ver since his first appearance in the pages of 1962's Amazing Fantasy #15, Spider-Man has been a pillar of the superhero genre. Even fans whose first serious introduction to this most self-doubting and human of heroes came with the 2002 feature film must have some sense of the depth of Peter Parker's story. It is impossible to imagine pop culture without Spidey—without radioactive spiders, the Hobgoblin or the enduring catch phrase "With great power comes great responsibility." Even the theme to the cheesy 1960s cartoon version of Spider-Man is iconic, one that has been repeatedly covered by musical artists, including jazz crooner Tim Tamashiro and, most famously, The Ramones.
It takes a site like Spiderfan, though, to show how deep the lore goes. The tireless and devoted staff of this amazing Web site has put together a massive database of facts covering collectibles, reviews of individual comics, titles, artists and writers. If there is something about Spider-Man this site hasn't covered, it must be beyond obscure: Every comic issue is
listed, every television show not only mentioned but indexed episode by episode, every Spider-Man theme park ride or trading card itemized. Even the people in Spidey's life, from the beloved Aunt May to the homicidal Venom, have complete biographies.
Spiderfan offers news, letters, fan art, polls and tongue-in-cheek top-10 lists with titles like "Worst Things Marvel Can Do to Spider-Man" and "Villains That Need to Return." What it doesn't provide is a fan fiction archive or message boards. For these services, Spiderfan refers visitors, via a long and well-indexed links page, to excellent web resources elsewhere. This is a site, in other words, whose creators would rather do some things spectacularly than try being all things to everyone.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—June 7, 2004
overing brand-new shows and long-running SF news stories with equal panache, SF Overdrive works hard to maintain its claim to being "America's Premier SF Talk Show." Thanks to the miracle that is the Internet, fans outside this program's broadcast range can still tune in to episodes via streaming audio or downloaded media files, catching the latest interviews, commentary and features.
The SF Overdrive Web page itself is a slapdash affair, ugly in its design sensibility and difficult at times to navigate. It forces visitors to sift for content—but what turns up, with some effort, is a wide range of serious and tongue-in-cheek articles. The page's lone op-ed piece (visitors are invited to submit more) discusses the emergence of graphic novels as an art
form. There are reviews of games, DVD releases, movies and comics; in addition, the columns section contains goodies like a discussion of the state of the aging Hubble Space Telescope.
The reading on offer here is secondary, though, and the Web page's clunky design is forgivable, too—given that this site is primarily intended as a gateway to the SF Overdrive program. The show's broadcast schedule and downloads are its most prominently features, and the audio clips are packed with interesting interviews and commentary. SF Overdrive is all about listening—its thought-provoking radio content makes it an ideal, informative and low-key companion.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—June 1, 2004
achyon TV is a quarterly webzine devoted, as the name implies, to SF television. Run by fans in the United Kingdom, it covers all the programs a casual visitor might expect: from Doctor Who and Farscape to U.S. programs like Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Enterprise.. What makes this site different from the dozens of other fanzines and SF news services on the web? Simply this: The Tachyon TV crew doesn't wait for news about a favorite show to come to them. Instead, they'll happily invent it—and the more outrageous, the better.
The result is a long and hilarious cache of news items covering topics like the end of Angel, potential episodes for a no-budget show airing on the BBC (If ... Logan Hadn't Run), and false spoilers for new Doctor Who episodes. Along with the actual articles are sidebars with snappy headlines—quick and amusing sound bites too small in scope to rate an entire fabricated story.
Other features of Tachyon TV include a captioning contest, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan page, a newly inaugurated area devoted to lampooning bad TV commercials, a Doctor Who of the Month photo and a blog filled with irreverent TV news and reviews. The star attraction of the page, though, may well be its "Karaoke with Kosh Naranek" section. Here, the mysterious alien from Babylon 5 provides readers with the lyrics for a host of TV-themed filk songs. Visitors can download the tune of any given song (for "Like a Vorlon," for example, the tune is Madonna's "Like a Virgin") they would like sing along with. Most of the songs are B5-themed, but there is a trio of Doctor Who titles, pieces like "Gallifrey," which is set to the tune of the Bee Gees hit "Tragedy." This section could use some good flash graphics to up its visual humor quotient—it cries out for an animated boogie-down Kosh—but even so, browsing through the lyrics will give visitors a hearty chuckle.
Cheeky and cheerful, Tachyon TV is packed with an infectious but irreverent fondness for all televised SF.
— A.M. Dellamonica
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