The Human Fly #1 – Flashback Review

By: Bill Mantlo (writer), Lee Elias (art), Marie Sev. (colors) & Joe Rosen (letters)

The Story: We’re introduced to a new hero, The Human Fly, who is immediately called into action to save a hijacked airliner.

What’s Good: When reviewing a comic of this era (1977) you always have to be a little precise about what you mean as “good”.  Do you mean “good for 1977” or do you mean “good for present day” or do you mean “worth collecting?”  I always do these reviews as a present day item with an eye towards: Will this issue cause me to compulsively dig through back-issue boxes or search eBay for more issues?

Let me start by saying that I wish more comics of today had artwork this tight.  Elias does a great job with something that many artists struggle with: drawing both superheroes AND people wearing clothes.  What do I mean by that?  Well, most superheroes (in their tight clothes) are really just nudes that have bodypaint for a costume (which is kinda dumb when you think about it).  But a lot of superhero artists today tend to draw their civilian characters the same way: They start with a nude and then hang clothes on them like they are playing with paper dolls and it looks about as good as paper dolls sometimes.  Elias’ non-super characters look like you’d expect them to look (and not like someone painted their clothes onto them).

This issue also has a collecting tidbit if you’re into Spider-Man.  As Human Fly is saving this plane full of people, it turns out that one of the passengers is none other than the webslinger himself.  I guess those people bemoaning Wolverine or Deadpool showing up in too many comics should feel better knowing that using guest stars to sell weaker titles wasn’t a practice invented in the 1990’s