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Spider-Man

Deconstruction in Spider-Man.

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Comic Books

  • Before Watchmen bulldozed the entire genre, Spider-Man / Peter Parker picked apart multiple aspects of being a superhero. As it turns out, carrying the kind of responsibility of protecting New York City and balancing a normal life ends up causing Peter Parker more problems than it's worth. In the earlier issues, Peter's seen as aloof and unwilling to commit to anyone in his personal life, while Spider-Man is feared by the public at large by the nature of being a masked vigilante.
    • Spider Man in the Lee-Ditko Spider-Man run was seen as a very interesting and original take on the superhero stories in that it featured a working class teenager as a superhero whose powers he initially tried to exploit for monetary gain by using his new found power to get rich, albeit on a small scale and use his power to strike back at his tormentors. The result? His empowerment fantasy goes to his head and he learns a famous lesson in responsibility. He struggles to pay rent and pay his way to college, take care of his ailing Aunt May and, in the Steve Ditko stories, the tensions between his personal life and superhero-work meant that people saw him as cold, aloof and snobbish which also upsets his early dates with his crushes. In his opening caption introducing Amazing Fantasy #15, Lee admits that his new hero is someone a little different from the usual run of superhero comics, or as he and his friends call them at work, "long-underwear stories" (with little doubt as to which other characters he was talking about). This aspect was toned down greatly when Steve Ditko left and Peter Parker attracted a circle of friends and incredibly attractive girlfriends.
      • The original run of Spider-Man more or less deconstructs the common tropes in Superman and Batman stories. Spider-Man's relationship with the press is entirely the opposite of Superman's. Instead of being adulated by the public for everything he does, he is distrusted by them. Wearing a costume with a somewhat creepy mask and having an animal theme of a creepy creature provokes the exact sense of fear and mistrust as you would expect unlike Batman who is trusted and regarded as an authority figure (in the Golden and Silver Age) despite his nocturnal get-up.
      • Superman working as Clark Kent more or less wrote his own PR. Batman has Commissioner Gordon and his wealth to protect him from the fallout of his vigilante actions, but Spider-Man has nothing of that. Superman and Batman have sidekicks, confidants, top-of-the-line fancy headquarters (Batcave, Fortress of Solitude), Peter has none of that. His costume, when it gets weathered he buys a replacement from a novelty store. When his Aunt is sick and he needs a cure, he has to call in favors from people he knows and nearly gets killed fighting Octopus to fix it. Bailing on a supervillain battle to go save his Aunt, people call him a coward. Unlike Batman and Superman who are both hyper-competent overly advantaged types fighting a bunch of Villainous Underdogs, Peter is the underdog hero who punches up and fights characters stronger, more powerful, wealthier, and more resourceful than he is, and faces all the consequences, difficulties and setbacks doing so.
      • A proto-Watchmen example where Spider-Man and Human Torch team up and chase the Sandman but their mutual bickering, Testosterone Poisoning, competitiveness prevents them from doing much while Sandman gets distracted enough that regular cops with discipline take him down. Ditko later admitted that he did this to correct and sabotage Lee's constant attempts at getting Spider-Man to team up feeling it would undermine Peter's own capabilities and also to show that just because two heroes are cool and popular doesn't mean their team up would be effective.

Films

  • Spider-Man: Spider-Verse:
    • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
      • We're told that one of the fundamental tenets of being a Spider-Person is they embody the Heroic Spirit in that no matter how many times they are hit, they always find a way to get back up. Peter B. Parker's back-story shows that he has had a long and world-weary life being Spider-Man. After two major emotional hits of his Aunt May dying and his divorce from MJ, we see the deconstruction of a Spider-Man stuck in the rut of "not getting back up". This turns him into a depressed and jaded slob that has stopped taking care of himself, lives in a crappy apartment, and on some level, is tired of being Spider-Man.
      • Kingpin's backstory deconstructs Even Evil Has Loved Ones by showing the effects of having a super-villain secret identity. As Fisk, he had an apparently loving relationship with his wife and son who were unaware of his identity as the Kingpin. When they accidentally discover this other side of him, they were naturally horrified and ran away, resulting in the car crash that killed them. Kingpin's attempt to get them back at any cost is what sets the story in motion and, ironically, results in alternate versions of his wife and son running away from him again as they watch him beating up Miles. The story reflects that sometimes even when evil has loved ones they, like most normal people, are going to be repulsed by that evil.
      • While partially played for laughs, Miles's ordeals after first gaining his spider powers does a good job with How Do I Shot Web? by showing Miles having extreme difficulty consciously controlling sticking to things or becoming overwhelmed by his Spider-Sense. As part of the story, ultimately the Spider-Gang decides he's not ready for the mission to destroy the Super-Collider because, no matter how much he wants to help, his inability to control his powers makes him a liability in the field.
    • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The plot heavily deconstructs the concept of being obliged to be Truer to the Text. The Spider-Society's strict enforcement of "Canon Events"—repetitive narratives from past works—such as losing a Uncle Ben, and Captain Stacy figure, and deliberately confining someone to these story beats in the belief that suffering a tragedy is a necessary prerequisite to being Spider-Man and even the stability of the universe, can rob them of their agency in developing their own unique stories and the possibility of them being happier and healthier than they were originally portrayed. Miles flat out points out that when it's being done In-Universe, it's incredibly screwed up and is understandably horrified.

Western Animation

  • The Spectacular Spider-Man: Of Kraven the Hunter's usual portrayal. While most depictions of Kraven are able to take Spider-Man on in a fight, here Spider-Man effortlessly beats him, and Kraven has to mutate himself just to be able to be an even match with him.
  • Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: This series is a deconstruction of superhero cartoons. While most superhero cartoons use Bloodless Carnage and make it clear that nobody is killed, here it's shown clearly that the villains are violently murderous as most real-life criminals are and not afraid to kill people to get what they want, and all supervillain's rampages can severely injure and even kill innocent bystanders. The villains also have reasons for what they do, and most are either common thieves who just happen to have equipment that lets them keep up with Spider-Man or genuinely mentally unstable people with superpowers who cause a lot of harm in pursuit of their goals. Spider-Man's You Fight Like a Cow schtick is far more subdued, his methods to stop crime often lead to loads of collateral damage, and while he tries to stick to his Thou Shalt Not Kill, he's often forced against villains he can't normally beat, and while trying to stop them sometimes ends up causing their deaths. And finally, his being a Hero with Bad Publicity pursued by the police is based more on several police officers' prejudice than any real evidence, and some officers like Officer Barr are willing to flat out ignore evidence to support their views rather than admit they could be wrong about Spider-Man.

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