Marvel comics as Penguin Classics

Good points but the comic book is only 80 years old and these days who looks at them? Its main vehicle now is the motion picture medium. It wasn't until they made mass-market films that many people had been exposed to them (and that is partly because there's no competition--there's not much else in fantasy adventure film now to choose from-stand alone stories are very rare).

This is more about a brand promotion than a single story. It's the Spider-man brand that is being showcased.

I know that in the 1960s and 70s, comic book reading was associated with childhood or juvenile minds.
You never saw an adult depicted as reading a comic book--in some European films it was associated with parody/fantasy (Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroianni are reading them the 10th Victim) or juvenile delinquency.
There's a giallo I recall where a criminal is reading a Batman comic.

Harry Palmer had a picture of Batman and Robin on his office wall in BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (likely because of the tv series) but he also had a box of cereal scattered on the floor and was clearly depicted as on the fringe of polite society.


You don't find too many people quoting a comic directly: "this situation reminds me of panel 7, thought balloon 2, on page 14 of Spider-man issue 24."
I should look it up to see what is there.
 

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