I’ve been meaning to write a little bit about these French-produced Spider-Man stories for a while, but when Newsletter reader Mark Bowen posted a link to this one, which he’d translated over on his blog, I thought that it was worth cross-posting. Mark’s original post can be found here:
https://imgur.com/a/french-spider-man-16-t-v-crazy-telejunior-1978-AdKR5nP
The French publication TELEJunior had received permission to generate new Spider-Man stories for its audience in the late 1970s. A number of these stories were written by Bullpenners just starting out, including Roger Stern and J.M. DeMatteis. Others were created by French talent who otherwise didn’t work on Marvel stories. But this particular tale has an interesting aspect to it.
This is the sixteenth story in the series, and was written and illustrated by by Yves Chantereau with inking done by Patricia Chantereau. The story is called “Télé en Folie!” and seems to at least have been inspired by the never-completed third issue of SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN magazine, a story that was promoted in the last issue as the “TV Terror”.
Given that this story invovles a villain wearing what looks like a Prowler costume (with a modified mask) and that Hobie Brown makes an appearance in it, and the plot turns upon the villain interrupting TV broadcasts as a part of his plan, Mark speculates that it may have at least been inspired by that unfinished story. About all that’s known for certain about it is that artist John Romita recycled the costume he’d designed for the “TV Terror” character, giving it instead to a new villain, the Prowler. So if there is no connection, then there are an awful lot of coincidentally similarities between this story and that one.
Of course, the original TV Terror story was intended to run 40 pages, rather than the scant 7 that Chantereau had to play with, so no doubt that story would have been more involved. still, it’s an interesting look at yet another international Marvel story that’s never been reprinted domestically.
In addition to new Spider-Man stories, the publisher also produced home-grown tales of the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Thor, the Sub-Mariner and others.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
wow…more that should be reprinted like the Mexican stories..talk to someone tom!
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This is gold just for the Hospice Care line! hard to imagine that line flying in a US Spidey book!
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Heh, that was one of the bits my non-francophone self had to do a little guesswork; here’s what Google translate gave me to start from:
MAY: My God! It’s “the Duke!” Oh, Peter, look! With him, our beautiful years come back to life!
PETER: And mine are visibly withering away…
Presumably sounds better in the original French, but I feel like I captured the gist of it!
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Wow, what a fascinating little piece of Marvel history! I suppose there’s not enough of a market for this material to justify the expense of translating, re-lettering, etc. But boy, I sure would love to see it.
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Interesting as an historical artifact, but as far as the ART goes, all the Spidey poses in the first story are recognizable swipes from late 60’s/early 70’s Romita/Kane & Buscema issues of ASM.
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A little tip for a future post: there were new Spider-Man and Fantastic Four stories also in an Italian magazine called SuperGulp! based on a very famous television program. It seems that it also reprinted some of these french stories:
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperGulp_(rivista)
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