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Laymen on the street.
Kids with their lunch boxes and onesies.Everyoneis gonna know who Spider-Ham is.
He laughs at the ridiculousness of it all.
No, those arent typos.
Slott is not talking about Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man.
Hes talking about PeterPorker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham.
For decades, he slung webs in obscurity as a Z-list Marvel Comics character.
Thats all about to change.
Unsurprisingly, Spider-Ham began as a joke.
The year was 1983 and the comics industry was in a state of upheaval.
But there was a problem with that rumor.
Marvel, at that time, was not in [those] leagues, DeFalco says with a laugh.
This topic came up during a routine bullshitting session between DeFalco and fellow Marvel writer and editor Larry Hama.
We were like, Havent these guys walked into a Disney or a Warner Bros. store?
What those stores sell are apparel and plush toys.
There were some Marvel T-shirts in those days, and thats all we had in terms of apparel.
And Larry and I were saying, Theres no way were gonna have a plush toy.
Quoth DeFalco: And I said, Like what?
Peter Porker, Spider-Ham?
The pair laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the notion, and Hama wanted to one-up his friend.
Soon, they were anthropomorphizing Marvel icons like Captain America and Ghost Rider, too.
Im saying, Captain Americat!
and hes going, Goose Rider!
Just back and forth with this stupid stuff.
Somebody comes in and listens to our nonsense for a few minutes and says, What is this?
Is this a book you guys are gonna do?
Larry or I go, Yeah, were coming up with a funny animal book featuring what was it?
Peter Porker, Spider-Ham!
The guys going, That sounds ridiculous.
There was a renaissance of new stuff all of a sudden.
It was easy to do a two-issue or four-issue mini-series.
That was your trial balloon.
Emboldened, the pair went to speak with Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter.
We said, Yeah!
He signed off on it and we started work on the comic book.
Yawn!I need some action!
This is Peter Porker, a character whose backstory is never once explained throughout the entire issue.
Is he destined to live the rest of his life under the monstrous shadow of the Hulk-Bunny?
Will he canhe ever again know peace?
Only time will tell.
Luckily, there was a five-page backup story about Goose Rider to leaven the whole experience out.
1 hit stores in September 1983.
And they looked at it and went, We cant even get Spider-Man dolls!
How the hell are we gonna get Peter Porker dolls?
So we thought,We had fun doing the comic book, at least.
We went on with our lives.
This is where the story gets complicated.
DeFalco has a dramatic version of what happened next.
A few months later, I get a call to come to Shooters office, he recalls.
He looks up at me and says, Galton wants to see you.
Jim Galton was, at the time, the president of the company and a notoriously bottom-line-oriented cutthroat.
I said, About what?
And Shooter said, Its your mess, go up and fix it.
Now go up to Mr. Galtons office.
I say, Yeah, its reprints.
And he says, No, no, Im talking aboutTails T-A-I-L-S. And suddenly, my heart stops.
Im thinking,What the hell did we do?
As DeFalco tells it, the situation grew even more tense and confusing.
Galton just stares at me.
I go, It was a one-shot.
Galton said, And you had something to do with this?
I said, Uhhh, yessir.
Im thinking,Whatever it is, Ill take the heat.
Im just assuming well be yelled at.
Dont worry about the exact meaning of that statistic just know that it was very good.
Galton turns to me and goes, Whens the next issue coming out?
I said, It was a one-shot.
Walsh repeats, It sold 65 percent on the newsstand.
Galton says, Whens the next issue coming out?
I say, It was a one-shot.
Galton says, Youre not listening to me, Tom.Whens the next issue coming out?
DeFalco laughs in the retelling.
I said, Oh!
In about three months, sir!
The only trouble with that story is that Shooter says its complete bullshit.
Galton never had any meetings with DeFalco, Shooter tells me.
Galton, he says, couldnt have cared less about the specifics.
As he puts it, Galton wouldnt know a comic if it bit him on the throat.
Whatever its origins may have been,Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-HamNo.
1 arrived in March of 1985.
Armstrong returned, but DeFalco and Hama passed writing duties on to a scribe named Steve Skeates.
The resulting series was somehow even weirder than the original one-shot.
Alas, quirky absurdity can only get you so far in this world.
Sales declined, and after 17 issues, the series was canceled.
Hama blames a changing entertainment landscape.
The market and the end user were mutating, he says.
Then came the mass popularization of video games.
The kids were less likely to use their quarters for comics.
They were more likely to drop them into slots, Hama says.
The remaining comics readers tended to be older and more self-serious.
So that was the problem:Peter Porkerhad a stigma as a kiddie book.
It seemed that Spider-Ham had had his run and was bound for eternal consignment to the discount pile.
But the porcine powerhouse left a mark on one particularly influential reader: Slott.
As a child, he was a Spidey obsessive and he adoredPeter Porker.
Flash-forward to the late aughts, when Slott was firmly ensconced as the lead Spider-Man writer at Marvel.
The opportunity opened up by that conceit led Slott to propose a gag.
It was a brief nod, but Slott was emboldened and requested something unreasonable.
I wanted to do apost-creditsgag, he recalls.
And I was like, Itll be funny!
And they were like, No!
It was the one thing where I stuck to my guns, he says.
They eventually gave in to me.
Before its release, Slott was vindicated.
And afterward, all these fans came up and were like, Is Spider-Ham in the game?
Will we see him?
Theyre hugging me and the video-game guys are like, Okay, okay, youdoknow these people.
We should do what they cant do.
Finally, he got the green light and dubbed the subsequent 2014 comics story Spider-Verse.
Spider-Verse: Thats me, and every time its said, I get a nickel, he jokes.
Is that a bridge too far?
Is that four bridges too far?
However, they stuck to their guns and the pig stayed in the picture.
He now graces posters and trailers across the planet.
In short,Peter Porkers future is brighter than its ever been.
(Ah, the superhero industry.
Always putting characters creators first and foremost.)
Hama credits Porkers unlikely success to his sheer idiosyncrasy.
If youre doing a formula, nobody cares, he muses.
