SPIDEY DOES DALLAS!

Usually the dangers in Dallas are related to civil liberties.

Spidey Does Dallas

Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (1981) in Southwest Showdown

Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (1982) in Pipeline to Peril

Spider-Man, Firestar and Iceman at the Dallas Ballet Nutcracker (1983)

Spider-Man and the Dallas Cowboys: Danger in Dallas (1983)

Spider-Man : Christmas in Dallas (1983)

Howdy, true believers! It’s time to mosey away from the familiar four-color sights and sounds of Spider-Man’s Manhattan stomping grounds and check out a new friendly neighborhood … down ol’ Dallas way!

Marvel Comics’ licensed books have a notoriety all their own. Some of their most acclaimed titles – G.I.Joe, Transformers and Micronauts, to name a few – came directly out of licensing deals, while some of their most oddball books – U.S.1, Team America and Crystar – were the product of in-house attempts to break the toy market.

And a quintet of books sponsored in part by the Dallas Times Herald and the Sanger-Harris chain of department stores saw Peter Parker and a slew of other Marvel characters temporarily relocating their adventures to the third biggest city in the state of Texas. The early 1980s brought the web-headed wallcrawler, the incredible Hulk, and a handful of colorful villains – plus Spidey’s Amazing Friends – southwesternly for these promotional books.

[The Uncanny X-Men also enjoyed an opportunity to promote the State Fair of Texas in search of a new mutant recruit, read all about it here]

Here’s a fun fact about these comics: Despite having been published cooperatively at the behest of companies other than Marvel, the stories in these comics appear to take place in the “616” continuity of the mainstream Marvel Comics universe! What scholarship there is to explore on the matter suggests that these tales have never been written into obscurity or shunted to a parallel universe. Instead, these Texan trips comprise a little-known side-alley of our hero’s adventures – let’s see where it takes us!

Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (1981) in Southwest Showdown

The inaugural tale in Spider-Man’s Lone Star State adventures is book-ended with shopping trips to Sanger-Harris, a short-lived concatenation of department stores which folded not long after this issue and, these days, swims somewhere in the genes of Macy’s. The reason for the shopping trips is to procure souvenirs for Aunt May, while the reason for the trip overall was so that Peter could catch up with former classmate “Fran” – now a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader!

“The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
have stumbled upon our operations!”

It’s difficult to explain how much of a phenomenon the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were in that brief period of the late Seventies and early Eighties, if you haven’t lived through it. Obviously, the Cheerleaders still exist – as an institution, one might argue –, but they were ubiquitous in this earlier era of the Big 3 broadcast networks. A high-budget, sex-sells overhaul of the traditional cheerleading squad, by 1980 they’d scored a made-for-TV movie, guest-appearances on high-rated TV shows (including, necessarily, The Love Boat but, strangely, not Fantasy Island) and a best-selling poster (which is how society collectively leered before Google). Around the same time, they broke the hallmark of true cultural success: inspiring an infamous porn parody.

So congrats to Fran, canonically a friend of Peter Parker’s who went on to cheer for the Cowboys! Also, she defeated the Leader. Canon.

On their way to perform at a nearby Army base, the Cheerleaders become lost in a torrential downpour. This leads them to an ersatz base set up in the middle of the desert by the Hulk’s brainy foe, The Leader! For several pages, the scantily-clad cadre slowly determines the true nature of the military outpost, and Fran is able to sneak a phone call to Peter which brings Spider-Man to the scene. Around the same time, the Hulk sort-of stumbles into the picture and starts fucking up all the tanks and stuff that are lying around, as he will.

The Cheerleaders, meanwhile, manage to sneakily wrest away control of the Leader’s evil scheme, proving once again that in the war between Good and Evil, cheer wins.

And Peter goes back to doing what he does best — photographing butts.

Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (1982) in Pipeline to Peril

Peter Parker finds himself in Dallas again, this time visiting his young cousin “Billy,” and that is canon. I don’t know who Billy Parker or Billy whatever-his-name-is, but he’s Into The Spider-Verse now!

The whole fucking place is paved.

Unfortunately, also visiting Dallas is Not Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, longtime foe of our friendly neighborhood web-slinger. It appears that Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of New York crime, has his eyes on a disrupted oil market. His villainous plot involves having the Sandman use his sand powers to block working oil pipelines in a move which, today, I think we can all agree “why not, already.” It’s about damn time. Hope he fucks ‘em up good. Go Sandman.

Reuniting with Spider-Man, in this issue, will be the Hulk once again! The American Southwest has always been the Hulk’s locale, but just to ensure that he’s hanging around Dallas, his alter-ego of Bruce Banner has taken a job as a wildcatter in an oil field. This is a great idea for Banner because he must keep his temper in check at all times or risk turning into the Hulk. And if there’s any less-stressful, less-physically and -emotionally demanding occupation than working in an oil field…

He really does.

Sandman uses a handful of green food coloring and his shape-changing powers to imitate the Incredible Hulk, in order to blame the man-monster for the damage to the oil field. He also visits Sanger-Harris and picks up a cowboy hat which, I have to admit, suits him.

Despite canonically becoming more powerful when surrounded by sand, the Sandman is pretty handily dispatched by Spider-Man and a cement truck smack in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert. The Hulk isn’t actually all that helpful in dispatching the crook – in fact, he basically knocks a donkey pump on its ass and likely screws up oil production in the region for years, more than the Kingpin could’ve ever hoped. The Hulk made Kingpin rich, you heard it here first. Canon.

Well I’m sold — on Sanger-Harris!

GALLERY

A fun feature of these titles were the regional ads inserted in blocks between story pages. The Sanger-Harris books in particular not only added Spider-Woman and some Marvel-style menace to some ads, but were drawn in what one can only call “a fascinatingly disturbed line.” Some of these illustrations -- and I remind you that they're intended to sell children's clothes -- have a genuine sense of menace. Enjoy!

Spider-Man, Firestar and Iceman at the Dallas Ballet Nutcracker (1983)

It's like that Kabuki Star Wars they did a few years ago.

(In my first draft of this article, I called this the first comic book outing of this particular trio. It’s my understanding that this is actually the *second* comic book to feature the “Spider-Friends” from NBC’s Saturday morning “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends” cartoon, and the first comic to feature them in an original story. If so, that’s neat! And if not — look, I love weird old comics, but this specific fact isn’t so compelling that I actually did a lot of research on it. Maybe it’s right, maybe it’s wrong, let’s spin that wheel)

No way that’s gonna catch on.

Part-time superheroine Anjelica “Firestar” Jones is moving to Dallas, canonically, and is saying goodbye to her Amazing Friend teammates Peter and Bobby by treating them to a performance of The Nutcracker, by the Dallas Ballet. For the record, “Dallas Ballet” is also a pretty good name for a drag performer, so consider that a gift from me to you, if you’re so inclined.

Hassling the company, however, is Daddy Long Legs, a baddie bedecked in tux-and-tails and formerly of Spider-Woman’s gallery of rogues. Having swiped an imperfect growth formula from plus-sized superhero Black Goliath, former ballet dancer Daddy experienced an absurd and alarming growth in his arms and legs, lifting him to fifteen feet high with disproportionate limbs. I don’t know where he got his tux.

Of course he is, Bobby, what choice does he have? Life’s a cosmic joke.

Spider-Man, Iceman and Firestar engage Daddy Long Legs outside of the Fair Park Music Hall. It’s what you can only call “a perfunctory battle,” after which the villain is left perched on a towering ice slide while the superheroic trio pop off to the theater. This seems like poor superhero etiquette. Daddy ought to at least get webbed-up, which is a much more sexual sentence than I intended when I began writing it.

Inside, the trio watch The Nutcracker play out, or so I assume – because I’ve never seen it. Here’s what I pieced together: A malevolent toy wizard foists a living tchotchke on his horny niece and a man with five mice for a head is put out by this, then war, Merry Christmas.

“Unf, he iss so BIG!”

Spider-Man and the Dallas Cowboys: Danger in Dallas (1983)

The Giants take on the Cowboys in a comic book which, I’ll be honest here, I don’t know what else happens. I love weird comics and I’ve spent a surprising amount of money on books some of you wouldn’t step on to snuff out if they caught fire, but this book contains Tom Landry and a bunch of famous Cowboys players and, frankly, I couldn’t find it cheaper than forty bucks. Not many men know their limits, but I know mine is around forty bucks.

What does happen in this issue, however, is that the Circus of Crime busts up an NFL game in order to steal the antigravity invention of Dallas-area inventor Dr.Stanley Mudge. Additionally, I’m led to understand that J.Jonah Jameson is portrayed as enjoying a hot dog in the stands. Canon.

Above, not actually the Spider-Man/Tom Landry crossover in question, but rather the only other comic book appearance of Tom Landry, as far as I know. It’s also prohibitively expensive. I got this image online. If someone buys me a real copy, I promise to put a Spider-Man sticker on it and re-post the result above, for clarity’s sake.

Spider-Man : Christmas in Dallas (1983)

Boy, they sure love shooting guns at prominent figures in Dallas, don’t they?

Lastly, however, Christmas in Dallas follows up directly on the previous Dallas-centric diversion. Antigravity inventor Dr.Stanley Mudge invites J.Jonah Jameson and Peter Parker to return to Texas for the enormous charity ball being run under his supervision. The beneficiary: Orphans. (No orphans were invited to the party, it was all oil billionaires. Canon)

Unfortunately, also on his way to the party is Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. His goal is to personally kidnap every wealthy donor at the party, and then to ask for a measly ten million dollars total in ransom. It’s a blatant attempt at classic villainy and a big step for a man whose cover is as a ‘humble importer of spices.’ He must have really been feeling the failure of the oil scheme from three issues earlier. Especially since, y’know … it’s canon, now!

Arguably, the Kingpin may have been driven mad by Sandman’s failure to tank the oil business, because his method of entering the party unannounced is as follows:

Daredevil: Born Again (Miller/Mazzuchelli 1986)

Luckily, Spider-Man is on hand to dispose of the Kingpin’s scheme — and possibly the Kingpin himself.

Slipping out of the charity ball, Pete dons his Spidey-gear and comes swinging through the window, to Kingpin’s surprise. Spidey manages, in the spirit of the season, to cap off a quick beating by dropping a titanic rich-person-style Christmas tree on top of New York’s literally-biggest crime boss.

Dr.Mudge himself strikes a critical blow by tossing his anti-gravity device straight into Kingpin’s hands, in which it’s viciously clutched. It seems that Wilson Fisk is the type of guy who gets a lot of people pointing to an imaginary stain on his lapel, and every time he looks down. Spidey adds genuine injury to mere insult by webbing the device to Kingpin’s hands and watching him float away into space forever (canon).

So long, fat-ass.

Ultimately, five trips to the Lone Star State and its broad array of department stores and sand is enough for anyone. Peter and pals return to their normal habitats in New York, seemingly bound by a pact of silence. Meanwhile, these curious and in-canon adventures fade into the background of a universe which seems content to not mess, any further, with Texas.

“…the salesgirl really knew her stuff. And it was a fair price, too!”