Original Big Man (Frederick Foswell) and The Enforcers - villains

First appearance: Amazing Spider-Man #10
(cover-dated March 1964, but with an on-sale date of December 9, 1963)






And from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (1964),

NOTE: There has been more than one "Big Man".

When that story was reprinted in Marvel Tales #147 (January 1983)


they included this extra:

I have always loved when there was something more, included in Marvel comic book reprints, like the John Bolton short stories in Classic X-Men of course it was a long time ago, as with Marvel Tales...

As I recall, Fred Foswell's daughter Janice later became the second Big Man, which was just weird.

tony ingram wrote:As I recall, Fred Foswell's daughter Janice later became the second Big Man, which was just weird.

She did.
She was also engaged to Crime-Master's son at the time when he had taken on that identity. Neither knew that the other had taken their fathers' names, and it did not have a pretty ending.
That was back in Marvel Team-Up #39-40 in 1975.

Janice was also referred to in a Nick Spencer Spider-Man story more recently where her brother Frederick Foswell Jr apparently took over the Big Man identity.

MajorHoy wrote:

tony ingram wrote:As I recall, Fred Foswell's daughter Janice later became the second Big Man, which was just weird.

She did.
She was also engaged to Crime-Master's son at the time when he had taken on that identity.  Neither knew that the other had taken their fathers' names, and it did not have a pretty ending.
That was back in Marvel Team-Up #39-40 in 1975.

Janice was also referred to in a Nick Spencer Spider-Man story more recently where her brother Frederick Foswell Jr apparently took over the Big Man identity.

I saw that! Nice to see the name still being used.

MajorHoy wrote:

tony ingram wrote:As I recall, Fred Foswell's daughter Janice later became the second Big Man, which was just weird.

She did.
She was also engaged to Crime-Master's son at the time when he had taken on that identity.  Neither knew that the other had taken their fathers' names, and it did not have a pretty ending.
That was back in Marvel Team-Up #39-40 in 1975.

Marvel Team-Up remains largely unpublished here, so I didn't know this "new" character...

MajorHoy wrote: was also referred to in a Nick Spencer Spider-Man story more recently where her brother Frederick Foswell Jr apparently took over the Big Man identity.

I guess this story should be in a couple of issues of Italian edition of Spider-Man with Nick Spenser written stories I recently ordered, still to be received!

Barry_Allen wrote:

MajorHoy wrote: . . . That was back in Marvel Team-Up #39-40 in 1975.

Marvel Team-Up remains largely unpublished here . . .

Truly a shame. There were some fantastic runs in that series, written by the likes of Bill Mantlo and later Chris Claremont (who wrote the story with the first appearance of a character Tony likes in the U.S. Marvel Comics).

MajorHoy wrote:

Barry_Allen wrote:

MajorHoy wrote: . . . That was back in Marvel Team-Up #39-40 in 1975.

Marvel Team-Up remains largely unpublished here . . .

Truly a shame. There were some fantastic runs in that series, written by the likes of Bill Mantlo and later Chris Claremont (who wrote the story with the first appearance of a character Tony likes in the U.S. Marvel Comics).

Marvel Team-Up 65-66, for me the highest point of the run.

tony ingram wrote:

MajorHoy wrote:

Barry_Allen wrote:

MajorHoy wrote: . . . That was back in Marvel Team-Up #39-40 in 1975.

Marvel Team-Up remains largely unpublished here . . .

Truly a shame.  There were some fantastic runs in that series, written by the likes of Bill Mantlo and later Chris Claremont (who wrote the story with the first appearance of a character Tony likes in the U.S. Marvel Comics).

Marvel Team-Up 65-66, for me the highest point of the run.

Marvel Team-Up 65-66 were among those issues published, indeed, but they were printed in l'Uomo Ragno (italian name of Spider-Man) original series # 250 in December 1979 and never reprinted since then...
There have been rumors for years about a new printing of this series (MTU) in a "nostalgia" format called "Super Eroi Classic" which has been reprinting the original Marvel series, starting with every # 1, so there are Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, Daredevil, Hulk, X-Men, with Silver Surfer and the Defenders added then, but then Panini (and Rizzoli, this is a co-publishing venture) has choosen to reprint Doctor Strange from Strange Tales #110 (already reprinted last years in tpb and also available in Masterworks), instead of MTU!

I suppose it's logical. Doctor Strange is currently better known to the general public because of the movies.

That has always been a hope for every comic book publisher, to take even a very small percentage of movie viewers into reading the original adventures of their characters, but I really find hard to think that movie vievers will find attractive those not so well aged and naïve 10-page stories from Strange Tales 10 pagers, and "Super Eroi Classic" is really a nerdish publication from the kind of paper used, the graphics, the Soapbox and so on so we'll see how the old Doctor will be accepted by regular buyers...