... FOR "FRANCHISE FACE-OFFS (PART 16 - 'SPIDER-MAN' EDITION)"

The fun of the Spider-Man comics has always been that Peter Parker is intrinsically One of Us. We just may be too modest to admit it. We all feel the awkwardness of our teenage years, we all dream of greater power and responsibility, we all yearn for the courage and the conviction to swoop in and save the day. Swinging through the spires and the skyscrapers of New York City, Peter's world feels grounded in the everyday (well, as "everyday" as a kid in a red-and-blue leotard fighting crime, anyway), and his quips and his wisecracks give him the edge over his enemies, not only stronger and faster but smarter and wittier than they are too. With skills like that, who wouldn't want to be Spider-Man?

Despite his enormous popularity, however, the concept for Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's iconic creation almost didn't make it off the ground. When pitching his initial ideas for the character, Lee recalls that his publisher, Martin Goodman, asked, "Don't you understand what a hero is?" Goodman felt that the idea of a teen-aged superhero - especially a high school nerd who was unpopular with the ladies - wouldn't appeal to readers, since most teens in comic books (think "Bucky" Barnes or Dick Grayson) served only as sidekicks to more experienced crimefighters. Little did he realize that audiences were clamoring for a character they could call their own; unlike Superman, say, with his godlike powers and chiseled physique, or Batman, with his unlimited gadgets and millions of dollars at his disposal, Peter Parker struggled with more conventional problems, like passing his classes or trying to hold down a job. And comic book fans fell immediately in love with him. Spider-Man debuted in Amazing Fantasy #15 in June 1962 and sold in record numbers (in 2011, a near- mint edition of this issue sold for $1.1 million to a private collector). He has since become Marvel's flagship character and company mascot, appearing in multiple comic titles, cartoons, radio plays, movies, books, video games, even a Broadway musical (with music by U2's Bono and The Edge).

... FOR "DETAILS YOU PROBABLY NEVER NOTICED IN POPULAR FILMS BEFORE ('SPIDER-MAN' EDITION)"

In which we take a look at the movies of yesteryear and bring some of their more subtle, less- noticeable idiosyncrasies to the fore. Do some of your favorite films exist in the memory purely as entertainment and nothing more? Well, look again...

The first thing you notice about comic books is that they're color coded. Sure, it's the characters and the storylines that keep you coming back month after month, issue after issue, but it's the bright, shiny colors that catch your attention first. In this regard, the colorists' job is just as important as the penciler's, or the script writer's. Think about it: without Superman's red-and-blue getup or the Hulk's green florescent skin, would you have given them a second glance?

... FOR "EXCUSES, EXCUSES" (A BOOK REVIEW OF "THE OFFSPRING," BY R.J. CRADDOCK)

As someone who's tried his hand at writing a novel or two, I can tell you this: it's no easy feat. I barely have the patience (or the brain power) at this point to hammer out a couple nonsensical paragraphs for the blog, let alone 300-500 pages worth. More than that, being able to keep a plot rolling for that long, or characters worth the trouble, is a task so Herculean I can scarcely understand how authors like Stephen King or James Patterson or (heaven forbid) Stephenie Meyer are able to do so on a regular basis. It takes tremendous talent and effort to do what these people do, yet ultimately what binds us together boils down to one simple thing: our obsession with the written word.

Born in Oaka Tamuning, Guam (where her father worked as an art teacher), Ruth "R.J" Craddock has every excuse never to attempt the Next Great American Novel - marriage, kids, housework (and all the exhaustion that entails), not enough hours in the day, you name it. Yet she also suffers from a disability only 17% of the population can claim to share: dyslexia, diagnosed at a very young age. Determined to never let it get the best of her, or define her in any way, Ruth was able to maintain a 4.0 GPA by her sophomore year in high school, and at 29, published her first novel, The Forsaken, Book One in her proposed Children Of Cain series. Now just a year later comes its sequel, The Offspring, a sure sign that her dyslexia has no chance of holding her back. (She joins a select group of dyslexic authors throughout history, including Agatha Christie, Hans Christian Anderson and William Butler Yeats.)

... FOR "DETAILS YOU PROBABLY NEVER NOTICED IN POPULAR FILMS BEFORE ('TERMINATOR 2' EDITION)"

In which we take a look at the movies of yesteryear and bring some of their more subtle, less- noticeable idiosyncrasies to the fore. Do some of your favorite films exist in the memory purely as entertainment and nothing more? Well, look again...

A blockbuster to end all blockbusters, James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day opened in the summer of 1991 and blew away all its competition, earning $519.8 million worldwide (or roughly $888 million when adjusted for inflation). Cameron and his cinematographer, Adam Greenberg, though, had more up their sleeve than state-of-the-art special effects or rock-'em-sock-'em heavy metal action; they infused the movie with a slick, subtle color scheme that mimics the emotions of the characters.

... FOR "MOVIE COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY #4"

In which we take a look at a series of odd movie coincidences - scenes, jokes, dialogue, even specific camera shots shared between two seemingly unrelated films. Anyone who's sat through a particular scene in a movie and thought, "Gee, haven't I seen someone do this somewhere before?" will know exactly what I'm talking about.

The other week, I posted an MCOD connecting a joke in A League Of Their Own (1992) with an earlier one, from The Naked Gun (1988). Actually, that wasn't entirely fair: Though the setup is basically the same - man urinates, long and loudly, for a captive audience, seems to stop... then picks up again, just as long and as loud as before - the context is not, so I feel the need to backtrack a bit. In A League, you see, the joke is all about character: by the time Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) is introduced to his fellow Peaches, he's already been established as a louse and a loser, so his little stint at the latrine (or was that a sink?), at least, makes sense from a certain point of view. In The Naked Gun, it's less about character than out-and-out silliness, for which its creators - a comedy team known as ZAZ, for David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker - had pretty much cornered the market.