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Today, we look into whether Spider-Man has a mermaid cousin.
This is “Just Like the Time Before,” a feature where I examine instances from comic book history where comic book creators did early versions of later, notable comic book characters and plot ideas. Essentially, the “test runs” for later, more famous characters and stories.
Generally speaking, with this column, I’m looking at spotlight actual prototypes for future characters, like Jimmy Olsen using a wish to create a “Supergirl” a little while before the actual Supergirl debuted. Stuff like that (I think that that one was literally my fist column on the topic). However, at the same time, I don’t mind occasionally pointing out some interesting examples where a very familiar-looking character debuted before a more famous character but it was just a coincidence.
This all leads into the request from longtime reader Joe O., who was inspired by my recent column about how comic book back issue seller are always trying to sell people on retroactive first appearances, like “Sersi’s first appearance isn’t in Eternals #3, it’s in Strange Tales #109, because the ancient Circe appears in that comic and we later learned that Sersi actually WAS Circe!” So Joe wanted to know a little bit more about the infamous (famous?) prototype appearance of Aunt May and Uncle Ben that I covered in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed (you know you’ve been doing these things a long time when your 328th installment was still over a decade ago)
“AUNT MAY” AND “UNCLE BEN” APPEARING TWO MONTHS BEFORE SPIDER-MAN
During the late 1950s and very early 1960s, Marvel’s most popular titles were their monster comics. These monster comics typically followed a specific pattern, which was that Jack Kirby would draw (and almost certainly plot) a lead feature starring a fantastical monster, then there would be two other short stories starring monsters, typically drawn by Don Heck and Dick Ayers and written by some Marvel writer (perhaps Larry Lieber) and then Steve Ditko would plot and draw (and Stan Lee would script) a surrealist twist-driven story, very much along the lines of the stuff that you’d see on the Twilight Zone at the time.
Ditko’s twist stories were so good and they were so generally buried behind the more notable Kirby monster features that Stan Lee decided to just, in effect, give Ditko his own magazine for these sort of stories. Amazing Adult Fantasy was originally Amazing Adventures, which was just a standard Marvel monster comic. With issue #7, it changed its title and devoted itself exclusively to the twisty tales that Ditko and Lee had been doing for the past few years. The hook on the magazine was that this was the comic that would “Respect your intelligence.” So…as opposed to what, all of the other Marvel Comics that thought you were a moron?
Anyhow, Strange Tales #97’s “Goodbye to Linda Brown” was one of those types of stories…
In it, a man and a woman known as Aunt May and Uncle Ben are taking care of their niece, Linda Brown. Linda is a happy young teen who is in a wheelchair. At night, though, May begins sleepwalking…
Ben had previously been sleepwalking and there is some concern that perhaps Linda will start to sleepwalk, as well (the story never explains why they all started sleepwalking, but the implication is, I suppose, that someone was sort of telepathically calling to them?).
As you can see, Ben and May share some similarities with how Ditko would later draw Ben and May Parker in Amazing Fantasy #15 a couple of months after this issue…
But let’s be frank, the similarities are really quite overblown. The Bens really don’t look the same at all. May does, but she is also clearly a lot younger than May Parker and it sure appears to be more Ditko having a distinct “look” for his characters.
DOES SPIDER-MAN HAVE A MERMAID COUSIN?
But anyhow, let’s get to the twist. One night, Linda DOES sleepwalk…
And we get the big twist…Linda is a mermaid!
Joe wanted to know, “I’ve occasionally heard mention of “Peter Parker’s mermaid cousin.” But I don’t know if that was ever made “canon.” I was wondering if you knew what the story was. Did Ditko ever really intend to use the same characters twice?”
Almost certainly it was just a coincidence. This stuff happened all the time. Stan Lee would often re-use names, with Betty being Bruce Banner’s girlfriend AND Peter Parker’s girlfriend’s name. The Silver Age of Marvel before Fantastic Four #1 is littered with familiar sounding character names, like Magneto, Hulk, Thing, Droom and more. Ben and May’s names being used was just a coincidence.
However, in Spider-Man: Chapter One #1, John Byrne appeared to slightly allude to the existence of a cousin Linda with Peter receiving a present from a Cousin LAURA. Byrne tends not to make mistakes like that, so I tend to think he was just inventing a cousin without thinking about this story, but Laura and Linda ARE pretty close-sounding names, so perhaps Byrne mean it as a slight jokey reference to this story…
Generally speaking, though, no, there was no intention to connect these Uncle Ben and Aunt May to Ben and May Parker and no writer has ever gone back to try to connect the two together, so no, Spider-Man does not, in fact, have a cousin who is a mermaid, but then again, he also didn’t have a sister for many years and now he does, so I guess you should never say never with these sorts of things. Zeb Wells might surprise us all with his upcoming run on Amazing Spider-Man!
Thanks for the suggestion, Joe! Okay, folks, you MUST have some suggestions for other characters and/or plots that fit into this theme! So drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com for future installments!
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