stories—all of which were published within the final 63 issues of La Prensa’s Sorprendente run, on a weekly or twice-monthly schedule that ran from March 1972 to October 1973.

Whew.

I started out almost three years ago knowing nothing about Mexican Spidey comics and now, here I sit, with more knowledge on the subject than I ever would have dreamed. Pretty sure I’ve covered it all at this point, but then again, ya never know. Check back here for another potential update around 2024, just to be safe. END EDIT

5 thoughts on “The Surprising Spider-Mex!”

  1. Hello,
    Would you be able to share issue 128 or any other ones you found digitally?
    I would really like to check them out.
    Thank you

    1. Keep looking, John, they’re out there! A simple web search will get you where you want to go, eventually.

  2. I have been trying, that is why I asked.
    A couple sites that may have had something, the links were old and didn’t work. Asked about them but got no response.
    I’ve trying everywhere and have had no luck whatsoever.
    Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

  3. Seems Gwen appeared prominently in more covers on the Mexican version than in covers of ASM between her introduction in ASM #31 and her last appearance as a living character and not a clone or a character in an alternate universe on ASM #121. Making a wild guess based on recollections, her cover appearances were somewhere between 5 and 10 and only prominent in 2 or 3.

  4. I’ve found a few more. Tried to translate the wedding issue but haven’t had time to do more. It didn’t come out as clear as I thought so I need to try again.

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