For dedicated visitors to spiderreturns.com, here are the subtle changes and additions that have been made recently to this constantly growing site.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Updated my England reprints page with a British Spider pulp from the 1940s! This is quite a discovery and my thanks goes out to Joel Frieman of Argosy Communications for the tip. Also re-posted the earlier versions of the Robot Titans of Gotham covers, and incorporated all three versions into the Reprints Gallery.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Posted my report from BookExpo America. Also added a link from the Bean page to my interview at bean.com.

Monday, April 16, 2007
I changed the REPRINTS section of the site into the more general BOOKS area. This is mainly to give a permanent home to Moonstone's short-story anthology, but I will eventually be adding a page of books that talk about The Spider as well.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Upgraded 3 pulp cover scans, and added full-size scans of: November 1938, February 1939 and December 1939 (trimmed edges). With this update I've completed a 47-issue run of full-size 72dpi cover scans, stretching from September 1939 to the final issue.

Also made a significant factual correction: The cover art for the February 1939 issue which was previously attributed to "artist unknown" is now attributed to John Newton Howitt. In his book, Spider, Robert Sampson flatly states that this cover is not by Howitt, siting its sketchy quality; Although I agree with Sampson's assessment that this does not look like a Howitt cover, now that I own the issue I can see that his trademark "H" signature is included in the bottom right corner (ripe for flaking off). So, apparently, this is simply a case of a less polished work, like the April 1938 issue. Though Howitt was known for being meticulous, I'm guessing his intricate process exceeded the printing deadline in these cases.

Sunday, March 25, 2007
Upgraded 4 pulp cover scans, and added full-size scans of: August 1934, September 1935, February and March 1936.
Also added an actual scan of the Return of The Spider spread from the Columbia Serials 1940-41 promotion book, along with that giant 12"x18" brochure's cover and opening spread. This promo artwork is so cool, I added a computer desktop featuring it as well!

Thursday, March 15, 2007
Added a new scan of John Newton Howitt's final cover, the September 1939 issue, including a full-size scan. Finally able to include scans of three Spider's Web lobby cards, which are pretty rare. This incudes one from Chapter 1 and two from Chapter 13 (1, 2). Also, upgraded the image of the Chapter 8 title card from a recent Bruce Hershenson eBay auction.

Sunday, March 11, 2007
Upgraded 32 pulp cover scans, courtesy of some recent eBay auctions. This includes: Feb, Mar, May, July-Nov of 1934; Jan, May, July-Oct, Dec of 1935; Oct, Nov, Dec of 1936; Feb, Mar, May, Jun, Jul, Nov, Dec of 1937; Jan, Mar-July, Sep of 1938. The late 1936, 1937 and 1939 additions are particularly crisp and in good condition. Also added a new scan of the June 1939 issue, including a full-size scan. (Admittedly, this is not a great copy, but on the plus side it only cost me 35 bucks!)

Friday, February 16, 2007
Added a page about the brand-new version of The Spider Ring that has been created to promote Baen Books' The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham.

Friday, February 9, 2007
Added a page about the Mews Books reprints from England, including scans of the covers courtesy of Paul M. Yellovich of projectaka.com.

Thursday, February 8, 2007
Added new cover scans of January, April, May, July, September, October and December of 1940 and December of 1943 from pulps in better condition. These are actually file copies that Harry Steeger owned, supplied by Joel Frieman of Argosy Communications. Additionally, this means a full-size scan of "The Spider and the Pain Master" has been posted for the first time.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Completed the collection of El Arana covers, thanks to Mariano Buscaglia of Argentina, and added scans of title pages and story openings from the 1941 and 1947 series showing the differences. Also added a better scan of the November 1940 US pulp, and a better/larger scan of February 1940.

Saturday, December 9, 2006
Replaced the absolute worst image on the site! Previously, the January 1937 pulp had been represented by a scan from a 3"x5" photo that was both cropped badly and almost colorless. A copy of this relatively rare pulp showed up on ebay and I won it!