#personally I'd love to call him Benjamin/Benji but I worry that would be less recognizable :•( alas

[canary-song]

While the monsoon rains and thunder hammer away at the glass windows to my right, and the world is a mix of heavy greys and distant solar lights, lets chat about Noir Peter (herein referred to as Pete), wearing a mask perpetually throughout ITSV, and Aunt May.

(Short essay below the cut, includes comic panels taken from the 2009 run of the Spiderman Noir comics, canon typical violence)

Now I know that the common headcanon, or perhaps a recent headcanon that's been passed on in the small circle of consistent noir blogs I follow, is that Pete wears his mask and doesn't take it off once within the timeframe and events of ITSV because of facial scars.

But, as a Spiderman Noir comics fan, I would also like to posit another possibility - Pete doesn't take off his mask in ITSV, especially at first, because the "spidergang" is staying over at Aunt May's home.

If you aren't familiar with the comics, Pete has a very important but strained relationship with his May - one that is specifically put under strain by Spiderman's choice to kill The Vulture to protect her. Everyone in the household has a strong sense of justice, but ultimately, Pete and May's moral compasses are far different, especially Pete when put under the threat of May getting.. cannibalized.

The aftermath doesn't go well.

Assuming similar or identical canons (though I know a lot of people seperate ITSV entirely from the comics, which I respect), a Pete that had just been through these events wouldn't exactly be all that comfortable showing his face around her.

Because, no matter his convictions, her fury clearly shakes him. Her and Uncle Bens beliefs is much of everything he is, so to be faced both with the fragility of her life and then forced to reckon with the fact she didn't want to be and in fact hated how she was saved..

How could he look a May in the eyes and take off his mask, willingly?

The dialogue is this portion of the comic is interesting, because it does vaguely imply that May might be guessing this is Pete (calling him Young Man and being as dissappointed as she is furious, along with demanding his gun), which makes it hurt all the more - perhaps its easier to handle the moral ambiguities of your violent actions when your worlds are more seperated. Earth 1610 knows that Spiderman is Peter, but for his own sake, Pete perhaps keeps the mask on to keep those worlds of his feeling divided.