Spider-Man and Frank Miller Promoting...a Punk Band?!

CBR

Comic Legends: Spider-Man and Frank Miller Promoting...a Punk Band?!

By Brian Cronin

Published Sep 9, 2017

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover the odd tale of the punk band that Spider-Man & Frank Miller helped promote in a Spider-Man annual

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and forty-fourth week where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

As we've been doing it for some time now, one legend today, one tomorrow and one Sunday.

Let's begin!

COMIC LEGEND:

Frank Miller helped promote a band in a Spider-Man annual, even doing an ad inside the comic for the band!

STATUS:

True

For a while there, Denny O'Neil and Frank Miller had a thing where they would did back-to-back Amazing Spider-Man Annuals. These annuals were the highlights of O'Neil's run as the writer on Amazing Spider-Man, with the first annaul featuring a Doctor Strange team-up and the second one featuring Spider-Man dealing with Punisher and Doctor Octopus. It was awesome to see Frank Miller draw the Marvel Universe like that.

Anyhow, in the 1980 Amazing Spider-Man Annual, there is this creepy bad guy who takes control of a whole crowd of people at CBGBs as part of a demonic possession deal. Peter Parker was at the club watching a band called Shrapnel play before everyone in the club (including the band) are taken over...

I'm sure plenty of folks who have read that issue in the years since just assumed that it was a fake band. However, it was very much a real band. Here they are playing at CBGBs and note that their stage set-up is just like in the comic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVC7bBWl8P0

The lead singer of the group, Dave Wyndorf, was a big comic book fan. He explained to Michael Toland recently how it all went down:

AC: In the early Eighties, there was a Spider-Man annual [Amazing Spider-Man Annual #14, October 1980]. Your old band Shrapnel made a cameo appearance.

DW: Drawn by Frank Miller! Unbelievable! That’s still one of the shining moments of my geeky life. We were in the band Shrapnel, played New York all the time, and we had met some people who knew famous comic book writer Denny O’Neil. And he was working with this young guy, not super new, but rather new: Frank Miller. They came to CBGBs to see us and the next thing you know, Denny had talked with Frank. “Why don’t we put these guys in the comic book?” Just to be cool, y’know?

It was amazing. It wasn’t an Easter egg, either. This was a serious plot point. It was fantastic. I totally cherish that thing – it’s a whole point of pride with me. And all because these guys were just nice guys. They just decided to be cool about it. It’s the kind of thing that would never happen today. So many people would be talking about licensing and lawyers. Back then it was just like, “Yeah, sure.”

Miller even then did a special AD inside the comic book for people to mail in and get a special EP from the band!