Spider-Man comic strip

[daibhidc]

Until fairly recently, the Sunday Mail (not to be confused with the Mail on Sunday) ran The Amazing Spider-Man in its comics section. We don't get the Mail, but I used to read it whenever we visited my Gran on a Sunday. And I was disappointed, because it seemed like I was always missing out on the strips where something actually happened.

Today, I followed a link from TV Tropes to a blog that sarcastically reviews newspaper comic strips. And I learnt something interesting.

Nothing interesting has ever happened in the Spidey newspaper strip. It's just the equivilent of the first few pages of a new comic book story, with him worrying about money and his secret identity, and subplots about J. Jonah Jameson.

I feel a strange combination of relief that I hadn't really missed anything, and irritation that I'd bothered trying to follow it all that time.

(Now the main feature of the comics section is Hot-Shot Hamish. Less happens in a Hamish strip than happened in the Spidey ones, but at least you never get the feeling anything should be happening. It's amazing that a strip about a thick Hebridean Roy of the Rovers who doesn't know what a car is, and takes his sheep everywhere [really!] should be reprinted in a Scottish paper, but the Glasgow-based Mail probably has a similar view of the Islands to the London comics the strip first appeared in.)

Comments

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

Heh. I used to devour Hot-Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse when I was a kid, scouring charity shops and the attics of friends to find back issues (partly because I didn't buy the comic when it came out). I was never that interested in football, but I thought these two comics were rather funny. By the way, Hamish quickly develops into a more Carrot-like character, and his innocense would often see him through.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know that happens eventually (I read the later ones when I was a kid as well.)

At this point, though, he's Carrot in G!G!: the classic Big Naive Guy, guaranteed to misunderstand just about everything with humourous consequences.