In 1983 I got the opportunity to create the visual design of Peter Porker, Spider-Ham.
Larry Hama called and asked me to come up with “something that does not look like Porky Pig.” He sent me some examples of what he did not want to see. One was the above imaginary cover by Joe Albelo depicting Peter Porker as Porky Pig wearing the top half of a Spider-Man suit. Another, shown below, was Marie Severin's take on Peter Porker, Spider-Ham, with a “heavy” emphasis on “porker”:
So I came up with something that did not look like Porky Pig.
©1983 Marvel Comics
There were two directives. From Larry came the directive to come up with something that did not look like Porky Pig. From Tom Defalco's series concept came the directive that Peter Porker was to be 4 heads tall and Captain Americat was to be 5 heads tall. I did my best to deliver on those directives.
I wish Tom had simply stated that Peter was to be shorter than Steve, or that Steve was to be taller than Peter. I always tried to design characters that would be easy to draw. In the instance of Peter Porker, Spider-Ham, I start by using a circle template to draw a circle that will be the foundation of the head, and then mark off three spaces below that for the rest of the body. But by having a mandated scale to adhere to, I was not able to design the character with proportions that wanted to come out of the pencil. When I draw the character, Peter tends to have either a head that looks too big, or a body that stretches out a bit more than 4 heads. So, even though I did the visual design of the character, drawing the character in a way where he comes out 4 heads tall has always been a challenge for me.
Also, I designed the character without muscles. I always viewed Peter as being made of Silly Putty. But Joe Albelo, in inking the character, always put in muscles. I don't know if he did it on his own initiative, or did it at Larry's direction. I never discussed it with them.
J. Jonah Jackal went through a series of name changes before the first script was finalized. In Tom Defalco’s series/story concept, the character was called Jackson J. Jawbone. In the initial script he was called B. Bowser Bulldog, Jackson J. Jawbone, J. Jonah Jacka_ _* [I’m doing my best to keep this a family-oriented blog for all ages], and finally J. Jonah Jackal. I designed the look of the character with J. Jonah Jacka_ _* in mind, and have always had that name in mind when drawing him, and would think of him as a braying donkey, not a jackal.
The homage panels were scripted in. Tom included with the script photocopies of specific panels from Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby stories he wanted in the story. Although I’m a fan of Ditko and Kirby, I'm not that much a big fan of doing homage panels. But the script called for it, and I did my best to include them and to put my own spin on them so that they wouldn't be mere copies.
I tried to insert as many nonverbal gags and background gags as I could. And there are at least two Easter eggs in that first Spider-Ham story. The “old army buddy” who slaps Steve on the back on page 6 was one of the characters in “Recondo Rabbit,”--the top sergeant who goes to Heaven. I turned his death into a temporary one that turned out to be near-death experience. And on page 16 Super Santa makes a cameo appearance on an arcade game called “Super Santa Sleigh Ride.” The stories of both these characters are discussed in earlier installments of this series of blog posts.
©1983 Marvel Comics
The “town crier” beagle on the front of the Daily Beagle building (as shown on page 5 and throughout the series) I added as I thought there should be a logical reason for the name of the newspaper. A town crier was the only explanation I could come up with for a paper named for a beagle.
It was my idea to have most or all villains smoke cigarettes, a tradition that I continued in subsequent stories. And as with most all of my stories, I penciled the title lettering and sound effects. I hope the letterer of the book didn’t resent my encroachment into his territory.
That first story, “If He Should Punch Me!” appeared in a one-shot comic called Marvel Tails #1. Later, Larry Hama told me that after it hit the stands the distributor asked when the next issue would be coming out—something that the distributor had never asked before. So the decision was made at Marvel to make this one-shot a series.
I’ll discuss the subsequent Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham series in the next installment of My History in Comics.
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