®
by
Michael Browning
There was a creative explosion in the 1980s that brought us The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Miracleman, Secret Wars, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and … Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham! And no, I didn’t mean The Spectacular Spider-MAN, although that series was pretty good then, too. I actually meant the Spectacular Spider-HAM! Around 1983, when comics were booming and Marvel and DC were rolling out hits like Uncanny X-Men and New Teen Titans, Tom DeFalco, then a writer for Marvel, decided to pitch something totally new—a parody of Marvel Comics characters as funny animals.
THE (PREVIOUSLY UNTOLD) SECRET ORIGIN OF SPIDER-HAM
DeFalco and Larry Hama, who had just come off a long stint as editor of Marvel’s MAD magazine knockoff, Crazy, brainstormed and came up with Spider-Ham. DeFalco thought the idea would make a great comic and an even better cartoon. “Larry Hama and I were sitting in his office talking about the standard nonsense that creative people talk about,” DeFalco says. “We were talking about Marvel and licensing and that type of stuff. We said, ‘Marvel can license just about anything, but the one thing they can’t license is plush.’ They had nothing for young kids or plush-kind of toys. So Larry said, ‘You know what we should really be doing? Funny-animal comic books!’ “Now, Larry Hama is so wide in terms of the depth of his creativity,” DeFalco continues. “It depends on what you know him from. I think the vast majority of people know him from G. I. Joe or Conan. Or Crazy magazine, which shows the depth of the man. Larry has always been a fan of funny-animal comic books, like Carl Barks’ stuff, and he said, ‘What we should do
Swinging Swine Move over, Spider-Man! Here comes Spider-HAM! Detail from artist Joe Albelo’s cover to Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham #9 (Aug. 1986). © 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc.
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