 Where is this from? It's a picture of a man in a Spider-Man costume of unknown origin. The costume he's wearing is quite interesting. It appears to be a scrappily put-together costume, while also being entirely faithful to the old 1960s Steve Dick co-drawings of the character. And judging based off the quality of this image, it seems like whenever this photo was taken, it was from a long time ago. It's not very far-fetched to assume that this costume was made some time back in the 1960s, as it would explain why the costume looks so much like Steve Dick Coe's artwork, because around that time, Dick Coe was one of the only people drawing Spider-Man for Marvel Comics. There's nowhere near as much choices in Spider-Man artists like there is today. There's no Baigleys, no John Romita Juniors, and if you wanted your JR senior, you'd have to wait a decade or so. But back to this mysterious costume. After not being so sure who to ask about it, I turned to one of my back alley sources. Nevermind, or NirvanaMind on Twitter, someone with extensive knowledge and experience with Spider-Man comics. They sent me a link to a Spider-Man fan film that was made in 1969, of course featuring this elusive Spider-Man costume. And now, I will watch the fan film. So it turns out that this movie is about Spider-Man going after this original character, Dr. Lightning, who's a mad scientist who is severely hurt in some sort of accident. He ends up having his henchman kidnap his own daughter, and Spidey chases after him through the mountains. It seems like this area is where that photo that started this whole conquest was taken. After Spider-Man takes out his henchman, Dr. Lightning gets away. But not before Spider-Man puts a spider tracer on him and chases him down once again. Before he swings away, the daughter yells, Try to remember he's my father. Yeah, I'll try. Damn, Peter, holy shit. Spider-Man catches up to him, webs up his car, and attempts to pull him up the side of the mountain. But then the doctor fucking kills himself. Holy shit, man, this film goes places. God damn. So then Spider-Man goes back to the daughter with the most unempathetic response. I got bad news for you. Your father's dead. But you're safe. And so is the world. Jesus. Anyway, I know I've been ragging on this fan film a bit, but I just want to say some nice things about it because, you know, in the end it's actually a really cool piece of Spider-Man media that I honestly think more people should check out. With as dated as some of the special effects are, they really did as much as they could to make this fan film actually work with its own dated methods. Whenever they need to have Spidey swing around on something, they'll dangle this toy in front of the camera while interspersing close-up shots of Peter swinging from his webline. And honestly, I'd rather this than them just not trying to show Peter swing at all because they couldn't do it. They actually managed to flow between Dahl and Peter pretty well in this one sequence. And honestly, if you don't really think about it too much, it's pretty natural. I love how they make Peter's webs work in the film too. This time, they're much more net-like, mostly because it seems like the webbing is made out of actual netting. But I like that. It makes Spider-Man's webbing seem way more low-tech than it actually is, which is kind of refreshing. But let's talk about the thing that got me interested in this phenomenon in the first place, the Spider-Man suit. There's not much we can see too clearly due to the age of this footage, but let's discuss what we can see. The lenses on the mask seem to be made of this white mesh netting, and all the red fabric on the bodysuit and mask seem to be made out of velvet fabric, yet the boots and gloves aren't. It looks like he's wearing webless boots, and gloves with some sort of spider webs drawn on them. It also looks like this costume features some kind of shorts. They're barely noticeable, but, I mean, I figured I might as well note them anyway. The logo work on this suit is nice too, with a wide back logo with outstretched arms. And the one on the front is simple and classic. While very clearly primitive in terms of today's cosplay scene, this is a really nice Spider-Man costume. And something I could have definitely imagined the character wearing back in those old Ditko stories. And it has web wings. I swear to God, I'm like the only person on the planet that loves when Spider-Man has these corny-ass web wings. I would kill to have these on a movie suit. And not like Tom Holland's where they come out where he needs to fly. Fuck all that shit. I want them on his costume permanently. It's for aesthetics. It's not for flying or all this dumb bullshit. It's just a design choice. Damn. Anyway, this whole fan film is primitive yet really charming. It feels like this movie fits right in with those old Lee and Ditko books. I know this video feels like it's about to wrap up, but there's more to the story. You can actually learn more about the production of the fan film by reading the description of the upload of the film. The first ever documented Spider-Man fan film in the first unofficial live-action adaptation appearance of Spider-Man from 1969. This was produced by Donald F. Glutt, and this was his last amateur fan film. He had produced many other Marvel fan films before this, before moving on to write for other classic cartoons like Transformers and Spider-Man and his amazing friends. I love the costume, Don Glutt is wearing the red and blues himself, and it looks heavily inspired by Steve Ditko's work. Notice the use of the Captain Action Spider-Man figure for web-swinging and wall-crawling. That goes for huge bucks now. The villain in this fan film, Dr. Lightning, is not a real Marvel character and was created by the guys making the film. There is also another elusive Spidey fan film that's from 1974 entitled Spider-Man vs. Craven the Hunter by Bruce Cardozo. Unfortunately, this student film won't be found anywhere online because apparently Bruce Cardozo is against it. I do hope this is not true, as it could be a potential lost classic and it would be very unfortunate if we were not allowed to see it. It has been shown at several fan film festivals, however. Here's an image. Unfortunately, the link leads to nothing. But if this elusive Spider-Man vs. Craven fan film interests you, you can check out a video by All Things Lost on YouTube to continue down the Spider-Man fan film rabbit hole. But that's all from me. Subscribe if you like Spider-Man and make sure to go watch my Sam Raimi Spider-Man Retrospective if you haven't. See you next time. I have a confession to make during the outro card. I have a hard time watching Spider-Man fan films. I don't know what it is, but unless it's like a short film, I cannot sit down and watch a Spider-Man fan film. I don't know why I've just never been able to, and I don't know, I just kind of wanted to admit that in the outro card. I would, I do think it'd be cool if I made more fan film content. It's just, I'd be worried about how I talk about other people's work and how that makes them react, because I know who I am in the community. I'm kind of like that guy who's like, people kind of see me as like the guy who has opinions about Spider-Man and everything and everyone wants to know what I think and stuff. And I don't want to make people think that I'm gonna shit on their fan film or whatever. And I don't, it's just, it's a whole thing for me. And I kind of am worried about how I would approach that. But yeah, it's a mix of two things. It's one, that I have trouble watching fan films for some reason. I just can't sit through them. And two, I'm the Spider-Man guy. Dabba, whatever. I just, I probably should. I probably should sit down and watch some more fan films. It might do me some good, maybe make me some content.