Sunday, November 2, 2008

Pulp Spotlight: The Spider (#2)

Pulp Spotlight
Hello Pulp Friends,

I know I have already dedicate a Pulp Spotlight to The Spider, but I thought that another illo showcasing our masked friend should be still well accepted while we wait to get out of the Halloween celebrations and get back to some old radio show.

Hope you guys dig it and wish you all a wonderful evening :)

Cheers,
Francesco

The Spider

5 comments:

Kyle Latino said...

Very cool. You know Phillip Jose Farmer supposed that The Spider and The Shadow were estranged brothers, and that The Spider was more violent because he was compensating for his deficiency in mental powers.

That both show up in Farmer's short sotry, "Adventure of the Three Madmen". Worth a look.

Cunningham said...

Sniff...sniff...

Words fail. Thanks for this.

Re: Spider/Shadow - Anyone out there know where I can get a digital copy of "Adventure of the 3 Madmen"?

The Spider is a madman. Psychotic and driven to extremes... I've always liked his stories more than The Shadows...what that says about ME I leave for this audience to decide.

;D

Unknown said...

Yep, I'm an absolute SPIDER fan...moreso than the SHADOW. Call me unimaginative, but I like my danger coming at me with both smoking barrels!)
Thanks for this, Francesco!
Say...when is the Francesco sketchbook coming out? ;)
-Dave

Chad Carter said...

There's also the idea (mostly my own) that the Shadow hides/suppresses his natural inclination toward evil (thus giving him an insight few have in countering evil); the Spider, however, has decided to mirror what he perceives evil to be in his own costume, mockingly perhaps. Thought that way, the Spider might turn out to be more fundamentally moral than the Shadow, even if the Shadow's grasp of reality may be much more firm.

Francesco Francavilla said...

Kyle: thank you for the kind word, the info and the headsup on that book: need to find it :)
Bill: Thanks, man :) You know, going through the first radio episodes of the shadow, he barely uses any weapons on the radio shows. Yet everytime we see some classic pulp cover or illo fo the shadow, here he is with not one but usually 2 guns in his hands, which would make him more close to the SPider, visually speaking.
Dave: Glad you liked this, Dave, and that's a really good question: I would love to have one out in 2008 since I skipped 2007 already...
Chad: Well, both Shadow and SPider are playing the card to "scare" the bad guys, to instill fear even before getting to the action. It's not a coincidence, in that view, that also Batman (who was created in the same period) played that "fear" card as well. That is my opinion anyway ;)

Cheers,
Francesco