Pulled From My Files #42: WEB OF SPIDER-MAN

Images © Marvel.

Some time in 1984 I was contacted by Marvel editor Eric Fein and asked to submit logo design sketches for a new title, WEB OF SPIDER-MAN. This is the first of four sketches I did using markers on typing paper. It uses the webbing from a decades-old AMAZING SPIDER-MAN logo and a similar shape, but with different letter forms.

Sketch 2 is in straight lines with another style. This would have taken the least amount of space on the cover of the sketches I did.

Sketch 3 is very tall and would have taken up a lot of cover space. The style is based on the pointy Spider-Man logo revision I had recently done, which was in turn based on my Sabretooth logo for Marvel. This one is hard to read and the least successful, I think.

Sketch 4 is another straight-line design that’s also pretty tall. Not so easy to read, but I think it would have been easier in color. I like this version of WEB OF the best, and probably should have done the whole sketch like that.

When the first issue came out it featured a logo by someone else, probably Jim Novak. I was not asked to do more work beyond my four sketches, and was probably paid a kill fee, usually about a third of a finished logo rate. So it goes sometimes.