Spidey Sent Packing..

  I never had an interest in comic books as a kid. In fact I spent my time in Tony’s Barber Shop where the stack of comics was immense, looking at LIFE MAGAZINE. It wasn’t that I was reading LIFE but it was a great cover for hiding the PLAYBOY so no one could see just what I was reading. But there I was in the late 80′s as a grown man, hanging out with Spider Man. At this point in my career I was raising money for drug awareness programs for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and trying to find innovative ways working with Health Canada’s “king of Communications” Jim Mintz. We spent a long time examining all of the materials that had been going into the schools aimed at the 6 to 12 year old target audience. Most of them were clinical looking brochures or folders bearing titles like ” HEY KIDS” and one I remember was “TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT DRUGS”. 90 percent of this stuff never left the school yard and recall of the content was non existent from the research. How do you reach such an audience? They range from barely able to read to being excellent readers. Their interests from childish to adult. Music went from baby songs to Black Sabbath and obviously some were boys and some were girls. How can a single handout piece do all of that?  One evening over the supper table I was discussing this problem with the Scottish lady when my 10 year old son Peter offered a suggestion. The usually quiet kid disappeared to his room and brought me a comic book which he tossed in front of me and said, “Use Sipder Man. Everyone loves Spider Man“!  Well I looked in the front of the comic and there was the name of the President and Chairman of MARVEL COMICS, Jim Galton along with the office phone number in New York. As with Jake Blues in THE BLUES BROTHERS..I HAD SEEN THE LIGHT!

I called first thing next day and was put right through. I often thought about it afterward that he must of been having a slow day because he listened patiently to my story about the dilemma and my son’s idea. With very few words JIM invited me along with Peter to come to New York and meet him the next week. Cutting a long story short Jim Galton bought Peter and I lunch and agreed to let the CACP and Health Canada use SPIDER MAN in a special comic with a drug abuse based story that Police could hand out on visits to school. An idea was born. Marvel used Canadian writers, wrote a story based on information from Health Canada, set in a Canadian City ( Winnipeg) and invented a cast of characters that was representative of the multicultural Canadian audience the Police would be meeting. Marvel even got TODD McFARLANE the now famous Canadian artist to do the cover. All we had to do was pay to print it, which by the way they also did in Montreal.  Magic. To pay that  printing cost  Marvel too allowed us to put ads for our sponsors in the comic. A habit that was to prove a very sucessful fundraising tool. This wasn’t done at the time. So Coke, Nestle, Petro Canada and even Chrysler put ads in. The story was written around the famous Herb Carnegie and his Future Aces kids program that promotes positive lifestyles and racial harmony. The Edmonton Oilers let us use the team logo and the theme for the story was kids hockey. MARVEL even agreed to provide SPIDER MAN the character to travel Canada and do public appearances in schools and children’s hospitals with Police Officers. Talk about a NATIONA PR Campaign this whole program was unheard of being done by the normally stodgy conservative Police! 

It took forever for those books to be created, approved by thousands and sent out to Police across the country free courtesy of CANADA POST.  After the first day the calls started for reorders and a couple in particular sum up the success with the youthful audience both Boys and Girls.   An Officer in Toronto went to a school in a pretty tough part of town where the Police were not necessarily treated with warmth. She would usually do a presentation to a class before recess, then another class after, repeating the routine in the afternoon. The teachers gladly turned the class over to her and she faced about 30 glum little 10 year old faces. She went through her presentation getting virtually no response when asking questions. The recess bell went and she asked them to line up as she had something to give them as a thank you for listening to her. As each child left she gave them a SPIDER MAN comic book, much to their surprise. As the last child charged to the playground, the officer went to the teachers room for coffee, returning to the next classroom as the kids had come in. She said it was dead quiet as she entered the room and was introduced.

She began her normal presentation and a hand went up to ask a question. As the class went on the participation was astonishing to the point the lesson lasted enthusiastically until the lunch bell. As the Constable  announced the line up for her gift, the kids were swarming over each other to be first and they couldn’t wait to get that comic. As she related the story to me she started to laugh at this point.

 As she left the school to get in her squad car, the rest of the school were waiting for her..Word had spread at recess..They all wanted a comic!  The other story came from Quebec. SPIDER MAN was done in English and French. An officer was handing out the comics at a local youth centre and a paricular tough kid he knew swaggered up an got a SPIDER MAN book.  About 20 minutes later he was approached by the same fellow who thanked him and said it was the ony thing he had ever got from a cop except a tough time.  Was it successful?  You bet and the CACP and Health Canada went on to do 5 of a planned series of 10. Each book was set in a different Province with a different theme. Calgary Alberta was around the Stampede, Montreal Qeubec was the EXPOS and the Big “O”.  Ferdricton New Brunswick was about the Reversing Falls and Toronto, Ontario was the Blue Jays and the Skydome (ROGERS CENTRE). Then they were stopped.

A school Principal in Ottawa had complained to the school board and the local Chief of Police ( Tom Flannigan at the time) that the comic dealt with violence, showed the main problem solver was always an adult and that SPIDER MAN was white, anglo saxon and American. That was 1990 and the beginning of the sickness called  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!   An unsuspecting Police Community held up their hands and surrendered and the program was suspended after over 1 million English and 200,00 French comics had gone out.

Now dear reader you will have to wait until tomorrow to find out how we solved that problem and continued with the march to capture young minds!  It has a happy ending..sort of.

                                                    -30-