If you didn’t know August 1st is Spider-Man Day, the day in 1962 when Marvel Comics first published Spidey in Amazing Fantasy #15. And what better way to celebrate everyone’s favorite Wall Crawler than cooking up a bunch of his favorite meals from his hometown, New York City. And how could you possibly know what his favorite foods are? As with most things, there’s a book for that, Spider-Man: The Official Cookbook: Your Friendly Neighborhood Guide to Cuisine from NYC, the Spider-Verse & Beyond
Written by Jermaine McLaughlin, Paul Eschbach, and Von Diaz, this coffee table book is a fantastic mix of tour guide, cookbook, and insight into Spidey’s foodie world. Told through the voice of Spider-Man, readers are taken on a gastronomic journey of NYC and given the recipes to recreate the dishes from the tour.
A few weeks back I caught up with one of the writers, Jermaine McLaughlin, a former writer for the Beat, at a very impromptu signing at Anyone Comics in Brooklyn on the book’s release date and got to ask a few questions.
George Carmona 3rd: This is Spider-Man’s version of what New York food is throughout the five boroughs mixed in with what other superheroes from the Marvel universe would think of as the best, is that what this is?
Jermaine McLaughlin: For all intents and purposes, we would lay down the recipes first and then we just figured out what works best in each borough. You’re going to have a lot of duplicates in terms of nationalities, where these dishes hail from but some things are distinctly Queens and some things are distinctly the Bronx even though they’re both Cuban and so it was just a matter of figuring out what fit, what Spider-Man villains, and fit what Marvel Heroes fit. That was the fun part. Once we got the recipes down the heroes pretty much the heroes and the villains pretty much jumped into my mind and it was a fun ride.
Carmona 3rd: How did the ride start? Were you approached to do this book? Did you pitch it? Was it something that was in the back of your head or they were like hey, we got an idea, can you help us flesh it out?
McLaughlin: It was pitched to me. They already had the chefs on board and they just needed somebody who had a pretty good idea of how the Marvel universe worked. They came to me, and asked me to submit a few samples just to see what my take on this would be, and they liked what they saw. And from there it was just a matter of using years and years of useless Marvel knowledge and throwing it into this book that actually came together pretty well.
Carmona 3rd: You talk about useless knowledge. Let’s talk about how you went about this. Did they give you a list of recipes and say fix this to that place, or where you like these foods will definitely go with this superhero, let’s break it up this way.
McLaughlin: It’s a combination of all those things. Some editor and Chef had an idea of where it would go and then I interjected and said no, like chopped cheese for example. It was going to be a Brooklyn thing for some strange matter and I fought vehemently to get chopped cheese up to the Bronx.
Carmona 3rd: Chopped cheese is an Uptown thing.
McLaughlin: Exactly. Something’s worked from what we laid out initially, in terms of what borough they were assigned to and some there had to be a little bit of friendly fighting to get the proper borough, but once we all got it together, it fell into place. For some strange reason, I am particularly fond of the chicken and waffles up in Harlem. Harlem being a special place for me, so all the recipes in that borough seem to come together very well for me.
Carmona 3rd: You’re not just going to have Harlan just fully represented by Luke Cage and the Falcon.
McLaughlin: No.
Carmona 3rd: I was thinking in my head the Thing would be the Lower East Side and Katz Deli or someplace like that. Is this book more for a comic person or chef, a home cook or both? Did you get to try out any of the recipes for yourself?
McLaughlin: Not yet. But the recipe that’s kind of high on my list right now is the Bavarian pretzels and the ricotta cheesecake, just because we’re near a popular cheesecake spot here in Brooklyn. So once I saw the recipe, I was like, yeah, this could work. But the Bavarian pretzels are definitely high on the list. Being able to place Nightcrawler into that particular story, kind of made me smile.
McLaughlin: It covers all categories because I put in a decent amount of hard work and it was fun getting to voice Peter in this way. But Von Diaz and Paul Escobar have done an amazing job putting these recipes together. So whether you’re just a fan of the food it’s a fun four-color ride to go on. And if you’re a fan of Spider-Man, I hope I put a story together that will draw you into some dishes that you may not have known you might actually become fond of. So it’s just fun to experiment. I’m hoping the stories, Drag you into the food and you go from there.
Carmona 3rd: How was the collaboration between the people, you spoke about a little bit, but what was the give and take with it? Were there things that they might have missed that you were like, hey, we need a cheesecake place or you know someplace that does fried fish?
McLaughlin: I was in good hands with my co-author of this book, Paul Eschbach. He is from the East, but he currently works in San Francisco, among other places. He’s a world-renowned chef, really gifted at what he does, and he’s a big fan of the Marvel Universe. Von was responsible for very specific Miles(Morales) recipes and Paul handled the bulk of the tri-state area culinary tour that we were going on in this thing. He laid out a quality groundwork and the only thing I in terms of adding recipes, I only had to add maybe one or two at the most just to round out the true New York flavor of the place to the book, but by and large, he covered most of the bases in terms of recipes that could fit in each borough from there. There were only like two or three holes that I had to patch in from there in terms of we should do this, we should do that. But by and large, he knows his stuff.
Carmona 3rd: We’ve talked about the book, but let’s talk a little bit about you and your background. I’ve known you for like 25 going on 30 years, damn I feel old. For those people that don’t know you, your background, and what makes you an expert in Marvel to say that, hey, I know the heroes and the food.
McLaughlin: I am a 16-year veteran of DC Comics. I know that doesn’t really dovetail with all the Marvel things, but I’m a lifelong comic reader. The DC thing has kept me involved in comics. And I have friends and associates and writers and artists that I’ve known and kind of become very close with during the course of my career. I’m pretty much intertwined in both Marvel and DC lore. After DC, I graduated to doing oral histories for the website SYFY Wire on both DC and Marvel characters. I’ve gotten to round out my knowledge of comic history in terms of storylines and characters. Then getting it to add some breadth to it with the artists and writers that have put these stories together. I’m pretty well-rounded in terms of seeing rather stories about lore, putting that lore together, getting a concrete story going and I hope that kind of represents itself with this book.
Carmona 3rd: Let’s do something a little controversial here, give me your favorite TV or movie Spider-Man, top five go.
McLaughlin: Oh, okay. I’m a huge fan of Josh Keaton, the voice actor for Spectacular Spider-Man. Tom Holland has been killing it. Granted, I have gone back and watched them fairly recently and yes, they’re horrible, but Nicholas Hammond, your original live-action Spider-Man will always have a special place in my heart. And just to round out the voice actor for the Spider-Man 90s show, Christopher Daniel Barnes. And last, let’s go with Andrew Garfield, who I think never got a fair shake.
Carmona 3rd: For real, there’s something about him as Peter and Spider-Man that I really liked. I feel like he really needed some more time in the suit. Is there anything else you want to add? Like where can people follow you and possibly get their own copy of the book? Will you be on tour?
McLaughlin: Well, we’re working on hitting more locations, we’re signing here tonight at Anyone Comics. I’m hoping to dot the borough if not multiple boroughs. This summer, just to get the word on the book out and I think it’s a fun ride. It should be fun for people who are fans of the Marvel Universe, Spider-Man in particular, and fans of some great food because I’ve shown it to people who have no background in comics whatsoever and it draws them in just as much as it draws the comic fan. I can be found on Twitter/X and Instagram. I’ll do my best to get the word about this book out a little more during the course of summer and hope to see you at a signing.
Spider-Man: The Official Cookbook can be found at most bookstores and you might be lucky enough to get a signed copy at Anyone Comics.
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