REVIEW: Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham #1

Story: Steve Skeates
Pencils: Mark Armstrong
Inks: Joe Albelo
Colors: Steve Mellor
Review: Madman

I was lucky enough to score the first 9 issues of Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham from one of the many dollar boxes I pawed through at this year’s Kokomo-Con. I’ve always been a fan of Peter Porker books for a couple of reasons; the most obvious being his life mirrors a certain other spectacular super-hero. The other reason being the stories are always light, funny, and overall entertaining.

If you’ve never read a Peter Porker book you might not know that, rather than normal human beings, all the characters are cartoonish anthropomorphs. It probably goes without saying that Peter Porker is a pig, but we’ve J. Jonah Jackal, editor in chief of the Daily Beagle, as…you guessed it…a jackal. The two actually face off against the big bad Ducktor Doom on his secret bad guy island, complete with an army of giant kangaroos and a “fowl” army of evil duck henchmen. I found the evil duck version of Dr. Doom quite amusing and would go so far as to say the he is now my favorite Porker villain.
Ducktor Doom’s dastardly plot was pretty ingenious, if I say so myself. Doom has been using his “tractor beam”, a.k.a. a giant magnet, to capture aircraft passing over his island in order to use them for his “experiments”.       

Steve Skeates does a good job drawing out the big reveal of said experiments. As it turns out Doom is forcing the prisoners to audition as rock bands for the giant kangaroos, who are apparently great judges of musical talent. The purpose? To find a great band and make a great music video he can sell to the television networks for big bucks…
Well, I mean, the book was written in 1985, and MTV was still a big thing back then so I get it. Of course, Spider-Ham foils the video, Peter Porker gets his photographs to sell to the Daily Beagle, and J.J. Jackal takes all the credit.

Skeates does a fantastic job of making this “toonish” book entertaining enough to be relevant and the art team does the same in their medium. They did a great job on Ducktor Doom, so much so that I’d buy the action figure or at least the plush version for cuddling. There’s also some pretty funny stuff hidden in the background that younger readers might not catch or see the humor in, such as the small bucket of jawbone grease that JJJ carried around for a bit…
It’s funny, because he’s drawn with a huge protruding jaw.

I hadn’t read the first issue of this series before now and, though I knew what to expect, I was not disappointed.
Quite the opposite, actually. Anyone claiming to be fan of comics and has not read at least one issue of The Spectacular Spider-Ham is living a lie and should repent now.