The Spider-Man Conundrum.
He is one of the most beloved characters in all of popular fiction. So why can't his source material, comic books, keep up?
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Ryan.
Come the 1970s, Marvel had a problem: they were widely successful.
It was a far cry from where they were just a few decades previously, struggling under various names and up-and-down periods of good fortune.
Now? They had the power of corporate branding in their corner: lunchboxes, television shows, even era-appropriate shag carpeting, all featuring their superhero characters.
There were absolutely bizarre (but equally endearing) adaptations based in Japan, celebrity endorsements and a theme song so immortal, it will be sung come the Rapture.
But how do you write for an audience that now expects something your stories can’t deliver?
See, when the company as we now know it was taking shape in the early-to-mid ‘60s with, most notably, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr, John Buscema and (depending on who you ask) Stan Lee at the peak of their creative powers - variously creating and/or co-creating characters who would almost immediately conquer the zeitgeist, they weren’t necessarily thinking long-term.
Like, “how will they be viable ten years from now?” Or “how do we spell their names?”
And, in all fairness, why would they worry about longevity? When you’re in the midst of such a creative high, who is, really, concerned with the fine print?
But as the years ticked on, there was no longer any hiding it. Marvel’s heroes? They were getting old, man.
How so you ask? Well, since they debuted a decade-plus prior, they had all been aging, issue-to-issue, in real-time.
And nowhere was this more prominent than with Peter Parker.
Just fifteen in Amazing Fantasy #15 when he was bitten by that radioactive spider in August of 1962, everything about that bookish boy from Queens was, initially, a big ol’ question mark.
Teenagers, per conventional wisdom, weren’t supposed to be heroes. They were, at best, sidekicks.
Even The Fantastic Four followed this line of thinking just a year earlier, with Johnny Storm, The Human Torch. He was the youngest of the quartet and his youth would frequently show as he bristled under the authority of his teammates often in those early issues, the “sidekick” in a room full of adults.
Perhaps then, Peter’s against-type portrayal to what was “standard” is what made him… well, so amazing, so soon.
Even with the mask on, as he swung above the caverns of New York City’s skyscrapers with abandon, using humour to throw others off and equally, to hide his own fear, he was still, well, just Peter.
A tormented, brilliant and sometimes standoffish young man, who, driven by inconsolable guilt in the death of his Uncle Ben, was determined to use his extraordinary powers and intellect to help others however he could, no matter the personal cost.
But on his own and with no mentor to truly guide him, gifts be dammed, he still struggled with everything else: relationships, paying bills, getting to class on time, a demanding boss, etc.
As Abraham Riesman noted in 2016, for her brilliant profile of Steve Ditko, this inherent contrast was hard-wired into the clashing styles of the character’s co-creators, artist/plotter Ditko and writer Stan Lee, a dynamic that, even now, is still the subject of controversy.
Lee, never one to shy away from self-promotion, was often accused of greatly exaggerating his actual creative input, while minimizing the work of his collaborators, most prominently Ditko, with whom he also co-created Doctor Strange and the legendary Jack Kirby - with whom Lee co-created The Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk and Black Panther, among many others.
Lee loved poppy, witty, ingratiating verbiage, but the characters Ditko put into the stories often looked unnerving and anguished; Lee liked high-flying action, Ditko wanted pathos. In a series of mid-2000s essays entitled “A Mini-History,” Ditko said his Spider-Man plot contributions were what led to the comic’s unusual focus on the struggles of its hero as a put-upon teen. The resulting character was unlike any other in the superhero corpus: an awkward, despairing, and oft-seething teenager who struggled through life both in and out of costume, but managed to banter his way through the darkness and always triumphed in the end.
Abraham Riesman, in her Vulture profile.
But regardless of who was the true creative driver behind what, it was a once-in-a-lifetime characterization, that, from the onset, was revolutionary. Peter, speaking directly too and deeply resonating with, his initial audience in those early years.
So as he he navigated the twists and turns not just of his double life but the challenges and milestones of burgeoning adulthood, his readership did too:
When he graduated high school, trying to balance relationship trouble and supervillains both (Amazing Spider-Man #28, June 1965).
Started university at the (fictional) Empire State, where he met Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn for the first time (Amazing Spider-Man #31, September 1965).
When he was captured by the villainous Green Goblin, who, upon learning Peter’s secret, also revealed his own: he was Norman Osborn, Harry’s father, adding a new wrinkle to a dynamic that would come to haunt and define Spider-Man storytelling in equal measure for the better part of sixty years (Amazing Spider-Man #39 and #40, May/June 1966).
Where, after almost twenty issues teasing it and following a series of missed connections, he finally met Mary Jane Watson (Amazing Spider-Man #42, August 1966). It began a romance that, while instantly iconic, has not been without its infuriating editorial meddling and storytelling screwups over the decades.
You see the running theme though, right?
It was all happening in real-time, Peter and his growing supporting cast, doing what all of us have - going from one moment to the next, only to turn around and wonder: dammit, where the hell did the time go?
But as Spider-Man moved into the 1970s, his stories began to tackle more socio-political and real-world issues.
From drug use, the changing politics of America to the Vietnam War, there was noted leap in what Marvel was presenting, compared to what came before, not afraid to speak to directly to their readers (while taking a stand against the Comics Code Authority too).
Rereading those issues now? I mean, yeah, they still hold-up, outside of veering into heavy-handedness at times. And that goes for those early years as a whole, which can often be difficult to read with our modern lens - from their writing style and general presentation to most troubling, their depiction of women and social attitudes that simply wouldn’t fly today.
To hold them to such a standard that they’re without criticism is foolhardy but there was change on the horizon.
Lee would leave writing duties behind on both Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four in the early ‘70s and with his departure, came a shift.
Most notably, there were the deaths of the Stacys. Spider-Man’s close ally, police Captain George Stacy died in August of 1970, a casualty of a battle between Spider-Man and Doc Ock and his daughter, Peter’s then-girlfriend Gwen, was infamously killed by the Green Goblin in the summer of 1973.
Both were storylines that had massive repercussions not just for Peter and those in his orbit but for the medium at large too, pushing comics in a more mature, grounded direction.
The realization that Spider-Man, despite his credo to always do the right thing, wasn’t immune from more death and suffering, still influences his storytelling today (often, unfortunately, for the worse).
As new characters were introduced and the 1980s arrived, it became clear: they were no longer expressions of ‘60s pop art but rather, had an eye turned towards relative realism and darker sci-fi.
From Vietnam veteran turned lethal-force vigilante, Frank Castle/The Punisher in 1973 to the daring criminal and occasional anti-hero, Felicia Hardy/The Black Cat in 1979 and most famously, the alien symbiote that would become known as Venom, in 1984. All of them, members of Spider-Man’s expanding cast.
For a long time, outside of corporate-mandated crossovers as Marvel’s most popular hero, you would rarely find him working with others. It just wasn’t his MO.
Yet as his broader storytelling grew, so to did Peter himself, as he teamed-up in memorable and influential stories with Daredevil, Wolverine, Captain America and others.
His relationship with The Fantastic Four was further built upon too. Having known Spidey since the very beginning (Amazing Spider-Man #1!) he is considered to be not just their honorary fifth but additionally, a member of their extended family as well (something we can only hope to see in MCU by 2050 but whatever).
But that larger question continued to loom - what was the endgame?
Would Peter, slowly but surely, continue to move from his 20s, into his 30s and so on? Sticking with the readership that had been there since the beginning but ultimately, leaving his targeted and now highly lucrative demographic behind?
Marvel, in response, eventually introduced, for all characters in their “Main Universe” what would become known as the Sliding Timescale. In a nutshell? It means that for every thirteen real-world years, you’re looking at, roughly, one comic book year.
So instead of Peter aging semi-gracefully into middle age, he would forever be loitering somewhere in his mid-to-late 20s, occasionally pushing 30, even as three lifetimes of stories were told with him at the centre.
Eventually though, this posed a new challenge.
I’ve talked about it before but in any type of storytelling, even in long-form, serialized work like comics, you need momentum. And if there is no specific end goal in mind, then you, at least, need something to build towards, even if it is more of a hypothetical investment.
Because without the real-world passage of time to move things along, there was only so much that Marvel’s storytellers could achieve.
Utterly committed to a rigid status quo that pushed back against more exploratory avenues, the only actionable course was to continually up the stakes, which were, for a time, offset by some great character-driven stories that worked incredibly well.
Until they didn’t.
Peter and Mary Jane were married in the summer of 1987, a full-circle moment of sorts, given how the characters and their specific dynamic had grown and developed over the preceding 21 years (Marvel even staged their “real wedding” at New York’s Shea Stadium in front of 45,000 people before a Mets game - did you know Peter was a Mets fan? Now you do!)
What made it so effective though, was how Mary Jane wasn’t just “Peter’s girlfriend” but rather, very much her own person, an individual who would never allow herself to simply be defined by her partner.
We knew of her difficult childhood and how she, initially, masked it behind an outgoing, carefree persona. We knew of her drive for independence and how she was building towards what would become a successful acting career.
We learned that she had known Peter’s secret for years (having watched him from afar as he swung off that fateful night to find his Uncle’s killer) but kept it to herself. How their shared heartbreak over Gwen’s death brought them closer.
They were equals, their marriage and relationship as a whole, built on trust and frank honesty.
But most importantly? They felt human.
They weren’t above arguing about money, dealing with the ebbs-and-flows that come with any long-term relationship, including the grief over losing a child or facing the often life-threatening circumstances that came with Peter’s superhero commitments head-on.
Was it flawless or perfectly written or even consistent? No, of course not. Nothing ever is. But it did come across, nine times out of ten, as genuine and sincere. In serialized work, where creative teams are a steadily revolving door, that is often hard to find.
Here’s something: The Amazing Spider-Man series alone? It has published over 900 issues since it began, not counting the various additional titles (Spectacular, Web of, Sensational, Superior etc, etc) that factor into the main continuity.
So that number? Really, we’re talking twelve-hundred-plus, probably more. At minimum.
It is a lot, too much even and I say that as someone who has read, if not everything because that’s insane, then pretty close to it.
At the end of the day, there are going to be some lulls and reader indifference.
The ‘90s and early-aughts however, really did speak to this with editorial settling into a particular vision for what Peter Parker could be - even as some writers, like J. Michael Straczynski tried to break that mold.
It was, probably, the most stable the character has ever been (and my personal favourite period). Well into adulthood, happily married and with a (mostly) solid job, as a high-school science teacher. Not that it was the “be-all-end-all” but there was still the pushback to Peter having kids, the worry, that it would age him too much. But it also left that “what’s next?” question in something of a holding pattern.
He couldn’t just be… content either, the “this is what you signed up”, soap opera nature of comic book storytelling, meaning there was always something around the corner.
From the Clone Saga, which dragged on for far too long and (unnecessarily) brought back Norman Osborn as Green Goblin, to the constant wedges being thrown between Peter and MJ, from kidnappings, plane crashes and evil-doing supernatural entities.
It probably peaked with 2004’s Sins Past, a story so awful, it was, thankfully, heavily retconned just a couple years ago - the original story, featuring the long-buried reveal that Gwen had children with Norman not long before her death (big yikes).
But it set the stage for stories like 2007’s One More Day, in which, spooling out of the Civil War and Back in Black events, Peter’s secret identity was now public knowledge. The crime lord, Kingpin, eager to get finally back at Spider-Man after years of the hero foiling his schemes, put out a hit on the wall-crawler but the bullet hit Aunt May instead.
It wasn’t the first time Marvel had explored potentially killing May off, even if she had been a staple in the mythos since the start. She was depicted as being riddled with health troubles in the early Lee/Ditko years and she supposedly died in Amazing #400 (it didn’t take).
Instead, to save her life, Peter and Mary Jane agreed to a literal deal with the devil, bargaining with the underworld demon Mephisto. Who, in exchange for saving May’s life, wiped their marriage from existence, resetting Peter back to being a just-barley-with-his-head-above-water bachelor and all but axing what had been twenty-plus years, for both Peter and Mary Jane, of character development.
Later storylines, specifically 2010’s One Moment in Time, would expand on this, showing how Doctor Strange worked to restore Peter’s secret identity - but it didn’t matter.
And that doesn’t mean, necessarily, that in order for Peter or Mary Jane to be an intriguing characters, that they need to be married or in a committed relationship or what have you.
There is power in independence, after all.
But for the more adult driven stories Marvel was trying to tell, for what they were building towards, it just… worked. Editorial has toyed with their readers frequently since then, teasing the possibility of Peter and MJ truly getting back together (they’re currently on the outs) but often, it has felt like pandering, something they know will sell but have no interest in actually committing too.
In the meantime, Amazing has, over the past ten years, focused on Peter swapping bodies with Doc Ock, battling demons in Hell or making partial amends with, of all people, Norman Osborn, the catalyst for so much of his personal suffering.
The reality is, something fundamentally changed in 2007.
And Marvel has been trying to recapture it ever since.
Just ask my dog, Marty (who is a very good boy).
Which is… kinda of odd, right?
If you’re more of a movie watcher, you might recognize some of those above plot threads.
Portions of One More Day, One Moment in Time and the 2015 storyline, Spider-Verse, were all adapted into the 2021 film, Spider-Man: No Way Home. It received high praise in comic circles for how it took elements that were widely despised in the source material (OMD and OMIT, specifically) and made them work for the MCU versions of the characters (while also bringing Andrew Garfield back, which is always going to be the best play)
And that’s the thing. While Amazing has struggled for almost twenty years now, Spider-Man, as a whole, has soared.
In 2000, Marvel, looking to separate Spider-Man from the decades of increasingly convoluted storytelling in Amazing, launched Ultimate Spider-Man which was an immediate and resounding success.
It put Peter back in high school and during the course of 160-plus issues over eleven years, more or less laid the groundwork for the character in outside media going forward, particularly in live-action - while also establishing Miles Morales, who took up the mantle after Ultimate Peter’s supposed death.
Miles would eventually star as the protagonist in the Oscar-winning Spider-Verse films, which proved that “power and responsibility” didn’t have to be contained to just one, highly specific perspective.
And developer Insomniac has released two critically acclaimed video games based on Peter and Miles both in recent years (2018’s Spider-Man and 2020’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales) with a third on the way this October.
Pulling from various sources: the comics, television and the movies, they have crafted a world that is respectful of the source material but isn’t afraid to do its own thing, bringing life to stories and characters you wouldn’t expect.
And the comics too, have found their own grove, outside of Amazing’s fumbling and Ultimate’s success:
Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows showed an alternate reality where Peter and Mary Jane remained married, raising their super-powered daughter, Annie. It was reminiscent of earlier titles like Spider-Girl, which showed how Spider-Man’s world could expand for the better in the main continuity if only Marvel allowed it (they have, I’ll concede, a little bit with the introduction of Peter’s maybe-maybe-not sister Teresa Parker but her appearances have been relatively limited).
The further growth of Miles and other Spider-Heroes like the alternate-universe Gwen Stacy, Spider-Woman, who continue to show a different side to a mythos that, for decades, was almost entirely the story of just one man (and his various clones).
More concentrated, individual efforts like
and Mark Bagley’s Spider-Man: Life Story, presenting a reality where the Sliding Timescale doesn't exist and with it, a unique look at a Peter who truly ages in real-time from the ‘60s onward.
One of my favourite all-time Spider-Man issues is Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #310.
Zdarsky both wrote and did the pencils, #310, his final issue on the title.
A filmmaker who Spider-Man saved years prior, is now doing a documentary on the hero, interviewing various New Yorkers for their opinion on the web-head.
Many, of course, could care less, thinking of little of him: he’s someone who is more trouble than he’s worth, a criminal, a con-artist, an annoyance.
Others, are fans, supporters, having been personally touched by his kindness and drive to help. Whether that meant he carried their groceries, looked out for a loved one or saved them from certain death, as he’s prone to do.
But the final person interviewed?
It is Peter Parker.
Listen, I love Spider-Man. I have since I was four years old, the simple brilliance of the character, something that has stuck with me for twenty years. It has endured since long before I was born and will, there is no doubt, carry on for decades still.
The past ten, fifteen years of the character’s main continuity in the comics? It hasn’t really clicked for me, there’s no denying that. And as the medium itself faces something of a crossroads as digital media becomes more-and-more prevalent, there are legitimate questions about just how long that method of storytelling can preserve.
But I’ll still be reading every issue, be first in line for movie tickets and I will, always, be a fan (every if doing so means I’ll be lining the pockets of a billion-dollar mega corporation that is most likely spying on me but that’s another story).
Really, though. What makes Spider-Man so appealing?
Zdarsky nailed it in 2018, the same way Lee and Ditko did in 1965, as he lifted himself from that rubble.
He may not always win or succeed, as he deals with heartbreak and insurmountable tragedy.
But he will always get back up, he will, always, give it his all.
He will, always, try.
60 years on.