El Sorprendente Hombre Arana #128
I’m eager to get a better grounding on Mexican comics. That said, I’m always up for a bit of a detour. That led me to some Mexican Spider-Man. Now, this one particular issue has grabbed a lot of attention in the last few years. Welcome to El Sorprendente Hombre Arana #128. Of course, the image is quite striking and has all it takes to stir up comics fans: Gwen and Peter getting married! Here are pages from inside the issue. But there’s more than meets the eye. . . .
Page 1 from El Sorprendente Hombre Arana #128
Page 21 from El Sorprendente Hombre Arana #128
As any comics fan knows, beware of teasers. Once you read the comic, it’s clear that a wedding is not exactly the main theme here. Not at all. Spoiler alert: truth is, this is only a dream sequence cooked up by the Green Goblin, the little trickster! For more details, I must direct you to the comics sleuthing by Marvel Comics editor Tom Brevoort. If you want a more detailed account, then go see Tom.
Jose Luis Duran
Back in the early ’70s, Marvel Comics decided to kill off Peter Parker’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. It sent shockwaves throughout the comics community. One Mexican comics publisher chose to do something about it. By what authority La Prensa was acting on is a mystery. Initially, La Prensa began with a licensing deal with Marvel Comics, which allowed for some additional stories from local Mexican talent. That arrangement took on a life of its own. So, the deed was done: 44 issues of an alternate Spider-Man reality, one with a very much alive Gwen Stacy! Hey, Gwen was just too popular in Mexico and Latin America for her to actually die! Marvel was unleashing the darker Bronze Age but La Prensa would hold it off, at least for a while. All 44 issues of these Mexican Spidey adventures were drawn by Jose Luis Duran.
What happens in Mexico, stays in Mexico.
I have to hand it to La Prensa for going off in their own direction. They had an agreement with Marvel and they got pretty creative with it, maybe too creative, given how totally out of canon it was. Marvel officially kills off a beloved main character and La Prensa chose to simply do what they thought best. Perhaps what saved them was that they used relatively good judgement. It was tasteful storytelling and in keeping with readership demands. And Marvel didn’t seem to care. Anyway, only a few years later, La Prensa would go out of business. Now, we’re left with some somewhat strange Spider-Man stories.
El Sorprendente Hombre Arana #154
El Sorprendente Hombre Arana #163
So, now this very special run is a hot ticket with lots of speculation about what it’s worth these days, especially the issue with Peter and Gwen at the altar. According to comics collectors in the know: the low range: $2k; the mid-range: $6k; the high range: $25k. This gets my spidey-sense tingling all over!
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Marriage of Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy in an original story published in Mexico
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Issues in this series divert from the U.S. storyline with Gwen Stacy surviving the events from The Amazing Spider-Man #121
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There exists a German reprint that sells for significantly less
Issue Details
| Publisher | Editora de Periodicos La Prensa |
| Artist | Jose Luis Duran |
| Writer | Raul Martinez Gonzalez |
| Published | May 1972 |
Java Bean: “Mexico! That’s where I came from! I cannot say I ever saw Spider-Man there, though.”
La Prensa created a special bootleg version of Spider-Man for a very limited amount of time back in the 1970s.
So, that’s why it’s so mysterious and rare today. I wonder how many people in the States would know anything about it.
Haha! A Mexican Spider-Man. Didn’t know about that. Great art actually. Thanks for sharing.
A Spider-Man after a Mexican’s heart and sensibility.
Indeed. As a matter of fact, Spider-Man is very popular here. It is one of my grandson’s favourite costumes.
Yes, you can’t go wrong with Spider-Man!