In the Racks and Stacks series, Cody discusses the comic books he has been reading.
A spider movie comes to the page.
I was a mere six years old when the spider-themed horror movie Arachnophobia was released back in 1990, but I remember it being a big deal at the time. It was such a big deal that even some of the kids I attended Christian school with at the time watched the movie, and they didn't usually watch horror movies of any sort. I'm not sure why they were allowed to watch Arachnophobia. Maybe the PG-13 rating made it seem more acceptable to their parents. Maybe the spiders were a horrific threat that parents felt more comfortable allowing their children to see, more so than slashers and gut-munching zombies. Or maybe it was the Steven Spielberg stamp of approval that made it all seem safer. It was probably the Spielberg connection that helped make this story of killer spiders as big as it was at the time, going hand in hand with the real arachnophobia suffered by many of its viewers.
I know I was certainly caught up in Arachnophobia fever. Not because I'm scared of spiders, but simply because I was a horror fan drawn to the idea of killer spiders. I saw and enjoyed the trailers on the big screen, but I don’t think I caught the film itself until it hit VHS. Once I saw it, I was an instant fan and have watched it multiple times over the decades. Before I saw the movie, I had bought a copy of the comic book adaptation – and as many times as I’ve watched the movie, I have definitely read that comic book a lot more times. This was one of my favorite books to grab out of my collection and leaf through, getting drawn in by the story of killer spiders over and over.
Scripted by Don Jakoby, Wesley Strick, and Al Williams, Arachnophobia was the feature directorial debut of producer Frank Marshall, a longtime associate of executive producer Steven Spielberg's, and the film does feel very much like a Spielberg picture, with that familiar Amblin charm. The story begins with nature photographer Jerry Manley joining entomologist James Atherton on an expedition into the Venezuelan rainforest to search for undiscovered species of spiders that may have been surviving in isolation for millions of years.
Atherton is a little too successful. He does indeed find an unknown species of spider, which has a venom so toxic that it kills Manley with one bite. The spider then hitches a ride with Manley in his coffin, which is shipped back home to Canaima, California. Once in Canaima, the spider takes refuge in a barn, where it mates with a domestic spider, creating a whole new species of spiders with that same deadly bite. I always felt this was a cleaver move on the part of the filmmakers: by creating a new deadly species (with no genetic experiments necessary), they don't have to explain why a species we're all already familiar with is suddenly going nuts. This is the first time these spiders have ever existed in civilization. And go nuts they do, proceeding to crawl all over town, bringing death to old and young.
The task of dealing with this issue falls on the shoulders of arachnophobic doctor Ross Jennings. He knows there's more than meets the eye when it comes to the deaths of these Canaima residents, but he's new to town and the older, set-in-his-ways, out-of-touch local doctor refuses to listen to his theories that these weren't just natural deaths. The sheriff isn't any help, either. Jennings just can't get any support... until it's beyond obvious that he's right.
Soon Jennings is trying to solve the spider problem with the help of Atherton, Atherton's assistant Chris Collins, and quirky exterminator Delbert McClintock.
William Rotsler was the writer assigned to bring this story to the page, and he did a good job of condensing things that took 110 minutes to play out on the screen and getting them to work in a 60-or-so page comic book. Dan Spiegle handled the artwork, which must have given a challenge, since the book didn’t have the rights to use the likenesses of any of the popular actors (like Jeff Daniels and John Goodman) from the movie. Spiegle did a decent job of coming up with alternative looks for the characters, although his renderings of Delbert occasionally come off as somewhat monstrous.
Sam Parsons provided by the coloring, with Carrie Spiegle handling the lettering.
There is some great imagery in this book: corpses with spiders crawling over them, a web so large that it has caught mice and birds in it, a body covered in web, spiders pursuing characters while their little legs go “dukka dukka” on the floorboards. Spiegle also drew Jennings in a way that’s reminiscent of the male leads in ‘50s creature features, adding a nice throwback vibe to the whole thing.
The Arachnophobia comic book is a fun read that used to give my younger self the Arachnophobia fix, again and again, when I didn’t have a copy of the movie on hand.
Note: Marvel Comics will not be covered in Racks and Stacks articles, as they have their own article series.
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