Guide to Spider-Ham (Early Access for ALL PATRONS) (Patreon)

Hello after a long silence, my comic-loving friends! I'm so happy to be getting my Crushing Comics guides back on track, and to kick that off I have a brief guide for a sentimental favorite to offer you....

Guide to Spider-Ham, Peter-Porker

As a reminder, you no longer need a special CK login to access guides! When you visit a Patreon guide you should be prompted to log in to CK using your Patreon login. If you aren't prompted when visiting a guide page, try visiting the CK login page directly.

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Long before I was a regular comic reader, I had a meager stack of comics from newsstands and spinner racks that sat on a slim bookshelf in my closet.

One was an old Conan comic from my father. Another was a random issue of Captain America.

The third was Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham (1985) #6.

I don't know why I had it. I think people in my family assumed I would really love Spider-Man because I shared his name, but at the time (and, to this day) I was much more interested in Wonder Woman.

That one issue (which I still have!) meant I've always had a soft, nostalgic spot for Peter Porker. I never expected he would appear in a comic again other than as a one-off joke about the silly excesses of the 80s... until Spider-Verse.

Spider-Verse brought almost every iteration of every spider-character ever back into play for a brief, somewhat-bloody event, which included this Spider-turned-Super-Pig from Earth-8311.

Spider-Ham survived the carnage (not THE Carnage - lower-case carnage) of the event, befriended Spider-Gwen, Spider-Gwen become a hit, and the event inspired one of the most successful and awarded animated movies of all time.

The rest is (recent) history!

This might lead you to wonder: are there many Spider-Ham comic books to read? Are they anything like the zany version of the character who was cartoony even for a cartoon in Into The Spider-Verse.

Well... that depends.

Spider-Ham made a respectable 51 appearances prior to Spider-Verse, in all of which were either explicitly a children's comic with no bearing on modern continuity or (in the case of the 5 most-recent appearances) an obvious spoof on him being a children's comic book character (still with no bearing on modern continue).

It's not until Spider-Verse - and, really, after Spider-Verse - that Spider-Ham becomes the wisecracking "cartoon in the real world" version of him we saw in the film.

For better or for worse, that means your deep dive into "modern" Spider-Ham reading will actually be into a shallow pool of issues. But, if you have an unironic appreciation of seeing his cartoon silliness on display in his original cartoonish Earth, there's more for you to read.

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What's up next for comic guides?

After so long an absence, I'm making no promises or goals. I'm happy you're still here supporting CK, and I hope I can freshen things up enough to make it worth it for you to continue to do that.

In the meantime, I invite you to take a peek at the CK homepage from time to time, where I've been coming back from a long bout of internet burnout by writing about life in NZ, music, television, and even cooking.

As always, I'm very interested in what you would like to see THE MOST right now as a Patron of CK - whether that's brand new guides or updated content. I'm still building out my all-time solicits database, which makes updating older guides so much easier once their collections exist in the database. I'll be sure to make updates here when older guides are refreshed.

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Marvel Guides: Alpha Flight, Blade, Captain Britain, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, The Eternals, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Mister Sinister, Sabretooth, Spider-Ham, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man - Nate Grey

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Marvel Guides: Alpha Flight, Ant-Man & Giant-Man, Captain Britain, Champions, Darkhawk, Blade, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, Falcon, Gwenpool, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Moon Boy / Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, Ms. Marvel: Kamala Khan, Power Pack, Sabretooth, Sentry, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Ham, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Venom, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man - Nate Grey

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