#ASM5 45

[koalas-koalas-everywhere]

Duuuuuude. Listen. I’m not the kind of fan who loves Peter’s rage, you know? Like, I love that he has this flaw, and I love how he interacts with it, how it interacts with his sense of morality, since he hates the brutality his anger brings out in him, not just because it’s him, but in general. I find it very interesting. But I find it interesting most of all because of the betrayal it is to his main philosophy of responsibility. It’s not just the worst part of him because it “ooohhh, a flaaaww, so baaad”, but because of the consequences it’s had. All his greatest sins (ironic, seeing the story that inspired this post) were caused by his uncontrolled rage. So... I don’t exactly want him to be like that... but I don’t like it when writers don’t make him like that, because it just shows they don’t understand the character. 

Take Tom Taylor (too many t’s). He tries to sell this sort of... cinnamon roll version of Peter, who not only never has any violent urges, but has never had them, either. Take Zdarsky - he’s a bit more willing to present Spider-Man as someone who’s threatening and scary, but even he paints it as something unintentional, best illustrated in that scene in Daredevil #23 right after DD and Spider-Man interrupt a meeting where Fisk appointed his successor, and Peter, who had been appropriately intimidating, asks Matt if he’d been able to sell “dark and menacing” and he replies that “tearing a vault door off its hinges is bound to spook most of them”, as if it’s something that’s just because of Peter’s powers, as if he can’t help it and needs to put on an act and, what, only pretend that he’d like to beat up each and every one of those gang leaders in that meeting within an inch of their lives? As if the kind of anger that would make him look dark and menacing would be fake?

Not long ago, I compared Peter’s anger issues with alcoholism, and, just like alcohol has its upsides, a reason why people use it and abuse it, so does Peter’s anger serve him in crime-fighting, as a sort of fuel and even as a bit of a moral compass. I mean, if you see the things Peter sees, the violence and brutality and cruelty and indifference, and don’t feel at least a little bit angry... well. His struggle is (or was), as someone with a short and explosive fuse, to keep it under control - to quote this issue, to make it “about justice, not revenge”. Heck, Amazing Fantasy? Ben’s death? Peter becoming an entertainer instead of a superhero off the cuff? It wasn’t just irresponsibility, or self-absorption, or a sort of understandable “he was just a kid, he wouldn’t expect stopping criminals to be his job”. He was angry. He literally said that he was looking out for the people who had been kind to him (Ban and May) and the rest of the world could burn for all he cared. I agree that it’s a bad thing, but it’s a part of Peter. I’d say it’s an essential part of Peter. Ignoring it, denying it, is just... wrong.

Now, Spencer has been referencing this part of Peter. Not a lot, but it’s there. In his confrontation with Kraven during Hunted, and now with the return of the Sin Eater. I believe Peter’s anger is anathema to his responsibility - that’s why it’s so fun, because every once in a while the guy goes batshit and betrays everything he believes in. Not just because of what he does when he’s in a rage, but because of the very fact that he has these huge anger issues and the ability to cause an enormous amount of damage before he gets stopped, and he’s done nothing about this. No one has! What the hell! He used to be friends with a psychiatrist who worked rehabilitating villains and founded Ravencroft, who once saw him without his mask and still respected him enough to not look, who he talked about his parents and the beginning of his guilt complex with, and he never went to her with this! And he almost went to her during his “Spider” phase (only to find her in badly hurt after being attacked during an escape from Ravencroft, thus making his mental state worse, but yanow), but it never occurred to him to go to her for help with his anger issues, and that’s a big oversight. Very, you could call it... irresponsible.

But if Spencer’s bringing it back... we 1) could organically return to a better characterized Peter, and/or 2) see him go through an arc where he deals with his issues. Not just a “The psychology of Peter Parker part one of four” kind of arc, but a real, long character arc, like an addiction recovery kind of thing, with him acknowledging the problem, the pitfalls and the upsides, talking to the people who’ve seen him when he’s gone berserk, people like MJ, who’ve managed to talk him down, like Matt, who’ve only managed to “calm” him by knocking him out. Again, like MJ, who quit smoking, but started for a reason, and could share her experience with recovery (which, correct me if I’m wrong, but we never saw, so it could be a chance to write it for the first time), and with Doc Connors, who could remind him that, as strong as his rage might make him, the price to pay for losing control like that would often be high, and he won’t be the one paying for it. 

It would make for a good balance between past characterization that got lost in a sea of mediocre (of we’re being kind) writers and his current characterization, which hasn’t only been pretty solidly established in the comics by now, but also outside of them, so that new readers will probably be expecting a more... mellow Peter. If it’s made clear that this is something he chose and worked for, and still struggles with...

It’s a very big if, but if Spencer is planning to do something with it... I’d be so here for it.

Of course, I haven’t even finished reading this issue, yet, so none of this might actually be true. Still, one can hope.