Over the years, both Marvel and DC have built up a steady stream of ancillary income by licensing out their characters for what are known as “custom comics”–comics dedicated to promoting a company, a perspective or an ideal (or sometimes a specific product or individual.) These books are produced to-order for the client, meaning that their contents, while scrutinized by the editors at the big companies to make certain that the characters don’t do anything untoward that might damage their appeal, are of wildly varying quality depending upon who was involved and how heavy a hand the licensors took with the material. One of the earliest and most prominent of Marvel’s custom Comics was THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN VS THE PRODIGY, released in 1976.
This digest-sized comic book was produced by Marvel on behalf of the Planned Parenthood Federation and was intended to instruct the children of America on matters of sex education. Which is quite a topic for a 1976 comic book to be tackling.
Despite its smaller size, the issue looks like a typical AMAZING SPIDER-MAN release, due primarily to it having been drawn by the web-slinger’s then-current artist, Ross Andru. Visually, there’s little to distinguish it from any other Spidey adventure of this period (and frankly, the art is better than on some of them.)
But it’s the story that’s remarkable, and a big unintentionally funny along the way. It was written by Ann Robinson, who worked for Planned Parenthood. She understood exactly what all of the messaging points she needed to hit on were, but she wasn’t exactly experienced as a comic book author. Consequently, her dialogue is often stilted and awkward and more than a bit ridiculous. I’m not entirely sure just how seriously she was taking any of this stuff apart from the talking points.
The story involves the Prodgy, secretly an alien from the far-off planet of Intellectia, using his mental powers to convince the children of Earth to have a bunch of unprotected sex, thereby causing a raft of pregnancies that will result in children who can be used as a menial slave race on Intellectia. As plans go, it’s definitely one of the more patient ones–how old would those kids need to be before they’d become an effective labor force? But, hey, it’s not for me to question the wisdom of Intellectia.
Spidey gets involved when he happens to stumble over a bunch of teenagers getting into a helicopter–which is suspicious enough for him to follow along for some reason.
I must say, I love the line, “What jive stuff this turkey hands out!” Robinson definitely has a command of the lingo the kids are laying down, you know?
I think that bright red-and-blue costume is going to be a bit of a giveaway there, Spidey ol’ pal!
Spidey firing his webbing down the Prodigy’s throat feels a lot more violent and deadly than is intended, I expect. My guess is that the alien was dead in another panel or two, his airway completely closed off. Fortunately, the story ends here, so we don’t need to see Spidey’s mea culpa.
I don’t know how many copies of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN VS THE PRODIGY were printed up for Planned Parenthood, but it must have been a large amount. Copies of this little booklet were ubiquitous in comic book shops for decades after its initial 1976 release–these weren’t in any way difficult to find.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
That was just the laugh I needed right now! Any chance of Prodigy reappearing in a panel or two as a gag? Maybe Intellectia could have been annexed by the Sh’ar by now. 
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I was today years old when I learned that there was a Planned Parenthood/Spider-Man team-up.
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Never heard of this one before; it’s amazing 🙂 Got to say, though, Prodigy’s plan seems kind of local and small-scale. Is it really going to significantly increase the number of babies on Earth? Or is he just trying to concentrate a lot of them in one smallish area, for ease of kidnapping? Maybe I’m just not as clever as an alien from the planet Intellectia. Also, I’m just imagining Anne Robinson, host of The Weakest Link, delivering this lecture to kids…
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Prodigy isn’t the only alien playing the long game, there are short humanoid aliens in Marvel Tales#138 ( September 1955 ) third story ( The Little Men! ) that was spraying Earth crops to affect human genes so their children would be no taller than the aliens, but Frank Ferris tricks them by telling them their spray cause both extremes ( midgets & giants ) by getting his really tall friend Cluny out of his car. The aliens took off in their ship before Cluny could see them.
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There’s also a Golden Age Wonder Woman story in which Paula von Gunther plots to choke off America’s milk supply so the next generation will be too feeble and unhealthy to triumph over milk guzzling Nazis.
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Saw a lot of these custom comics in my 30 years working in a comic store but never this one. Usually the custom books turned up in the collections those completists who tried to collect every appearance of a particular character, an almost insurmountable task with Spidey. Was very surprised to run across Avengers: Everyday Heroes, a custom Pfizer Comic at my local drug store back in 2022. Makes a nice compliment to the American Welding Society/Iron Man Special I discovered a few years back.
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Iron Man and welding is a good thematic match.
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A little too on the nose. 😉
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The entire original art for this comic were recently up for auction. Maybe the author didn’t take the story seriously, but Ross sure did. I agree with Tom, the art could have easily been from an Amazing Spider-man issue at the time.
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This book must have really worked. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but by the time I got to high school in the 80’s Spider-man readers were no longer sexually active.
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“Planet Parenthood”!
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The Prodigy has the Ross Andru-iest face I’ve ever seen.
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Prodigy shares a look with Mindworm to some extent. 
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This reads … oddly. I’m trying to figure out the specifics of why it seems so “off” to me. It’s like the writer has some familiarity with the genre, but kind of thinks it’s silly. There’s details garbled in a manner that a more fitting writer wouldn’t do. That whole long paragraph about Prodigy’s voice power “rock ship … ionosphere … radiation …” strikes me as the writer knows the Fantastic Four origin, and is going for something like that. But there’s too much technobabble crammed into it. The posing as a gargoyle is just dumb. And the webbing down the throat may come from the common scene where Spidey will often web-gag someone’s mouth to shut them up – but as I far as I recall, he’s never shown (at least during this time period) deliberately putting anything inside the airway.
I think as a kid these type of missteps would have made it feel extremely condescending, that the writer didn’t care to craft a good story for the reader.
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Some of the dialog makes me wonder if Haney’s Teen Titans shaped the author’s concept of writing for kids.
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Good lord, what is going on with Spidey’s right arm? It’s dislocated at the shoulder in the opening splash page and again on page 9, where it’s flopping around lifelessly as he lands on the ground.
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Galloping guacamole! I want to hear Tom Holland utter this.
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