Amazing Spider-Man #43 p 1 Un-Used SPLASH (LARGE ART) 1966

An abandoned opening design for “Rhino on the Rampage!”

Overview

This unused splash is not a discarded doodle. It is a developed alternate opening for The Amazing Spider-Man #43, designed around the Rhino’s explosive entry into a police facility and surrounded by character information intended to orient the reader. The central image is substantially inked: the Rhino charges away from the viewer, massive shoulders and legs driving toward the officers ahead of him. Along the right side, a vertical sequence of character heads identifies important figures, while additional studies and brush tests remain visible in the margins. The page is simultaneously narrative art, design experiment, and evidence of Romita’s working process.

A different splash page was ultimately published. That makes this object especially valuable to an encyclopedia because it records a creative choice that cannot be recovered from the printed comic alone. The published issue shows what Marvel selected. The unused page shows one of the alternatives considered before that selection became final.

The Central Rhino Image

Romita chooses a rear view of the Rhino, a decision that emphasizes mass rather than personality. The reader sees the villain as a moving wall. His back occupies the broadest area of the composition, and the rounded forms of shoulders, hips, thighs, and boots build a continuous downward rhythm. The small police figures ahead of him establish scale. Their defensive gestures and gunfire appear ineffective against the enormous figure advancing toward them.

The pose also creates a strong entry direction. The Rhino appears to have broken through the left side of the page and is driving into the scene. Impact lines at the lower edge, a burst near the wall, and the cloud around his foot make the page feel like a single sustained collision. The viewpoint places the reader behind the villain, almost pulled into the charge. That is a different emotional effect from a frontal villain portrait. It makes the Rhino’s momentum the subject.

The inking varies across the figure. Some forms are fully defined with contour and shadow, while blue-pencil construction remains visible elsewhere. This unfinished mixture allows the viewer to see how Romita built volume: light underdrawing establishes the pose, darker contour selects the final silhouette, and parallel strokes create the heavy texture of the suit.

Character Headshots and Layout Function

The right margin contains a stack of character images, including the Rhino, Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker, and Spider-Man as described in the source listing. The arrangement resembles a cast column rather than a conventional sequence of panels. In a finished splash, captions or labels might have clarified each portrait’s role. Here, empty spaces and partial banner shapes show that the informational design was not completed.

Mary Jane’s portrait is particularly important because issue #43 follows immediately after her full introduction in issue #42. The Romitaman description characterizes this as the second time Romita drew Mary Jane on a piece of Spider-Man comic art and compares the expression to the famous final page of #42. That is a meaningful seller claim, but an encyclopedia should present it as attributed rather than automatically verified. Confirming an exact ordinal claim would require a broader survey of surviving preliminaries, published pages, and production chronology.

At the upper left are additional male head studies, and along the extreme right edge is a lightly drawn profile. These may be exploratory sketches, placement tests, or unrelated warm-ups made on available board space. Their presence reinforces the page’s status as a working object. The final article should reproduce these marginal studies rather than crop them away, because they are part of the evidence.

Unused Versus Unpublished

The most accurate classification is “unused splash page” or “unpublished alternate splash.” The piece was apparently created for a published issue but was not the version printed. That differs from a private commission, recreation, or later concept drawing. Its relationship to the final issue is direct even though readers never saw it in 1966.

This distinction matters because alternate production art occupies a special place in the history of comics. It documents editorial decision-making. A published page tells us what happened; an unused page may tell us what nearly happened. When the two are studied together, changes in viewpoint, emphasis, lettering space, and storytelling priorities become visible.

Story Context

The Amazing Spider-Man #43 continues directly from the events surrounding John Jameson and the Rhino. Marvel’s synopsis states that the Rhino’s tranquilizer wears off and he escapes custody while seeking revenge on Spider-Man. The Grand Comics Database identifies the story as “Rhino on the Rampage!” and credits Stan Lee, John Romita, and Art Simek. The story also reveals the Rhino’s origin and advances the expanding supporting cast that defined the early Romita period.

The unused splash reflects that continuity. The Rhino is shown smashing into or through police headquarters, visually tying his return to the authorities who had attempted to contain him. The source listing connects the scene to his effort to reach John Jameson after the previous issue’s conflict. Whether every surrounding headshot was intended for final publication cannot be established from the scan alone, but the overall design follows a familiar Silver Age splash function: announce the threat, identify the cast, and promise the reader that the issue will explain how the characters converge.

Collector and Historical Significance

The page brings together several highly desirable qualities: large-format Romita art, a major Spider-Man villain, a splash-page composition, direct connection to consecutive key issues, and visible creative process. Yet its greatest value to an encyclopedia is not scarcity alone. It expands the known visual record of the issue. The published comic contains one opening. This board proves that Romita developed another.

The character portraits also link the Rhino plot to the title’s growing social world. Spider-Man, Peter, and Mary Jane coexist on the same board, reflecting the series’ central tension between masked adventure and personal life. Even in an unused form, the page captures the editorial ambition of the Romita era: a villain could dominate the image, but the cast surrounding Peter Parker still mattered.

Process Evidence

The lower margin contains brush or pen tests, crossed lines, and flowing strokes. The source listing specifically describes Romita testing pencils and brushes on the board. Such marks are easy to dismiss as peripheral, but they reveal something important about original comic art: the board was a workplace. Artists checked line weight, ink flow, and texture before committing to the image. The marks connect the finished figure to the physical act of making it.

A faint horizontal crease is reported by the seller as passing through the board without compromising the artwork. The scan also shows aging, blue-pencil residue, incomplete lettering areas, and a mixture of finished and unfinished forms. These should not be described simply as “condition problems.” Some are production evidence. The condition section of the final encyclopedia should distinguish damage from working marks, original corrections, and unfinished stages.

• No automated discrepancy flag is attached to this record. Publication credits, dates, page identification, and physical claims still require a formal verification pass.
• The issue title, credits, cover date, and general Rhino plot are confirmed by Marvel and the Grand Comics Database. The seller’s reported dimensions, crease description, character identifications, and historical claims should remain attributed to the Romitaman record until the board is physically examined or additional documentation is located.

Other works from Amazing Spider-Man #43 (1)

Collection sequence

Primary object source

Romitaman / Mike Burkey personal-collection listing supplied in the master document

• Romitaman catalog field link 1
• Romitaman catalog field link 2
• Romitaman artist reference 3
• Romitaman image/reference link 4

Research basis: Primary object record: Romitaman listing in the supplied test set. Publication verification: Marvel issue page and Grand Comics Database record for The Amazing Spider-Man #43.