I’ve been doing a lot of sketches lately of SPIDER-MAN — as well as his secret identity of Peter Parker, Mary Jane, J. Jonah Jameson and the like. Mostly the immediate cast– the protagonists of the SPIDER-MAN universe (although it could be argued that Jameson is more an enemy than a friend of SPIDER-MAN). I thought it would be fun to do some sketches of the wonderfully colorful villains of SPIDER-MAN’s world. SPIDER-MAN has probably the most bizarre and fascinating gallery of bad guys in comics– maybe BATMAN can compete… but he’s a close second, in my humble opinion. In my first introductory phone discussion with FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN writer Peter David, he told me that he was happy to indulge me and write any of SPIDER-MAN’s villains into the comic that I wanted to make it interesting for me. I told him that I was more interested in drawing well constructed, exciting stories with good characterization and dialogue than I was just drawing ‘cool villains’….. and though that’s true, that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy drawing them once in a while. So I thought I’d start with one of my favorite of the Wall Crawler’s bad guys, THE VULTURE. I think drawing old people’s faces is much more interesting than drawing the ‘beautiful young people’ that make up the hero population of comics– and VULTURE has one of the most interesting faces in comics, with his huge nose, small chin and big ears. He’s a great character. So– here’s a quick sketch of the craggy old guy……

Hopefully I’ll be able to post more of SPIDER-MAN’s host of bad guys in the future for you to see.

See you next time……

Mike

This is Entry 127.