Ah, in a blog meme that’s already particularly self-indulgent, here’s as self-indulgent a post as it’s possible to get – picking a comic that’s actually written by me.

Well, co-written. Well, “plotted”.

The story starts back in 2008, at the now-sadly-not-what-it-was Bristol Comics Expo. Panini – publishers of assorted Marvel-Universe-character comics under license, and essentially the successor to/present-day version of Marvel UK – decided to hold a competition, to get a fan to plot a story for their younger readers title Spectacular Spider-Man. Upon hearing about this, naturally, I wanted to participate – although, wary of doing a Homer, I thought it better to wait and see whether or not all the entrants were actually kids, or if there were also any other adult, wannabe-comic-writer types getting involved. As it happened, all the entrants were adults – in fact, I think I was one of the youngest – so I was fine to get up and pitch my idea.

I’d had the brainwave in the car on the way to Bristol – I wanted to do something that would, as a one-off, appeal to the sort of kid who would be reading the comic; and I thought it would be nice to try and do something a little touching or inspiring, in the vein of The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man (not that it was going to be anything like as good as that, but that – along with some of the one-off stories Paul Jenkins did in the early 2000s – was the type of story that was in my mind). The image that struck me was of a kid in a crudely-made Spidey outfit – bandana, Spidey face logo t-shirt, trainers – jumping towards the reader, dressing up and calling himself “Spider-Boy”. The story pretty much grew from there quite quickly and automatically – with an element that I was particularly pleased with being the notion (although I know I’m not the first to make use of it) that in the Marvel Universe, Spider-Man – despite being “real” – is still popular with kids and has had plenty of cheap merchandise made using his likeness. This led to Ben (the kid) even having a pair of plastic store-bought toy webshooters as part of his “costume”.

Long story short, anyway, the pitch went down well, and I was delighted and somewhat surprised when I was called out as the winner. From there, I had to write up a two-page pitch document outlining the story in more detail – and after a few discussions over email about some changes the editorial team wanted (including switching the villain from the Vulture to the Hobgoblin, as they were using the Vulture in an earlier story – I was fine with this, as I’d only picked him pretty arbitrarily as a flying villain who could be easily taken down by being inadvertently blinded; and besides, I’ve always liked the Hobgoblin – and also changing my original ending to something a little more upbeat) it was ready for regular writer Ferg Handley to script.

And so it was that in March 2009, a comic – Spectacular Spider-Man #183 – hit the shelves with my name on it. It even, brilliantly appropriately, had a free toy webshooter with it. It’s fair to say I was pretty delighted with how it came out – whatever I might have (modestly or immodestly) thought of the story itself, the final version was astonishingly close to what I’d originally intended, even down to the first panel looking like they’d pretty much lifted the image out of my head:

I was also particularly chuffed to see the inker was one Gary Erskine – a name I knew well from assorted work of his over the years, and which meant I was able to say I’d had a story drawn by someone who’s also worked with Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis. I was also later able to buy the original inked art for that first page off Gary at the MCM Expo, which was a thrill. But the penciller, Carlos Gomez, did a terrific job capturing the exuberant excitement of Ben’s character – and even found time to work in a homage to the famous Amazing Spider-Man #50. The story seemed to go down well, too – people who read it seemed to think it hit the mark, and stories even filtered down of it successfully captivating members of its target pre-teen audience. And it even got a review online, courtesy of the long-running and  comprehensive SpiderFan.org, who liked it as well:

I’m gonna give this one the full five webs. Is it really a classic masterpiece? Well, it’s pretty close – and it’s important to remember that web ratings are given “in context”. Following after the years of mediocre dross we’ve seen out of this title, it’s just great to read a story that I actually enjoyed, and even more surprisingly for this title, left me in a contemplative mood after I had finished.

(he’s a bit unfair on Ferg in that review, though – I read a few issues of Spec, and some of his raw scripts, as research when working on the pitch document, and he does a good job of pitching classic-style stories at the comic’s target market)

It’s probably no surprise that like many (although not all) of those who write about comics online, I hold aspirations towards one day making a living out of writing the things. If I do ever manage to do any more work in the field, this story will always be something I’ll look back on as the moment it all began – and the fact that it was on an official Spider-Man comic, considering how significant a role the character has played in my comics reading, is just unreal. And even if I don’t fulfil that goal, the fact that I did it that once, and came out with something that was actually successful in what it set out to do, is something I’ll always be proud of. And that’s why, although it perhaps seems a little self-centred to say it, the copies I have of this at home (and yeah, I bought a few) will always be among my most treasured comics.