When I decided to put Peter Parker together with Ted Kord I did it for a few reasons; One has to remain a mystery till a later date, one is the general bug themed nature of both characters but the more interesting reason is Steve Ditko. Many know Ditko as the creator of Spider-Man, which is without a doubt his biggest creation at Marvel, but it’s lesser known that he is also the mind behind Ted Kord’s Blue Beetle (among other characters for Charlton Comics, who all migrated to the DC Universe after the latter bought the former). I’ve always been interested in putting these characters together beyond just “They’re both evil” or “They both wear red”, and getting to mix in the real life history of comics into these is always a plus. 

Obviously today’s piece is based on Spidey’s first appearance on the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15 (drawn by Jack “The King” Kirby funnily enough – not Ditko himself) – an idea I had when I stumbled on the Marvel Redraw account on twitter (does that mean I also amalgamated two art challenges into one?). I combined the titles of “Amazing Fantasy” and “Mystery Men Comics” (in which the original Blue Beetle debuted) but kept most of the overall cover design the same. 

The design really came out pretty quickly; I kept the overall color scheme of Ted Kord’s suit while shifting the usual Beetle design on his chest into something more spider-like and making the eye goggles visually similar to that of Spidey’s lenses. Obviously I had to keep a little bit of webbing on the chest because it can’t be a spidey design without webs.

Thanks for checking out today’s Amalgam and I hope you check back tomorrow for another!