In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover how Roy Thomas wrote “Here Comes the Spider-Man” (but not THAT “Here Comes the Spider-Man”).
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and forty-eighth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first legend of this installment.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Roy Thomas wrote “Here Comes the Spider-Man,” inspiring the Spider-Man 1967 cartoon’s theme song
STATUS:
True in part, but no relation to the cartoon show.
In TwoMorrows’ Alter Ego #169, Richard Arndt interviewed Roy Thomas about his 60-year-friendship with the late, great Gary Friedrich. Thomas discussed the rock band that he, Friedrich and two of their friends in their small hometown of Jackson, Missouri (Frank Tripp and Charles “Rocky” Bierschwal) formed:
Gary had named the band the Gaberlunzies, after our old high school “gang.” It lasted from spring of ‘61 till early ‘64. After a year, since nobody we dealt with could spell, pronounce, or even remember the name “Gaberlunzies”—for the record, it’s pronounced “GAB-er-lun-zies,” pretty much the way it’s spelled— he decided he had to change it to the much more pedestrian “Galaxies.” Yech! Mostly, we did covers of rock songs. Whatever was coming out in the early ’60s, plus “golden oldies” from the late ’50s. We never dreamed of writing our own material. The closest we came was when I’d start out real slow singing “Old Shep,” about a boy and his dog—then after one verse we’d suddenly launch into “Hound Dog.” That always got the crowd jumping. At least, I guess it did. I could never see them all that clearly, since I refused to wear glasses when I sang. Rock’n’roll singers didn’t wear glasses! For our theme song, Gary and I chose “C’mon, Everybody,” which had been a hit for Eddie Cochran. The band played only a handful of instrumentals like “Sleepwalk” and “Tequila,” so I only got to dance with my girlfriend Linda a few times a night. But Gary and the rest never got to dance at all, even if they’d wanted to.
Thomas then explained what led to the demise of their rock band hopes:
The coming of the Beatles around the end of ’63 basically torpedoed our band. Suddenly, group vocals were in, and nobody in our band except me really sang. Well, Gary and I did an occasional gag duet like “Paul and Paula” and “Speedy Gonzales,” but that was about it. So we couldn’t do decent covers of the Beatles or the other English groups that soon followed. So, over the next few months, our band kind of faded away, just like a lot of much bigger American rock acts did at the time. Several years later, Gary and Rocky put together another band, with more of a country sound—I guess it was after he’d moved back to Jackson—and, on one trip back, I went to see them play at some wonderfully sleazy honkytonk in Cape Girardeau and I wound up singing a couple of numbers with them. It was a hoot, and reminded me how much I missed our earlier band
Now, fast-forward to 1965, and Roy Thomas was now working at Marvel Comics as basically the other main writer at Marvel at the time, along with Stan Lee. Thomas also was Marvel’s other main editor, as well. Thomas convinced his old friend to come out to New York City to try to make it as a freelance comic book writer, as well. Friedrich complied and he and Thomas became roommates in a few different apartments in the city as Thomas helped Friedrich break in writing for Charlton Comics.
Obviously, Thomas also tried to get his friend gigs at Marvel, as well. In any event, at one point in 1966, the two young men were walking in a park near their Greenwich Village apartment (as I wrote in a Comic Book Legends Revealed thirteen years ago, Thomas gave Doctor Strange the address of Thomas and Friedrich’s Greenwich Village apartment) when they started to write a song about Spider-Man together, beginning with “Nobody loves you when you crawl along the wall”
The finished song was called “Here Comes the Spider-Man.” Soon, the song was recorded with a friend of theirs, Topps executive Len Brown, working as the producer on the song. They used two sessions guitarists and two session female backup vocalists. Roy Thomas sang lead and Friedrich backed him up and the song was recorded. Thomas spoke to his boss, Stan Lee, and received tentative permission to at least try to see if the song could be sold. As it turned out, though, the informal nature of Lee’s permission ultimately led to a possible sale to Roulette Records falling apart.
However, despite the name being very similar, there is no connection to Thomas and Friedrich’s “Here Comes the Spider-Man” and the theme song to the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, which, of course, uses “Here Comes the Spider-Man” as a key part of the song’s lyrics…
It was first played in public as the “Roy Thomas Day” festival in Jackson, Missouri, in February 2019. Its first national airing was over the “Steve… and Cimino Says Boom!” Show only on the POPXP! YouTube Channel on June 24, 2022. Here it is, in all of its glory…
Thanks to Roy Thoma and John Cimino for the cool story! And thanks to Richard Arndt for the interview with Roy about the early rock band days of Roy and Gary!
CHECK OUT A MOVIE LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed – Learn whether Steve McQueen actually crashed his car to make himself a movie star.
PART THREE SOON!
Check back soon for part 3 of this installment’s legends!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com