In the fall of 1974, the Children's Television Workshop teamed up with Marvel Comics to publish the Electric Company Spidey Super Stories comic books. The simple, fun, diverse, and relatively nonviolent stories were designed to help 6- to 10-year-olds learn to read, and have aged surprisingly well. They continue to have great developmental value, especially for young autistic and special needs readers. Panel moderator Britton Payne (entertainment attorney, executive director of The Autism Scene), John Jennings (writer/editor, Marvel Super Stories), and Hannah Bogen Novak, M.S., CCC-SLP (speech and language therapist) discuss the origin of the venture, the structure of the stories, the "far-out" concepts (including the first black Spider-Woman, Spider-Man vs Jaws, and the infamous Thanos-Copter), and the modern developmental value of the 57-issue run and its impact on modern comics for kids.
