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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years ago

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There was so much wrong with this I was compelled to debunk it line by line.

“The biggest successes in the business, character-wise, tend to have more than one axis that they revolve around; take away one, and everything goes wildly off course. ”

This isn’t universally true. Spider-Man for example is defined by power and responsibility. Responsibility can be somewhat broad though and relate to work, family,self-respect, community as well as being a hero so if that’s what you meant then okay. Similarly power can mean more than just super powers. After all Spider-Man’s original sin with the burglar was something he didn’t need super powers to have prevented.

“Yes, Batman’s very much about Justice, that’s what he teaches us about…but as a character, he’s defined by the idea of Family from the start, with the deaths of his parents to the various Robins, Alfred and Gordon, and even up to his old, familiar relationship with Gotham itself.”

This is somewhat debatable given that Batman’s family ties were not present in his first appearance and Alfred was not truly a father figure to him until post-crisis, nearly 5 years after his creation; arguably the same is true of Gordon. But because of his origin and Robin’s and his relationship with Robin okay it does make a lot of sense to say he’s about justice but justice in specific relation to family ties.

“Superman wants to show us how to hope and work for a better world, but the kink that gives his relationship with humanity weight and definition is his alienation from those he loves so much. Even if it’s subtle in its presence, stories from All-Star to Birthright have taken that principle to heart in their portrayals of Clark Kent: take that away, and you end up with something like the largely unconflicted, uber-patriotic Man-God of John Byrne’s Man Of Steel (which I know to be many people’s benchmark for the character, but that’s a discussion for another time). ”

This however was your first big misinterpretation.

That particular interpretation of Superman was absolutely absent from his character until like the Silver Age when, to cash in on the science fiction craze of the time, they leaned harder on his alien origins.

Post-crisis they went back to him not feeling all that alienated if at all, and outright rejecting said alien heritage, codifying that he is a human first and foremost.

Some say that these are two equally valid interpretations but the truth is they really aren’t. The entire premise of Superman as originally envisioned by his creators was an immigration allegory combined with a power fantasy. But it wasn’t just any given immigration allegory, it wasn’t as broad as to be anything. It was specifically the allegory of the idealized ultimate American immigrant, the American dream played out in a superhero/science fiction outlet. He wasn’t merely an immigrant, but very much an integrated immigrant who adopted the ideals of his new home and brought with him helpful traits from his place of origin with which to enrichen and help out his new home.

The idea that he felt alienated and not a part of humanity and that was a great tension between himself and those he loved like his parents or Lois...that was honestly an invention after the fact and a huge betrayal of the fundamental defining point of the character. Practically the opposite.

It is in truth a MISinterpretation.

Does that mean Birthright and All-Star Superman and Byrne’s Man of Steel are mutually exclusive?

I don’t know.

But it isn’t merely a case of Byrne being the benchmark for many people. Fact is...he got it objectively correct because he was doing what Siegel and Shuster were doing. If Birthright/All-Star are mutually exclusive then I guess yeah, sorry Waid and Morrisson did in fact get it wrong.

Which shouldn’t be surprising. Waid and Morrisson wanted to effectively reboot Superman BACk to his pre-crisis self circa the 2000s and Morrisson and Waid used said ideas for those stories, with Morisson kinda of rebooting Superman in the Nu52. Cut to 2016 and nu52 Superman was unrebooted back to his post-crisis self (more or less) after the Nu52 (inspired very much by pre-crisis Superman and leaning even harder on the ‘I’m so alienated, let me date this Amazonian demi-godess from an isolated mythic nation’ than pre-crisis itself ever did) utterly failed.

“Many, if you asked them what Parker’s second irreducible element is, would say that the big idea in play is the experience of being a teenager.”

No it isn’t.

“And it’s hardly unfounded.”

Yes it is.

“Voices throughout the online comics community, from Chris Sims[1][2] to Sequart’s own Colin Smith[3] (R.I.P., TooBusyThinkingAboutMyComics) to David Brothers[4], among many others, put forward that idea to greater or lesser degrees.”

And those voices are grossly mistaken.

“And they’re not wrong, not really.”

Again, yes they are.

Let’s contextualize things properly.

Circa the early 1960s the true concept of ‘the teen’ was at best incredibly new and at worst didn’t truly exist. Indeed as originally envisioned by Lee and Ditko Peter was a SENIOR not a 15 year old. He was going on trips out of town on his own within the first 10 issues. Aunt May was talking about him getting married within the first 20 and he considered proposing to Betty before he even hit college.

In those high school years Peter actually DIDN’T spend most of his civilian time in a high school setting. It happened but he was mostly centred upont he Bugle, a place of work.

He was working to support himself, Aunt May and generally financially support the household as the man of the house in lieu of Uncle Ben.

THAT...is the exact opposite of being defined by youth. Even in the early 1960s a teenager wouldn’t have been defined so heavily by their employment, let alone an employment as the breadwinner for the family, the one upon who’s shoulders everything rested.

That is very much an ADULT responsibility. Which makes sense. Realistically lsing your father and having to adopt that responsibility would cause you to grow up faster in many respects. Couple this with the fact that neither Lee or Ditko were even of the same generation as 1960s teens and from a time period where the teenager truly didn’t exist and you as a youngster had to step up earlier and basically go from child to young adult with little in between and it makes a lot of sense, whereas ‘he’s about youth and being a teenager’ absolutely doesn’t.

That’s nothing more than a modern idea we project backwards onto those older stories.

The experience of being a teen had little to do with defining Spider-Man’s character, it just happened to be something relatively different for the time period and indeed Stan Lee stated he called him Spider-MAN in the first place because he intended from the outset for Peter to age into adulthood eventually, and keep going at which point calling himself Spider-BOY made little sense. This is corroborated by the fact that Lee in the stories and in other interviews has repeatedly stated he always intended Peter to eventually marry (a decided adult experience) Gwen Stacy. He equally stated he was pleased in the comics and newspaper strips to see Peter’s character development from teen to married guy and looked forward to him eventually having children.

If part of the core idea of Spider-Man was his youthfulness then these ideas should’ve been anethma to his co-creator. A character defined by youth and the experiences of being a teen can never age out of that period of his life or be intended to age out of that period without destroying the fundamental core of the character, or at least a huge part of the fundamental core.

But that didn’t happen. Spider-Man left high school within the first 3-4 years of his existence and it is in fact the ROMITA era in college which until the early 2000s (when USM began being pushed as the definitve Spider-Man ever) was seen as the true blue golden age of Spider-Man.

There is after all a reason why versions of Spider-man set in high school USE so much stuff from the college era. Few TV shows, movies, video games or alternate universe comics set in Spider-Man’s high school years DON’T feature college era characters like Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane, Joe Robertson, Norman Osborn, Black Cat or plot lines relevant from the college years, such as Harry’s drug addiction, Norman being unmasked as the Goblin, the debut of the Rhino, the Shcoker, the Kingpin, Silvermane/other gangsters. Few in fact ever depict Spidey in a relationship with Betty Brant or in a love triangle with her and Liz Allan. Liz herself hasn’t gotten as much play as the above listed college era characters and whenever she does it’s usually in a second fiddle position to said college era characters.

Indeed in the majority of adaptations prior to 2008 (a mere 10 years ago) placed Spider-Man in college instead of high school or else transitioned him into college very quickly. Sam Raimi’s first movie, which is the single most reverential one to the Ditko run, has Peter transition into college by the halfway point of the film.* In the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon (which had a huge influence upon the Raimi trilogy and Venom over all) Spider-Man was only n high school for one flashback sequence and in college the rest of the time and that show had very direct involvement and consultation from Stan Lee. In the upcoming and highly anticipated Insomniac video game, Spider-Man’s story begins POST-College. In the 1970s Spider-Man newspaper strips by Stan Lee himself, the story begins in college and Spider-Man’s origin is even retold to take place in college. Again that’s by the CREATOR of Spider-Man.

It’s very obvious that the teenage/high school experience is NOT key or relevant to the character at all.

Indeed the Ditko issues depicting him in high school don’t place much focus upon his schoolwork, zits, or high school dating and the like. The most it is relevant is being bullied by Flash but that wasn’t in every issue or got half as much panel time as Jameson and the Bugle stuff. Which again, was affiliated with Peter’s work, work being an ADULT aspect of life, not a particularly youthful/high school experience.

You are correct in your assessment that power/responsibility isn’t the sole axis for Spider-Man’s character.

But wholly incorrect that ‘youth’ is the other axis. In truth it’s...being a normal guy.

THAT was the actual point Lee and Ditko had in mind. The Hero who could be YOU! Spider-Man was the everyman hero, the hero with relatable problems. His other axis was that he was ORDINARY relatively speaking, not that he was young.

This is corroborated by long term (as in began in the 1970s) fan and Spider-Man analyst J.R. Fettinger:

Peter's appeal was not that he was a loser (although his hard times was a big factor in his popularity), but that he was ordinary.

I remembered something that one of Hero Realm's co-creators, the "late" George Berryman, told me in the early days of the Realm was that Marvel President Bill Jemas "hates MJ, hates the baby, and wants Spidey to be a kid again."

Hmmm.

For some reason I became hung up on the phrase of wanting Spidey to be a kid again. And finally, I figured out why it was bothering me - and that's because it presumes that Spidey was a kid in the first place. And he wasn't. Not really. At least not the kind of kid the Marvel execs who have been desperate to de-age him think he was.

You doubt?

First of all, we do have to acknowledge that while many of us related to Peter Parker in one way or another (which is the root of his popularity), how many of us are really like him? The second part of that question is how many kids did you know in high school who were like Peter Parker? Let's establish that Peter was 15 at the time of the spider bite (supported by the recent Civil War where Peter tells the media he has been Spider-Man since he was 15 years old). He probably turns 16 before too long and is 17 by Amazing Spider-Man #16 when Matt Murdock, whose radar senses are pretty accurate, estimates his age. Let's look at what kind of "kid" Peter Parker really was in the Lee-Ditko, Lee-Romita, Sr. days:

After the death of Uncle Ben, Peter becomes the head of the household because Aunt May becomes too frail and senile to do much of anything (the way she was written at that time). Although Aunt May cooks him wheatcakes and worries about him being sick, Peter is the one with the primary source of income, and he is also her primary caregiver, a very atypical situation for a 15 or 16 year old.

Speaking of Peter's employment, I probably really don't need to talk about the inherent absurdity of a high schooler becoming one of the premier photographers of that great metropolitan newspaper, the Daily Bugle.

Peter's (and Spidey's) quick, razor-sharp witticisms tend to be the product of a more mature, experienced, well-read individual given the topical references, like maybe a middle-aged writer. Just a guess. There are too many to mention, but one of my favorite of Peter's overwritten zingers occurs in Amazing Spider-Man #26, when having had enough of Flash Thompson's big mouth, he states "I'm in no mood for your musclebound mirth today! And the same goes for your gang of grinning hyenas." Hey, I love this stuff, but if Peter were doing this on TV in one of those typical teen-age oriented shows where the kids have all the brains and wisdom and the parents are largely ineffectual buffoons, his character would be pilloried by the critics for being too highbrow, clever, or simply obnoxious for a teenager. I did know someone in college who was the quickest with a great comeback as anyone I have ever met before or since, but he was an English and literature major, not a science major (he's now an English professor and writer, so there seems to be a logical connect).

Speaking of the science major thing, I am probably in the minority opinion on this, but the extent of Peter's genius leaves me a bit cold. I do like the idea that he is this brainy guy whom everyone thinks is a nerd, but is really this terrific superhero. But seriously, an expert in complex polymers by age 15 (as Roger Stern once illustrated - in order to demonstrate that Peter was already on the road to the web fluid thing)? And then there's that anti-magnetic inverter he uses in Amazing #2 to take out the Vulture. And don't forget how he whipped up an antidote to temporarily cure the Lizard all in the space of a couple of panels in Amazing #6. I have a feeling that any kid this smart would not be in the New York City public school system, or any public school system.

So, ultimately, Peter Parker was never a real kid, not in the sense that real kids are, but he was really an adult in a teenager's body. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders like an adult, and he had true adult responsibilities. In a way, Peter Parker was very much like Charlie Brown of Peanuts fame. Charles Schulz's famous character was never really just a plain kid - he was a neurotic adult in the body of an eight year old (or however old he was). And talk about topical references, Peanuts was loaded with them. However, Schultz's clever writing, wit, and keen understanding of human foibles made this accessible to both young and old. It wouldn't have mattered whether Charlie was five or 15, Schultz's marvelous writing would have carried the message in an entertaining style.

Now, I am not implying that no teenager has ever become head of the household, or held a permanent job before graduation, or had a lightning fast wit, or been a super-genius and still at a public school (but was there ever anyone who was all of those). Nor am I trying to take anyway any of the fun of the early days of Spider-Man, nor ruin any of the fantasy conceits, because that's what it is - fantasy. We recognize that and enjoy it anyway. The point I am making is that for anyone, whether they be a Marvel suit, editor, writer, or someone from Wizard to get hung up on Peter's youth being the core of his popularity, and something that must be repeatedly revisited in order to make the titles popular again, is either blind, in denial, or simply not doing their homework on the character.

And if you want to handwave his views because he is a fan and observer (like Sims et al listed above) then consider this...Tom DeFalco agrees with him. Tom DeFalco has stated more than once that Spider-Man is about responsibility and NOT youth.

To get why that is a big deal, Tom DeFalco is also a long time fan. As in began reading in 1962 with Amazing Fantasy #15. He edited Spider-Man for years. He wrote THREE runs on Spider-Man and a 10+ year long run on a pseudo sequel called Spider-Girl. He was EIC of Marvel for a time and wrote a book literally called ‘Spider-Man: the Ultimate Guide’.

He is infinitely more qualified to discuss Spider-Man than any of the other people listed in this article or in my response sans Stan Lee himself.**

And he corroborates my and Fettinger’s point, that Spider-Man is definitely NOT about youth/the teenage high school experience.

“Moreover The high school years, and everything that comes with them, are indisputably at the center of the earliest adventures.”

Yes and no.

Spider-Man was in high school for the first 28 issues so yes.

But high school EXPERIENCES were 100% indisputably NOT the centre of the stories for that time period and again, Spider-Man became MORE popular and his true golden age was defined AFTER high school.

“ It’s a well people have been going back to for years from the late, lamented Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon; to David Lapham and Tony Harris’s With Great Power; Marvel Adventures Spider-Man; Sean McKeever, Takeshi Miyazawa and David Hahn’s Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane; twice over with Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Bendis and assorted artists (in my opinion, the most effective comic at recapturing the spirit of the Lee / Ditko years during the first run with Bagley…though again, that’s a topic for another time); and soon enough once more with Dan Slott and Ramon Perez’s “Learning To Crawl”. ”

And again, notice how all of those within Spider-Man’s 55+ year history only relate to stuff from the last 18. Spider-Man hit 56 years old recently. 18/56 is merely less than 33 percent of all of Spider-Man’s history wherein the high school era is being revisted over and over and over again.

It has even less weight when you consider the trend merely started because

a) USM was popular and USM’s success owed much more to Bagley’s art and the accessibility afforded it by being a singular self-contained narrative with a clear starting point. Read issue one or volume 1 of the trades and then keep going, no need to crossover into Ultimate Spectacular or Ultimate Web of Spider-Man

b) USM got started up by the disastrous EIC Bill Jemas who ignorantly believed Spider-Man to be defined by youth

c) The Spec cartoon was set in high school first and foremost to simply differentiate itself from almost every adaptation prior to it which DIDN’T centre things in high school and a desire to try something that had never been done before. The long term plan was for the show to run 5 seasons of high school before transitioning into DVD movies set in college

d) Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane was aimed as a tweenage all ages audience thus centring things on high school experiences made more sense as that was more directly relating to the age of the audience

e) Around the same time period Superman’s origins were revisted multiple times because people just LIKE going back to the early years inherently.

This doesn’t spell out ‘high school is more inherently Spider-Man and better for the character’. It spells out ‘this is something different we’re milking for all it’s worth whilst getting stuck in a rut creatively.

Hell THAT IS WHY Insomniac are NOT doing high school OR college for their game.

Additionally USM DID NOT recapture the spirit of the original Ditko stories. People believe they did because they liked it or else because that narrative has been repeated. But a simple analysis of the Ditko High school years to USM reveals countless differences between he two, differences which very seriously alter the spirit of the original stories. Ditko Peter had no real friends and his first romance wasn’t serious at all. He was constantly anxious over May’s health and being a provider for the family. Jameson was a constant source of harassment in and out of costume and a major force impacting his life, with his whole job as a photographer meant to get one over on his harasser. Ditko Peter was over all lonely and on edge a lot emotionally.

NONE of that applies to Ultimate Spider-Man under Bendis. Peter is more chilled out and whilst not a member of the in-crowd, clearly isn’t lonely having a friendship group. His first romance with MJ isn’t not serious, it’s a very deep committed love that involves her acting as a confidant which was absolutely NOT the case in the original Ditko stories. Jameson is barely there and his smear campaign against Spider-Man is not the most important aspect of their relationship or has a huge impact upon Peter’s life. Gwen Stacy lives with him. Nick Fury has an important presence upon his life and Aunt May is the bread winner, provider and is never a source of worry due to being pretty healthy for her age.

It is truly NOT a spiritual successor to the Ditko run at all.

“Those earliest of stories are at the center of everything good about the character…”

Again, no they aren’t. Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, Harry Osborn, the Green Goblin and everything awesome about the College era (which I will remind you was MORE popular than the High school era) proves that assessment incorrect.

“The Parker Luck, in those earliest days? Largely amounted to costumes shrinking in the wash, or misunderstandings with his girlfriend(s… You unmitigated cad), or his aunt just not getting it, man”

Aunt May not getting it was a college era thing, not prevalent in the high school era.

“but from any objective standpoint the boy was leading a charmed life. So why the misery? Because he’s a teenager. ”

No. The misery was because he didn’t lead a charmed life. This is patently obvious from the stories.

He had no friends.

His girlfriend Betty Brant was often unreasonable and became insanely jealous whenever Liz like...talked to him!

His mother figure was often in poor health creating huge financial burdens.

Jameson verbally abused him and shortchanged him at work.

The public hated and feared him and believed him to be a criminal.

He risked his life routinely.

He was ostracized and bullied at school.

Oh yeah...and his father figure was dead and he blamed himself for it.

To dismiss all that and chalk up his misery via ‘he’s a teenager of course he’d be moody’ is a gross misinterpretation of the character and a highly unsympathetic attempt to analyze him.

I’m not saying his woes weren’t over exaggerated due to his age, but serious and justifiable cause for sadness Peter absolutely had.

“Because it’s always the end of the world at 16, when in truth the world isn’t set against him (something we’ll be getting back to), but his problems simply result from misunderstandings, from the basic realities of his situation, and from screw-ups entirely on his own part. ”

Again this is objectively wrong. SOMETIMES yes there are screw ups of his own makings, but Flash’s bullying, Jameson’s smear campaign and May’s illnesses were the biggest sources of woe in his life and none of those were his fault. Those were instances where thw world really was unjustifiably against him. Jameson had no right cause to smear Spider-Man. Flash wasn’t in the right to bully Peter. And May and Peter didn’t deserve to go through May’s frail health.

“His was a situation entirely relatable, a lonely boy hiding behind a false face and acting as the man he wants to be, getting the strength over time to become that man himself. ”

No he WAS a man who’d had to grow up in a lot of ways fast just to cope with the burdens of life. See what Fettinger wrote above as well as Amazing Fantasy #16 and ASM #400’s backup story by DeMatteis, both of which have Peter in the past and in hindsight referring to himself as a growing up with the death of uncle Ben.

You are channelling Sims misinterpretation here.

Both his and your argument hinges upon Spider-Man being a facade Peter adopts when he becomes Spider-Man like he’s Superman or Batman in reverse.

But that isn’t the case. Spider-Man isn’t an ACT Peter performs, it’s just him, freed from certain constraints.

In or out of the costume he is who he is.

“A kid who refuses to tell the people closest to him about himself, in theory for their own good, but deep down because he’s terrified of being rejected the same way so many do when you’re growing up and defining your identity. ”

Or because you know nobody in the high school years were shown as trustworthy besides Aunt May who a doctor more or less told him ‘If you surprise her enough she WILL die!’

The more people who know something the bigger the chance that it’ll slip out. If May found out then as far as Peter knew that WOULD kill her, end of story.

So who was he SUPPOSED to trust with his big secret besides her?

Betty Brant? The woman who worked directly with the millionaire news mogul who HATED him? The woman who’d proven herself to have some criminal ties and who was generally unreasonable far too often?

Liz Allan who partook in the mocking and bullying of Peter until she abruptly started to like him?

Flash, his bully and tormentor?

Jameson his OTHER tormentor?

There was NOBODY for Peter to safely tell his secret to without risking it coming out to Aunt May.

And his fear of rejection wasn’t stemming from teenage angst (because AGAIN, the concept of the teenager as we know it today didn’t truly exist in the 1960s) but from Jameson painting him as a criminal.

In fact Peter DID come clean in ASM #87 during the college era to people who HAD been close to him and whom he sincerely loved and cared for and had infinitely more reason to trust than anyone in the high school era.

Know what happened?

They DID reject him!

“As the challenges increase, so too does he rise to meet them, maturing into the sort of person capable of realizing the responsibilities he’s taken on, and the storytelling engine I mentioned earlier purrs, as do sales figures.”

Or you know he meets those responsibilities from the outset and as word of mouth and confidence in the series grows so too do sales until Romita took over, aged Peter into adulthood and told fun less angsty (so...less teenaged) stories which resulted in stratospheric sales.

“Lifting some big-ass machinery aside, that’s the comic where his puppy-dog relationship with Betty Brant comes to a conclusive end, not out of manufactured concern that revealing his secret will somehow lead to her demise (that worry wouldn’t come to the forefront of his concerns until…oh, let’s say about 88 issues later), but from the simple and adult acknowledgement that it would never work between the two no matter how they feel. ”

No. Peter and Betty ENDED their relationship in ASM #30 not #33. ASM #33 just underscored the ending. It ended in ASM #30 because Peter realized Betty didn’t and couldn’t want to marry a man who risked his life as he did.

He’d already ended it, ASM #33 just confirmed his decision as correct.

“That’swhere he finally meets JJJ on his own terms and gets one up on the skinflint. That’s where he finally, at least in theory, manages to overcome the shame of his first and greatest failure by saving Aunt May. It had been getting built up to for a while, with Peter graduating high school and getting into college, but things were still on hold with his preoccupation with his aunt’s medical problems distracting from his rapidly-growing new cast. ”

I don’t necessarily disagree that Peter completely corsses the threshold into adulthood with the Master Planner trilogy but this actually undermines your earlier argument that the character was built around and doesn’t work without being defined by youth.

I’ve already laid out how that was never the case but for the sake of argument let’s say you are right and he had been about youth up until ASM #33 when he grows up.

How comes the character dealt with mostly similar social and personal issues (exempting lonliness and bullying) after that point in addition to new more adult ones and sales and acclaim went UP?

“In the last Ditko issues, you see Peter going out of his way to connect with his new classmates, an idea that would have been anathema to him not many issues earlier, and turning down the advances of a potential Betty Brant in the making in ASM #36 because he’s managed to figure out where that will go”

Again no, your assessment is that Peter turned down that girl because he figured out it’d be a retread of Betty brant. In truth that was a mistaken presumption he made naively. He believed she valued his brains and therefore it’d turn out like Betty. He was wrong.

“Suddenly the stakes are higher. Aunt May’s condition worsens. The fabled money problems start to come to the forefront, though at the moment they’re mostly limited to not being able to pay for dates or his snazzy new motorcycle, rather than the life-or-death issue it would become later. ”

Again this is a poorly researched assessment. Aunt May had been having health problems throughout the Ditko run, with 3 near fatal health problems alone. Peter had money problems related to those and other things literally from ASM #1.

Your assessment is that these things didn’t exist or didn’t exist as prominently until the Romita era but this is probably incorrect. They were there in big ways and merely continued into the Romita era.

You could argue they were more prominent because there were more instances of those things, but the Romita (more accurately the post-Ditko Stan Lee run) lasted LONGER than the Ditko era over all so of course that was the case.

“And even as the situation worsens, he doesn’t crumble under the pressure, because he’s changed enough as a hero and a man to rise to those challenges, even if he’ll never rise above them.”

But he didn’t crumble before such challenges before during the High school years and in certain cases DID rise above such challenges.

“But with exceptions like Mary Jane’s arrival, “Spider-Man No More” and the rightly famous Harry Osborn drug issues, Stan’s remaining time on Spider-Man would never reach the heights of his collaboration with Ditko. ”

Yeah, remember how sales went down after Ditko left...except they didn’t.

Remember how all those Ditko stories like Kraven crashing Flash’s leaving party, or the Petrified Tablet Saga, or the Brand of the Brainwasher, or Doc Ock boarding with Aunt May, or Captain Stacy’s death or the first Rhino stories, the first Colonel Jupiter story, the debut of Shocker, Kingpin or Norman Osborn remember he was the Goblin the first time, were so much better than everything after Ditko left and got acclaimed or revisted in adaptations, retellings and flashbacks over the course of decades?

Oh wait a minute all of those were post-Ditko stories.

“It started to congeal into familiarity, the never-ending soap opera that others would come to imitate—after all, it’s far easier to replicate the success of something when it can be reduced down to a formula, rather than a constant series of innovations—and would eventually be accepted itself as an essential element of the character.”

Yes but this applies to the majority of comic book runs wherein a writer lingers for too long. Lee’s F4 work dipped in quality over time.

Post-Gwen’s death the quality markedly improved.

“And as a result of this, and the desire to reduce Spider-Man to an easily-repeatable equation being applied to the earlier stories causing the strip-mining of only the surface elements, the core character philosophies of the Spider-Man franchise would be twisted into Loss and the Soap Opera dynamics mentioned earlier.”

No they weren’t. They were twisted into ‘he’s a loser’ and even that wasn’t a perennial thing. It applies to the Woflman run, the Mackie/Byrne reboot, Brand New Day and Slott’s run.

“One good example of the problem is the relatively recent “Mysterioso” arc of Amazing Spider-Man #618-620, by Dan Slott and Marcos Martin. Good writing, ”

There is no such thing as a Dan Slott Spider-Man story with good writing because Dan Slott is an objectively aweful Spider-Man writer.

In this story alone you have him nonsensically ignore Mysterio’s death in Daredevil saying he faked it. How the Hell does Mysterio fake out DD’s hyper senses?

“What, you don’t remember Carlie Cooper’s father, introduced in that arc as having been a cop who died years earlier but actually being alive and really being in the crooked pocket of Mysterio but is taken down by his daughter getting her to make an emotional breakthrough, none of this having anything to do with Spider-Man himself and actually completely distracting from the engaging main plot and it worked about as well as this overlong sentence?”

See you just spelled out a huge reason why this arc cannot logically be said to have good writing.

“It’s gone from Peter having trouble explaining himself to the person who can’t be trusted with even the simplest tasks—and in fact, he has become truly forgetful and neglectful a great deal of the time. He’s gone from a whiz-kid who has to take pictures of himself to pay the bills because of his aunt to the 250 I.Q. mega-genius who can barely scrape by, an empathetic naturally good-humored friend who can’t hold a relationship, a trouble-magnet whose luck once explainable by his own mistakes and misfortunes can at this point only be explained by witchcraft. He’s become the loser he was always afraid he was. What are we supposed to learn from this irresponsible schmuck, exactly?”

This is the single most poignant and insightful comment in the article. But this only applies to Spider-Man from 2008 onwards. This WASN’T true of the JMS era Spider-Man.

“So if he isn’t about loss (at least not, I’d argue, in a manner that can really work long-term at such a high level as what’s been going on for so long), but he’s not really about being a teenager either, what is he ‘about’?

He’s about growing.”

Jesus Christ no, he isn’t.

He’s not about growing, about being a teen or about loss.

He’s about power+responsibility within the context of being a relatively normal person.

THAT’S WHY HE’S CALLED SO RELATABLE!

THAT’S why he’s referred to by Stan Lee himself as the hero who could be you.

“That scene above in ASM #8 (by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, which is as official as if Marvel the corporate entity gained sentience and started writing comics on its own), where Spidey’s hogtying the Human Torch? Johnny’s not secretly the Chameleon in disguise, nor is he being mind-controlled by Dr. Doom or the Ringmaster. Peter’s doing it because he’s angry at the guy getting all the breaks he doesn’t, and feels like publicly ruining his day. This was not, by the way, the slightest bit uncharacteristic of Peter Parker as we’d seen him up to this point.”

Actually it absolutely was, especially when you consider the story actually happens after ASM #21 when Peter had already matured a bit.

You need to understand that this story whilst being published IN ASM...in truth is actually more of a Strange Tales Human Torch story.

There is no personal life stakes for Spider-Man and Spidey is himself the only character from his own comic to appear, everyone else from the Torch to the FF, Dorrie Evans and the other Torch supporting cast are from Strange Tales. And as if to confirm things, this was the ONLY Spider-Man story during the Ditko era published in ASM and it’s annuals NOT worked on by Ditko himself.

We all know of the Marvel method which rendered the artists of each story vital contributors to the stories at hand. Well if Stan Lee was working with Ditko vs. Kirby on a particular project the end results, including the characterization, were not necessarily going to be the same. In fact they often were not.

Kirby didn’t create or understand Spider-Man. Ditko did and Ditko DIDN’T characetrize Spidey like this during most of his run, including up until this point.

Additionally to differentiate themselves from DC, the Marvel pantheon routinely had the heroes bicker and dislike one another whenever they met up. It was rare for that to NOT be the case in the Silver Age.

And routinely in the Silver Age the guest stars were painted more unfavourably than the resident main character(s). This was the case for most of the F4’s appearences in ASM.

ASM #8 is a reversal because like I said, it’s not actually a Spider-Man story. It’s a left over Strange Tales story. It’s a Torch story which means Torch is painted positively whilst Spider-Man is painted as a jerk, synergy and consistent characterization be damned.

“In the earliest material, Peter Parker was a dick, and that went on long after the mugger got turned in. ”

No he absolutely wasn’t. Moments where he was a dick perhaps but this is a toxically cynical and unsympathetic misinterpretation of the character in line with the bullshit of ‘he lived a charmed life’.

I’ve seen it before and it never holds up.

Worse is the notion of he was a dick even after the mugger was turned in. Like...his Dad just died dude FFS.

“ His immediate response after Ben was killed? Keep on going with the show business until Jameson starts going after him.”

Yeah in order to earn money to support Aunt May and allow them to keep their home because they were facing eminent eviction.

He wasn’t resolving to continue with show business INSTEAD of fighting crime, that was evident from ASM #1 and #2 as well as from the untold stories from Amazing Fantasy #16-18.

“His first couple saves are at least in part about His Good Name, whether saving Jameson’s son with the idea that it would get him on the old man’s good side, or going after the Chameleon for impersonating him, and even once he starts going after criminals on a consistent basis it’s initially only for photography money. ”

Again you’ve not properly paid attention and your interpretation is rooted in cynicism.

Yeah IN PART he was going after those things for the sake of his reputation. But that wasn’t the root of it at all.

He saves John Jameson because he saw someone in need he doesn’t even mention the idea that saving him will help his reputation until after the fact and it’s an afterthought. He simply saw someone who needed help and so he acted as he hadn’t done before with the burglar.

In the Chameleon story he spots the Chameleon getting away with government secrets (a HUGE deal in the Cold War 1960s) and sees his helicopter getting away so he leaps into action.

Is he doing it to exonerate himself or would he have done that had he realized a spy was making away with stolen secrets right in front of him anyway?

Given how in the same comic book he leapt into action to save a life immediately it’s very obviously the latter that doubles up as the former. And even it was to exonerate himself that’s hardly a selfish dick move.

A criminal committed a crime and framed him for it. It isn’t selfish or a dick move to bring him to justice.

Equally even if he was fighting crimes to rehabilitate his reputation, again his damaged rep was how he lost a reliable source of income that he needed to survive and support his aunt and household. It isn’t selfish and dickish to attempt to help your reputation under those circumstances.

As for going after criminals for photography money this is again a misrepresentation of Spider-Man’s motives.

In ASM #2 it’s implied the Vulture’s presence isn’t huge. Some people don’t even believe he exists. It’s ambiguous as to when exactly Peter himself learned of his existence and even if he did already know he had the more pressing problem of earning money to pay the rent for himself and aunt May, he might not have figured out or gotten a routine going for actively crime fighting yet.

He seeks out the Vulture for profit initially yes but again earning money isn’t selfish or a dick move. He needed to do it to survive and support Aunt May. He GETS the pictures and therefore his source of income after being beaten by the Vulture but states that he’s already resolved to be a costumed adventurer before upgrading his belt. In other words he had already decided to fight crime and just saw a way to (pardon the pub) kill 2 birds with one stone. To this end he initiates a rematch with Vulture even though he didn’t HAVE to if he was in it just for the money. He already had the pictures he didn’t NEED to end the public menace of the Vulture and he wasn’t naive enough to believe that doing so would change Jonah’s tune.

But he did it anyway because he WAS trying to be a hero.

“He takes stupid chances. He’s desperate for cash. He insults and attacks undeserving people. ”

Apart from being desperate for cash (which would mean his efforts for helping his rep or earning money WOULDN’T make him a dick) he literally never does this at any point in the Ditko run. He maybe insults ONE person who doesn’t deserve it once.

“He fakes pictures of Sandman and Electro with the flimsiest of moral justifications.”

No. He faked pictures of the Sandman out of youthful naivete and then did it with Electro to earn money to SAVE AUNT MAY’S LIFE!

Journalistic ethics can go suck the big one if they need to be sacrificed for the sake of saving a human life for God’s sake.

He felt bad about the latter showing how he wasn’t a dick and had grown and consequently accepted the reprimands that eventually came from faking such pictures.

“He’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Queens and can barely begin to control his temper.”

Again bullshit. He controls his temper plenty hence he only once lashes out at Flash twice and obviously not fully since he never used his strength to seriously injure him.

As for having a chip on your shoulder no shit. His Dad’s dead, his mother is sickly and he’s trying to hold it all together whilst some asshole on the news lies about him and he’s bullied at school.

OF COURSE he has a chip on his shoulder.

“He’ll lash out at people on suspicion or anger alone,”

Again he literally never did this.

“ and in some early stories he just plain gave up or ran away until he learned his lesson or circumstances changed. ”

Yeah he did but that doesn’t make him a dick. It makes him human. He quit TWICE by the way. Once after Doc Ock owned his ass and broke his confidence (which can happen to anyone of any age) and once when everything went wrong and Aunt May was dying. She got better and gave him a pep talk.

This again is something that can happen to anyone and isn’t an example of being qa dick.

Does it maybe show him as being a kid.

Sure.

But that wasn’t the POINT. Stan Lee wanted him to be realistic and he happened to be a youngster. So he relatively speaking wrote him believably within that context, but as I said youth was never THE point.

Nor was growth because EVERY Silver Age marvel character grew and developed, whether they were teens like Rick Jones, Spider-Man and the Torchor adults like Doctor Strange, Reed Richards and Ben Grimm.

“He’s a bitter, arrogant know-it-all who looks down on virtually everyone around him, and even if we can’t blame him with all he goes through, he’s often far afield of anything resembling “likeable”.”

Except for all those readers of the time and sine who called him likable and relatable you mean.

Your just being utterly cynical.

I mean who does he ACTUALLY look down on really? Flash and the people who bully him who display anti-intellectual tendencies. Jameson who is a blowhard slander hound. Oh and the super villains who waste their talents on hurting people so fuck them.

Beyond those people he looks down sometimes on fellow heroes but every hero looked down upon basically every other hero in Silver Age Marvel and real talk, Spider-Man had it rougher than most of them anyway so he wasn’t wrong to think he WAS better than them.

But he didn’t look down on Betty or Aunt May or Uncle Ben or other people. SO he isn’t that arrogant most of the time (a little bit early on when he hasn’t faced down major foes like Doc Ock yet but then that stops by issue #3) and his bitterness is well earned.

So you are again misinterpreting.

Moreover those things apply to many differnet Marvel Silver Age characters.

Reed, Ben, and Sue, all adults, had plenty of moments of aggression, immaturity and the like. Not because the point was they are those things but just because that’s how Stan happened to write most of his characters back then. Hank Pym could be an aggressive jerk. Captain America could be an aggressive immature jerk, e.g. when he tried to inspire Hank Pym by attacking him.

“But he changes, so completely many seem to forget he was ever anything other than the official co-saint of the Marvel Universe alongside Steve Rogers. Perhaps it’s in part because of this misunderstanding that Spider-Man 2—starring Peter Parker being Very Sad because he won’t trust the people around him with information that directly impacts their safety, and pushing himself so hard he can’t even effectively fight crime anymore, defeating the purpose altogether of him taking the pain of the entirety of New York unto himself like a bargain-basement Christ—is widely considered the high-water mark of the character’s modern history, while the Peter Parker of The Amazing Spider-Man—who actually acts like a teenager, keeps on making mistakes and operating under selfish motives even after the mugging and has to learn, and is willing to place hope in tomorrow and try and still make a happy life for himself alongside the obligations he must shoulder—is quite widely considered a “douchebag”.”

Dear God this is so wrongheaded it hurts.

In the Raimi movies Peter thinks that entrusting MJ with his secret will endanger her because she likes Spider-Man so she’d want to be with him more. Which HAPPENS. He was 100% correct, she literally ditches her wedding for him!

But he WANTED to push her away because in her NOT being too close to him she would be safer. Which is also 100% correct but he evolved by the end of the second movie to be at peace with that risk and accepting that it was her choice.

It didn’t defeat the purpose it was a lesson he needed to LEARN. But his logic can’t be questioned.

As for Harry or Aunt May, he feared May would hate and reject him and that’s his goddam MOTHER so obviously he wasn’t going to tell her until he couldn’t stand it any more. And the other guy was his best friend and in his case he already wanted to kill him and then TRIED to do that in the third movie so again peter was right.

In Spider-Man 2 Peter doesn’t push himself too hard, he merely tries to balance everyday life with being a hero and finds it a struggle as was the case in the comic it was originally based upon. His mind and body suspend his powers because subconsciously he wants to be free of the burden but it wasn’t like if he’d taken things easier it wouldn’t have happened. He wasn’t going too hard, he was going normally but normally is hard when you are a hero. In fact the whole ‘he loses his powers because he doesn’t want them’ thing IS from a Ditko issue so your point is moot.

As for Garfield Spider-Man unless you grade him on the curve he was kind of a douchebag. Not so much in what he does but how he did it. He was overly cocky for the character, e.g. his dip and kiss of Gwen in the second movie. That movie that along with the first one you know...killed the franchise so hard Marvel Studios had to save them.

So...why is Spider-Man 2 not a high water mark again?

No to mention comparing the two by damning Spider-Man 2 is foolish because they are not the same ages or at the same points in their lives.

“He grows, he shifts, he learns lessons and forgets them and falls and picks himself back up, and he never stops pushing forward. He takes on the responsibility of becoming the Man he claims to be, that others need him to be, even if he doesn’t consciously realize it at first. That’s how he was built, and how he was visibly meant to keep going at first. That’s the “in”, that’s what makes him an everyman we can all relate to, because no one ever stops growing up.”

Yes and no.

Yes he was designed to grow and develop, but everyone stops growing up when they hit adulthood, they just don’t stop growing as people.

No though that wasn’t what made him relatable. The reltability WAS the point, not the growing up. He was relatable because he dealt with down to Earth normal life problems along with relatively realistic problems spiralling out of being a superhero and just having normal life experines anyway.

Countless movies present everyman characters who are NOT teenagers or people in the midst of reaching adulthood but who are already there. The Ghostbusters for example. These are not characters who grow up but are relatable nevertheless.

Peter remained relatable in the 80s and 90s and 2000s even though he HAD grown up and HAD hit adulthood a long time before.

“It’s what differentiates him, makes him real, compared to Superman or Batman or the FF or Captain America. ”

But THEY all grew and developed too! Less so with Superman and Batman but all the Silver Age Marvel characters grew and developed!

“And while the steps needed to keep that wheel moving are still implemented, one aching step at a time, it’s still drowned out by a deluge of perfectly satisfactory but no longer cutting-edge superhero adventures (that is, when such steps aren’t rolled back altogether, Mr. Quesada). ”

I don’t even understand this part.

“*describes the Joe Casey Bounce comic* So again: is that the only future? Is that the sole way any trace of Spider-Man as originally envisioned and executed can survive?”

First of all the Bounce sounds like it has a shallow misinformed grasp of Spider-Man.

Second of all the vision and execution of Spider-Man doesn’t need weird Indie AU knock offs to survive.

Spider-Man works at any age because he’s about being a normal guy defined by responsibility. He merely HAPPEND to start off as a teen for the sake of some novelty but it was never going to be the forever more status quo or inherently the appeal of the character.

Consider how many Spider-Man fans were forged in consequent decades via media adaptations of the character where he was more or less at a static age. He might’ve developed and grown but he didn’t begin as a teen or a high schooler in those?

How many people jumped into the comics in the 80s-2000s where Spider-Man was an adult and not aging much but was still written as a vibrant three dimensional character defined by being relatively down to Earth....and it worked.

I’m not saying character development isn’t critically vital at all, just that the notion that it’s dependent upon going from youngster to adulthood is not the inherent necessity of the character outside of adaptations which seek to replicate the mythology. 616 Spider-Man is in his early 30s and can keep going forward from there and work just fine because character development can still happen regardless of his age.

Fundamentally your logic here is Spider-Man grew up therefore that is the point of his character. But as I’ve said or implied before this, that applies to every Marvel character.

The X-Men being teens wasn’t truly the point, the point was bigotry and they became MORE popular when they were replaced by adult characters in Giant-Sized X-Men. They even graduated very quickly. But growth wasn’t the point for them either. Nor the F4 who grew and changed nor Daredevil nor the Avengers.

Growth is just part of many examples of good storytelling and part of what definied the Marvel Universe as a whole .

It’s blind to remove Spider-Man from that context and codify that it’s what he specifically was about.

“While limited, growth has happened for the character, and it tended to be in some of the better stories of the last decade plus. Whether starting to guide children like he himself once was in the solid early sections of J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr.’s run on the main title; confronting the nature of his role as a superhero in relation to his villains and Peter Parker’s own role in society in Mark Millar, Terry Dodson and Frank Cho’s Marvel Knights: Spider-Man (a largely overlooked gem by the former, and the most traditional of his modern work besides perhaps his Fantastic Four run); having him take his mission to the next level in both technology and dedication in Dan Slott and Marcos Martin’s modern classic “No One Dies”; showing what would happen if Peter Parker finally started to pursue his dreams as well as his duties in Slott’s “Big Time”, or revealing what would happen to a Spider-Man who couldn’t grow in Superior Spider-Man under Slott again, Peter Parker can still keep moving forward one step at a time, still undergo the growth that informs his responsibilities which informs his growth and so and so on into forever, and still maintain what he is: the normal guy in the world of giants.”

Okay...I actually agree with this but not the way you reached this conclusion via ‘He’s obviously ABOUT being a teen/growing up.’

“At the time of writing, I’m soon to pick up the newly relaunched Amazing Spider-Man by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos. Given that he wrote three of those examples I just listed, I have fairly high hopes.”

Slot progessed Peter, then regressed him and even amidst all that he didn’t progress him in the right direction.

You stated that he should be a normal guy. Slott turned him into a super scientist and then later a 1%er

“This is going to be by the writer who had him come back from the dead in part by admitting that being Spider-Man is actually pretty fun.”

It was also by the writer who turned Doc Ock into a rapist and proceeded to use him and variant versions of Spider-Man to show use how lame the original was before mutating the original into an Iron Man rip off.

Hindsight sucks the big one I guess.

*Even if you say he came of age at the end of the movie the movie was one part of a three part story in which he spent most of his time NOT as a teen or someone growing up. He was just an adult.

**Also he more than anybody advocated and pushed for Peter to age forward into adult life experiences, such as parenthood even though his favourite era was Spider-Man as a high schooler (makes sense that was the era he began with). The fact that his fav era was Spider-Man as a teen and yet he maintains SPider-Man was never about youth and advocated for him to be MORE adult adds much to his credibility.

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