Because publishers want you to buy their product every month, comics are typically serial in nature. However, occasionally (and more often nowadays than ever before) publishers launch a comic title that is only meant to last for one issue. While ongoing series often have multiple chances to hook in new readers, the comics highlighted in this ongoing investigations only had One-Shot At Greatness!
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Date: March 2007
Cover Price: $2.99
Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Artist: Mike Wieringo and more
Spider-Ham goes on a trippy quest to locate his lost thought balloons. On his adventure, he gets caught in the middle of Marvel’s Civil War and then transported into space by Doctor Strange. Afterwards, he’s dropped into the Vietnam War which leads him to a portal that reveals some parallel heroes form his anthropomorphic version of the Marvel Universe including Wolverham, Iron Ham, and more. Doctor Strange scoops him back up and drops him off back to where the story started. And, finally, Spider-Ham finds thought balloons – he steals them from Spider-Rat! No … seriously!
This story was nearly 100% unenjoyable and almost totally incoherent. Its only redeeming quality was when it poked fun at Marvel’s newer policy of never using thought bubbles (and using narrative boxes, instead). There were quite a few pin-ups that were fun to look at by great artists including Skottie Young, Clayton Crain and Ariel Olivetti but not good enough to make up for the lousy story.
On Ebay: Spider-Ham
On AtomicAvenue: Spider-Ham