Spidey Super Stories #16
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSpidey Super Stories #16 is a memorable artifact of Marvel's mid-1970s educational publishing partnership with the Children's Television Workshop, demonstrating how the publisher deliberately used this all-ages series to funnel young Electric Company viewers toward the broader Marvel universe by crossing Spider-Man with characters as varied as Kid Colt, Namor, and Lockjaw in a single issue. Its cover — John Romita Sr.'s Jaws homage arriving less than a year after the film's theatrical run — makes it one of the earliest identifiable comic book tributes to that movie poster, a cultural wink that signals how attuned Marvel's Bronze Age editors were to mainstream pop culture even in a children's title. Because the series was consumed by young readers rather than preserved by collectors, surviving high-grade copies are genuinely scarce, lending the issue an accidental archival significance the original editorial team never intended. The issue also sits at the exact handoff point in the series' creative history, being among Jim Salicrup's first issues after he took over writing duties from Jean Thomas.
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Spidey Super Stories launched in 1974 as a co-production between Marvel Comics and the Children's Television Workshop, the nonprofit behind PBS's The Electric Company, where Spider-Man had been appearing in live-action sketches since the show's 1974–75 season. Jean Thomas wrote the first fifteen issues before Jim Salicrup took over the writing duties; issue #16, on sale January 27, 1976, was therefore among Salicrup's earliest entries in the run. Every story in the series passed through a dual editorial gauntlet — staff from both Marvel and the Children's Television Workshop reviewed scripts to verify age-appropriate content, reading-level suitability, and meaningful representation of female characters, an unusually rigorous process for a Bronze Age Marvel book. John Romita Sr. served as art director for the series and drew the cover for this issue, while interior art was handled by Winslow Mortimer (pencils) and Mike Esposito and Tony Mortellaro (inks), the same core team that produced most of the run.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published April 1976 (on sale January 27, 1976); issue #16 of a 57-issue run (1974–1982) set in the alternate-universe designation Earth-57780.
- Written by Jim Salicrup — one of his first issues after succeeding Jean Thomas as series writer with issue #16 — penciled by Winslow Mortimer, inked by Mike Esposito and Tony Mortellaro, with A. J. Hays as editor and John Romita Sr. as art director and cover artist.
- Cover is an homage to the theatrical poster for Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), making it one of the earliest comic book covers to riff on that image, arriving less than a year after the film's release.
- Main story 'Spider-Man Meets Kid Colt!' (split into two parts: 'A Ghost from the Past' and 'A Switch in Time,' 12 pages total) uses Lockjaw's dimension-hopping power to send Spider-Man back to the Wild West to team up with the outlaw hero Kid Colt.
- Back-up tale 'Spidey Meets the Yeti!' was adapted from an Electric Company television script by Tom Whedon (father of Joss Whedon).
- Additional story 'Into the Jaws!' features Spider-Man and Namor (Sub-Mariner) teaming up against an environmental threat — the title a deliberate nod to the Jaws homage cover.
- Issue also contains one-page educational features spotlighting Lockjaw and Namor, consistent with the series' mission of introducing Marvel characters to young readers unfamiliar with the broader universe.
- The series as a whole has never received a comprehensive modern collected edition; outside a late-1970s mass-market paperback, the original comics remain the only way to read these stories.
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Reprints
Reprinted in The Best of Spidey Super Stories #[nn] (1978), Spidey #5 (1980), Die Spinne #70 (1983), Alter Ego #189 (2024), Die Spinne #69
Key issues in Spidey Super Stories
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