So there I was, poking through issue #169 of Amazing Spider-Man (written by Len Wein, illustrated by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, from June 1977) when I spotted the following panel:
Okay, that’s definitely your standard-issue mid-to-late-70s Stan Lee caricature, but what’s with the careful attention to detail with those two kids? That seemed a little unusual.
Well, the answer to that is no farther away than this issue’s letters column:
Say it with me: “SPIDER-MAN DANCE CONTEST.” One can only imagine. The TV show Wonderama is recalled on this page — one of the reader-contributed memories mentions said contest. It appears that someone in a Spider-Man costume did “The Spider-Man Dance” on the show, and then the contest was to see which kid in the studio audience could best perform that same dance. Actually, the way the memory is actually phrased, one could infer that Stan Lee did the dance as well. I really, really hope Stan actually did do “The Spider-Man Dance.” If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.
By the way, since some of you are probably wondering, here’s a little more information re: Vera Valiant.
And what the heck, here’s Stan the Man’s very own Marvel Universe-style page.
