Charles Vess spins a moody ghost story with Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth
The celebrated artist's luminous Marvel Graphic Novel sends Spidey to Scotland.
This is RETROGRADING, where they take each of us in our time to dance with the dead here under the hollow hills.
THE COMIC: The Amazing Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth
THE YEAR: 1990. It was a sensational year for ol' Web-Head and for Charles Vess; Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #1 had sold 2.5 million copies, briefly making it the best-selling comic book of all time, while Vess was honored with the Inkpot Award at that year's San Diego Comic-Con, for "excellence in comic art."
THE SPECS: Written and illustrated by Charles Vess, lettered by Gaspar Saladino, and published by Marvel Comics.
THE MAKE: Charles Vess was always an odd fit for mainstream comics, and his path to success was more of a winding country lane than an expressway. With a dreamlike and earthy style, influenced more by the Art Nouveau movement and turn-of-the-century illustrators like Arthur Rackham than Jack Kirby, he hardly fit in with Marvel's Eighties-era bullpen. Nor did Vess have much in common with the pop-pioneers of the day; next to Frank Miller's grittiness and Bill Sienkiewicz's postmodernism, Vess's storybook faeries and enchanted landscapes might have seemed doddering and old-fashioned to some. It didn't help that he wasn't particularly keen on superheroes, whose position in the market was even more dominant then than it is now.
Since his first graphic novel, The Horns of Elfland (1978), a love of fairy tales and mythology has dominated Vess's work. And while his talent eventually got him into the hallowed pages of Heavy Metal, his stories were an uncomfortable fit next to testosterone-fueled depictions of babes and bloodshed; eventually, an editor told Vess that his work was "just too nice" for them. He found a warmer welcome at Marvel Comics' adult anthology Epic Illustrated, where Archie Goodwin, one of the most respected editors in comics history, aided Vess in the further development of his craft. Epic led to work in the Marvel Universe proper; Vess illustrated The Raven Banner: A Tale of Asgard, a Thor-adjacent piece of Norse mythology released under the Marvel Graphic Novel line. And that, in turn, led to Spider-Man.
As a child, Vess was enamored with Steve Ditko and Stan Lee's original Spider-Man stories, and he eventually painted some spectacular covers for the Wall-Crawler, including the classic cover of Web of Spider-Man #1. He also wrote and drew "Cry of the Wendigo" in the latter half of The Amazing Spider-Man #277, featuring the cannibal monster of Algonquin folklore. (Although not the version usually seen trading blows with Wolverine and Hulk. Superhero comics! They make sense, I swear!) Not long after, Jo Duffy, a friend of Vess and an editor at Marvel, suggested he tackle his own Marvel Graphic Novel, focusing on one of the publisher's major characters.
A Spider-Man book must have seemed like an obvious choice, but the notion sat in Vess's mind for two years before bearing fruit. Meanwhile, he was falling deeper and deeper in love with the Scottish Highlands. Vess visited as often as he could, staying in a remote cottage with no phone, drinking deeply of the culture and the awe-inspiring landscape. Bouncing between this rustic solitude and the nonstop hustle of New York City and the comic book business, he began searching for ways to connect the two. Something that could stretch across the Atlantic and weave together the disparate threads of his career and his passion for Scotland. Something like a spider's web…
THE REVIEW: Spirits of the Earth opens with a gorgeous splash of Spider-Man swinging through New York, the Chrysler Building rising up into the clouds behind him. When he spots a couple of purse snatchers, he takes them down with ease — a familiar scene but flawlessly executed, with clear, energetic action and just the right blend of danger and humor. And it isn't just comfort food; it demonstrates how adapted Spider-Man is to his city. The Wall-Crawler is as New Yawk as pizza, crowded subway trains, and the tangy aroma of hot garbage.
But within a few pages, he's left his friendly neighborhood for Scotland. As it happens, Spider-Man's wife, Mary Jane Watson, has inherited a cottage in the Highlands, but it, along with the surrounding countryside, is in danger of being bought up by land developers. And though the village is quaint and the locals are charming, rumors abound that the nearby castle is haunted by ghosts and faeries, who have stolen away a local laird's grandson. Soon enough, Spider-Man sees these apparitions for himself. But, ever the scientific skeptic, he deduces that they're holograms designed to scare everyone away from a super-villainous scheme.
Silly as it is, this Scooby-Doo plot twist works. The villain at work is the laird's scumbag nephew, and he's stealing not only the villagers' ancestral homes but the mystic power of the land itself, and Vess's lush, painterly style brings that land and its people to vivid life.
The artist has an incredible talent for intertwining eeriness and beauty; no one can draw a tree quite like Vess, gnarled roots twisting up into ethereal branches that pull the reader into their embrace. His ghosts and faeries glow and practically float off the page. These pages breathe, ink and paint flowing into a river of form and color. Vess has a deep affinity with nature, which goes hand in hand with his unerring sense of the numinous. In this story, true magic isn't an extra-dimensional force. It's an inherent part of the living world and, thus, a part of everyone.
Beautiful as it all is, a lot happens in these seventy pages, and it doesn't always come together smoothly. The Bond-styled underground lair that Spidey ultimately uncovers is a hard turn away from the haunted castle mystery preceding it. (Strange that Vess didn't stick to the creatures of myth and fantasy he's so adept at portraying.) Spider-Man fighting off an army of henchmen makes for riveting stuff, no doubt — Vess masters Spidey's weird physicality — but the narrative gear shift required to get there is jarring. Plus, the henchmen Spider-Man uncovers belong to the Hellfire Club, and bringing in X-Men villains halfway through the book over-complicates the central conflict without adding anything substantial.
Those small missteps aside, Vess is a natural storyteller who understands the appeal of a classic Spider-Man story. The Peter Parker we get here is no world-famous Avenger but a hero of and for the common people, an ordinary guy who tries to do the right thing and keeps trying even when he screws up. Magical mumbo-jumbo tends to go over his head, and he rolls his eyes at megalomaniacal ranting. But when a selfish and irresponsible scoundrel takes power that isn't his and endangers ordinary people, Spidey does whatever it takes to help. Even if, as in this case, the people he's trying to save are under the belief that he's a demon and try to stone him to death. That quintessential Parker Luck is always in effect, no matter what side of the Atlantic he's on.
NOSTALGIA-FEST OR REPRESSED NIGHTMARE? With Spirits of the Earth, Charles Vess distilled everything strange and beautiful about his art and everything that makes Spider-Man a hero for the ages into one spectacular read.
RETROGRADE: A-