Spider-Man General Discussion

Speaking of the Purple Man, man i do not trust Marvel writers, Purple Man, and MJ in the same room to stay kid friendly. BRRRR

All superheroes suck at their job if you squint hard enough. Batman is a famous example. Arkham Asylum is this mockery of psychiatric care and is basically a rec room or boarding house for criminals in-between their schemes. Joker having a four digit body count is also Batman's failure. In Superman, Lex Luthor is always on the lam and even became POTUS. The Fantastic Four have never been able to entirely rid themselves of Doom and bring democracy to the people of Latveria.

I think the Purple Man of the newspaper strip is not the same character of 616. Safe to say. Purple Man being this Serial Rapist was something Bendis invented for his mature readers title Alias and somehow that became canon because he was an underused minor villain whose last big appearance was David Michelinie's Emperor Doom OGN where Victor straps him to a power amplifier to mind control the world to accept his dominion.

Interestingly in interviews, David Michelinie said that he originally planned a year long story arc that would have Peter unmasked. It would basically hit the same beats that Civil War did, but more focus on how Peter's life and world gets upended. Peter would be asked by the government to work for them in exchange for protecting his family and friends, Peter would deal with the fact that his W-L balance is all messed up and why having his identity gone means no private life. Michelinie said that obviously he was going to undo it. His solution was, you guessed it, Purple Man strapped to a Power Amplifier hypnotizing the world to forget. Editors nixed it because they worried about burying or dialing down something that big.

Interesting considering they did something similar with Daredevil years later.

Purple Man is basically the Marvel version of Superman erasing Lois' mind. That he's also a psycho-rapist now makes using him do that function difficult. HE wasn't one originally.

I do recall in Purple Man's original story, he DID mind control Karen Page and there were definitely creepy vibes to it even for a Silver Age Story. See with Purple Man, Bendis's handling of the Character, the creepy vibe was always there, Benidis just brought it to the forefront. For what it's worth, it's quite clear, that Purple Man did not actually rape Jessica Jones physically, just mentally. Same can't be said of all those random bystanders.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 15th 2019 at 3:18:45 AM

There's a difference between creepy vibes and so on, and crossing the line to really dark territory. The Joker mostly kills random bystanders too...doesn't make him less of a mass-murderer. Purple Man now is a rapist. And certainly that Netflix Show made him one. I am not slagging Bendis because I think he handled that well for the most part, but it kind of does make Purple Man a difficult villain to handle because to quote Garth Ennis, he is a villain "worth the bullet" many times over having crossed and sailed well beyond the Moral Event Horizon.

But anyway, the Purple Man of the newspaper strip is the Silver Age guy because the newspaper comic as a rule doesn't go and do anything that dark and Stan Lee himself said that he always wrote the comics to ensure it appeals to kids and not be too adult. He was not a fan of Garth Ennis and what he did with Nick Fury for instance, and that is rare because Lee never talks smack about talent and new writers like that. So there he's expressing his own views. I mean Lee did push strong content and ideas like the Drug Issue in Spider-Man and so on but he always had a sense of taste in how he went about it.

And in general, the new version of the Purple Man refashioned by Bendis hasn't shown up in Spider-Man's corner much because again Marvel editors are quite careful to avoid having Spider-Man deal with that kind of stuff.

Spider-Man hasn't fought Purple Man outside the comics strip. So i'd like to discuss the difference between Peter Parker and Spider-Man, Now while it's hard to tell the difference between them in most incarnations, i feel the Original Ditko-Lee version actually had the most interesting dynamic. Peter there is more shy and withdrawn with a misanthropic streak, But Spider-Man is way more outgoing and talkative with an ego to match. It's interesting to note, that Peter does become more outgoing and confident throughout the run, you can see this in his interactions with Betty Brant and his eventual evolution to Romita-Lee Peter. And using What if Spider-Man never became a crimefighter as a base, we can note that Peter like Jack says multiple times, would never become a School shooter, just Justin Beiber.

On a side note, the often cited line from AF 15: " Someday I'll show them, they'll all be sorry they laughed at me " is used by folks like Linkara as School Shooter jokes, but when i first read that line, i always understood that line has more of " I'll be successful and show you all i'm not a loser " not " I'll murder you all " way back as a kid, maybe because i've been in a similar boat/

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 15th 2019 at 4:35:41 AM

Fundamentally, Peter Parker is a Narcissist. Stuff like his whining about "Parker Luck" his constant surprise that "wow people around me are people too" and his remarkable level of introversion does convey that. If you read my favorite Roger Stern ASM issue, "The Daydreamers" (ASM #246), well he shows that Peter's fantasy involves him winning the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, being fought over by the Avengers and the Fantastic Four like he was a NBA draft pick. What makes Peter's narcissism and self-absorption interesting is that it coexists with a genuine selfless drive, capacity for love, and genuine sense of empathy. So that makes him a believable three-dimensional good person.

Peter deep down wants fame and fortune and covets it. When he got bitten by a spider. His first idea wasn't scientific curiosity, nor trying to see what he could do...it was, "I'mma be a pro-wrestler and become the jock of all jocks and go on TV and make moolah", the modern equivalent of an Instagram, Facebook, YT and social media poseur. That on the whole probably does make him healthier and more normal than say Dr. Octopus, Norman Osborn, and Curt Connors and others who went Professor Guinea Pig and conducted mad science experiments. Which is why I never believed the whole "Peter was on his way to villainy until Ben died". No he wasn't.

That's part of this narrative or idea that school shooters are bullied kids fighting back. That's actually not universally true and a number of specialists have been spending time correcting this. School shooters come from a variety of backgrounds and profiles and there's nothing common about them being bullied kids striking back. The more important thing is access to guns but the conversation decided to make it about bullying, which granted is important but what it amounts to is Victim Blaming, so now bullies attack kids because they see it as a duty to put future shooters in places. Yes that happens. What Peter does share with school shooters is a yearning for fame and respect and celebrity, since school shooters or people who do go on a rampage are quite self-conscious and aware of how their actions will look in the media. But even then, Peter invented the web-shooters and he never used his powers to get back on Flash and others...he used it for fame and celebrity.

Yeah i read that issue, it's also interesting to note that Peter's fantasy ends with him being shunned for his Peter identity. Makes the regular Peter vs Dan Slott Spider-Man all the more interesting during Nick Spencer's run. It also makes his dynamic with Norman Osborn , Venom and Doc Ock all the more interesting, while you have made your opinion abundantly clear on evil counterparts for Spider-Man, we can agree that Doc Ock is every bit the school Shooter people think Ditko-Lee Peter is right?

Right, back on topic of Peter's narcissism, if you remember during the Ultimate relaunch after Ultimatum, Spider-Man actually achieves fame and acceptance from the people of New York, for example, the cops believing him when Mysterio robs a gold deposit, and Peter actually finds it really annoying.

and speaking of fantasies, there is the House of M Peter, off course any judgement from that is sort of tainted by the fact the dream implies Peter still loves Gwen over MJ which is actually a horrible implication,( besides the silver age nostalgia ), out of character and misses the message of OG Clone Saga and because Marvel wants to milk any romantic tension for Spider-Man as much as possible.

Ultimate Peter is not as much of a narcissist as 616 Peter. He's a more selfless and stand-up guy. Like for him, becoming a wrestler after he get powers isn't about getting back or being cool, it's about making money for Aunt May and Uncle Ben. That part is also true in AF#15 but the Parker family financial situation wasn't conveyed to the same extent as in Ultimate Spider-Man, especially since Peter accidentally hurt Flash and his folks got sued. He was on his way back to Ben to apologize and make amends when he got shot and has Parting-Words Regret. Peter going after the Kingpin in "Learning Curve" is genuinely selfless. Young teenage kid going after the biggest mobster in the city out of genuine outrage at injustice. Sure there's the fact that the Burglar was apparently tangentially connected to the Kingpin the way so many criminals are, but it's going beyond revenge.

That depends on how much you think a person's dreams and fantasies are truly reflective of who they are. Neil Gaiman's The Sandman has that line, "The trouble with wanting something, is getting what you once wanted". A very subtle bit of dialogue. Alan Moore's For the Man Who Has Everything (and House of M Spider-Man is heavily inspired by this classic story) is about Superman's impossible desire and dream, Krypton if it never exploded and he never came to Earth. From that you can say that Superman deep down doesn't like Earth or feel at home here or loves Lois, at least superficially. But I think that's not what the story is about. It's about an impossible dream, a world that never was and never could be...and the whole point of FTMWHE is that Superman is able to outgrow that, and move past it. And House of M Spider-Man rejects and punctures that. There's the fact that House of M Peter is bald and obnoxious, he destroys his life, lies to Gwen all the time, and it's strongly implied that he's either cheating on Gwen with that version of Mary Jane, or at the very least is giving her the long side-eye. Basically Gwen is this impossible lost way not taken, and even that's a fantasy that Peter can't believe in, because he still lies to Gwen in that story.

The House of M Peter is a retread of the Fox Cartoon where one of the AU shows him living in a perfect world where he's rich, married to Gwen, and has a basically stable W-L balance. What both stories convey, unintentionally, is that far from loving or preferring Gwen, what Peter saw in her was mostly a fantasy of The American Dream, or basically a path for social climbing. Gwen is basically the Trophy Wife, Peter's retired rich and successful to the suburbs and the Mrs. is content to Stay in the Kitchen. That doesn't say that Peter loves Gwen more than MJ so much as that Peter's fantasies deep down is rooted in a '50s idea of the nuclear family, or maybe the writers think that is "an ideal".

Speaking of that, i hear Earth X Peter also had that dream, and that the Mayday of that dimension saw the fantasy and was heartbroken, beyond that i don't know, yikes. Also we sort of talked about this a few posts back, But Peter does has a slight sexist streak to him, especially during the Lee-Ditko and Romita eras, and yes Peter was called out on this, for example during the Savage land arc, Gwen actually calls Peter sexist for wanting her to be in a bikini shoot that Jameson wants,( insert clip of Goblin saying Jameson you slime here) so the writers did understand this. We should also point out, MJ is the main bread winner of the Parker household, which is something Marvel wants us to forget for some reason.

Peter and Mary Jane's relationship is as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out an entirely modern romance/marriage. 2-Income households, where because of Peter's life, MJ has the more steady work. And I guess to some people that's emasculating and so on.

So recently i decided to give Marvel's Spider-Man a shot after hearing years of terribad things about it. And yeah it's awful. The art style is horrible. I will say this, Prompto as Spidey is an ingenious casting choice but is he really playing Peter Parker? Took me a while to realize this, but this isn't Peter Parker, this character is Reed Richards as a teenager. I'm sure that Peter getting into an uber-exclusive super science School is supposed to make him more likeable and appealing to the kids, but i personally think it makes him come off as what's the word, unrelatable?? Peter is smart, but he isn't Reed Richards JR,he went to a regular high-school, he was smarter than most of his peers yes, but he wasn't babbling random equations and geeking over science every single time, i feel like putting Peter in this scientific hogwarts wannnabe makes him way too unrelatable to the audience, am i making sense? Because Horizon High really comes off as elitist, and Peter was always sort of an underdog. Also Josh Keaton as Norman Osborn. This just makes me wish Spectacular adapted Revenge of the Green Goblin.

That mostly sums up my issues with that cartoon. And yeah the art style is just bad as is the character and costume design. Gwen Stacy in a hot pink leather jacket?! Yikes. 616, Ultimate, and Spider-Gwen will gag, while Ditko Gwen would sneer in her Proto-Regina George way. Without the strong sense of everyday and civilian life you lose a good part of what defines Spider-Man and if you place Spider-Man in a situation where all his classmates are superheroes or in the process of becoming superheroes, then you aren't really doing Spider-Man anymore.

And I didn't like how they handled Miles. They basically made him Ganke to Peter. And this is another example of High School Peter vampirically feeding off Miles to extend his brand reach. Miles is the teenage Spider-Man of the 21st Century and if you set Peter in that milieu and make him Miles' classmate, you are diminishing Miles.

And ITSV has pretty much killed that show now.

See one of the best things about Nick Spencer's run on Spider-Man is that there is more emphasis on Peter's life after Dan Slott's PI arc had Peter act like discount Bruce Wayne with no business morals. Peter's friendship with Boomerang of ALL PEOPLE is actually bizarrely touching and believable, even more than Harry and Flash so we get to see Peter bounce off someone who isn't Mary Jane for once and isn't boring generic science people like the Horizon frat. If you look at the show and Dan Slott's run, you start to notice that the people behind it seem to think people prefer Spider-Man over Peter. Or at least Dan Slott thinks so.

On another topic, Does Green Goblin fall under weak but skilled? At least in comparison to the other villains. All of Goblin's victories over Spider-Man such as unmasking him, relied on his gadgets and having the element of surprise, and despite his gadgets and power set, has never actually won a fight with Spider-Man mano a mano. Even his first fight with Spider-Man involved conning him into a trap, ganging up on him, and then maneuvering him into advantageous territory with the Hulk as an added bonus. And in contrast would Doc Ock fall under strong but unskilled? Despite having a on paper lame powerset, Doc Ock has had the most victories over Spider-Man out of the big three, hell, the Ditko-Lee Doc Ock is one of the most badass incarnations of the character if you think about it, he takes an explosion, and despite recovering from being in a coma, is able to defeat Spider-Man one on one, and takes over a nuclear power plant defended by the military in his very first appearance. And he has canonically defeated the Hulk once. So those tentacles fall under boring but practical yeah? Yet, once Spider-Man finds a way past the tentacles, Doc Ock goes down fast.

Lastly, i think Venom actually falls somewhere in between, he can outmaneuver Spider-Man by being invisible to his spider-sense, and can outpower him(least before villain decay kicked in, Venom has defeated the Human Torch.)

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 17th 2019 at 6:07:47 AM

Dan Slott never once wrote a street-level Peter Parker. He was always putting him in bizarre situations and contexts. The entire Post-OMD is about that. It's funny how people in the name of "taking Spider-Man back to who he was" end up doing the total opposite. But all reactionaries are like that, they invent a version of the halcyon past that never existed. Like at the time they talked about how BND was bringing Peter back to the traditional supporting cast...when what they did was introduce a whole host of new characters, OC as its called in fanfiction, and soon passed them off as "they've been here the whole time, the whole time".

JMS had Peter being a high school teacher, which lasted until his unmasking. Then Slott and others took over Post-OMD, and he had Peter work in a Bugle that wasn't run by Jonah, work as a paparazzi, then he took him to Horzion Labs where Peter was working as a scientist for a think-tank or something. Though given that Slott, by his own admission and by the writing from his work, knows little to nothing about science, that place didn't work. And then Octopus takes over Peter's body. And then you had Parker Industries, and then Peter works as a science editor for the Daily Bugle. And then Spencer sent the chickens home to roost and unraveled the entire Slott era very quickly. And as per a recent issue, where Peter is in his mid-20s, the entire BND and Slott era, in comic-book time lasted for a much shorter time. A little over a year, maybe less. It wouldn't surprise me that later writers treat the businessman Peter as this joke or a fad, or say it was some startup that got too big too fast and make it like the dotcom bubble.

The Green Goblin is a much tougher and stronger character physically now than he was when he started out. Once they said the Goblin formula has this Healing Factor and that's how he came Back from the Dead, he's a much tougher and stronger guy. By himself, the Green Goblin isn't the most powerful of Spider-Man's rogues. Like Electro and the Sandman are in theory far more powerful and dangerous than him, but neither of them have the personalities and sensibilities to go with their powers. Dr. Octavius is also, I'll admit, a smarter man, and a better scientist. But a villain doesn't have to have the most virtues. He has to be a threat and a challenge. And what defines the Green Goblin is his bag of tricks, his ability to manipulate, trick, gaslight, and fool people.

Goblin's main asset isn't his gadgets, super strength or healing factor, it's his drive to completely destroy Spider-Man, and really killing his girlfriend, screwing with his sense of identity repeatedly, targeting his wife, killing his baby, being his boss for like 6 months, making him cry over a complete stranger, and evading justice for years is what puts him above all the other villains. The reason why he beats out Doc Ock, is because Peter values his personal life over Spider-Man, so while Doc Ock is the more physical threat, Goblin is the more personal threat and that to Peter is far more dangerous and painful than any beatdown Doc Ock can dish out.

And speaking of Marvel's Spider-Man, it's such a shame about the utter waste of talent on the show, but at least Mile's voice actor got to play him in a quality Spider-Man product.

I'd also like to discuss Spider-Man as a relatable character in comparison to Superman and Batman. While for some reason people like to cite Spider-man and Batman as way more relatable than Superman, i'd argue that Superman is most likely to appeal to the average joe, He's got a 9 to 5 job, with a wife and kid, had a stable home life with a mom and dad and as Clark he's pretty much an the office worker we pass by and forget about.

By contrast, both Spider-Man and Bats had unconventional childhoods, i doubt many of us lived with our Aunt and Uncle for example, as the Lee-Ditko page notes, the series was two decades behind and the family dynamic of the Parkers was more from the great depression than the 60s, yet despite that teenagers did relate to Peter, and Gerry Conway was the first writer from Spider-Man's generation.

"Relatable" or "relateable" is a marketing word. Any of us typing here will find red lines in word boxes because it isn't in dictionaries. It's not a real world. There isn't exactly one kind of character we all relate to.

The most popular X-Men is Wolverine, and he's the most interesting character. But he's an immortal mutant, with Healing Factor who murders a bunch of people and has adamantium claws. There isn't anything immediately realistic or believable about him and yet audiences relate to him, as is apparent in Logan.

Spider-Man having fewer advantages than Superman and Batman makes him unique and interesting but that doesn't mean Superman and Batman aren't someone you can relate to. Superman is a story of identity, the guy who comes from a farm, works in a city, and who has this sense of loneliness and doubts about himself. And he has this poignancy about the fact that he has all this power but he can't use it or do whatever he wants because he this strong sense of ethics, so his stories at best ask interesting questions about power. Spider-Man on the other hand is about responsibilities. The fact is that you can't take anything or anyone for granted. That relationships, friendships, jobs are not just stuff that will wait for you.

Batman is about justice and revenge.

So this past weekend many comic pros found out of the original Spider-Man series published in Mexico between the 60's and 70's.

I'm pretty baffled that they're just finding out, the covers have been circulating for years on the internet, and this are pretty well known among mexican fans. Even Tom Brevoort shared about this, makes me hope that they might do a serious effort to collect them, but I imagine it would be a herculean task that will make them think that it wouldn't be worth it. Between how expensive some issues can get (and now seeing how this exploded they're surely going up in prices too) and theire overall low quality, I don't think it possible.

That said, it seems that one of the driving narratives they've been pushing is that this issues were made because mexican fans wouldn't accept a death Gwen, when in fact the editorial that made this quit comic business altogether before even reaching Gwen's death!

Edited by Akirakan on Feb 18th 2019 at 10:52:04 AM

There were also some original, black and white Brazilian X-Men comics.

It is weird that so many people are just finding out about this, but not entirely unwelcome. It would be nice if this created enough demand for the stories to get them collected.

Though it could be said that, while Gwen's death didn't inspire the book, the Mexican fandom's sheer thirst for Gwen definitely did, if the marriage issue is anything to go by; that and the considerable, ahem, attention◊ she was given.

Well, good to know some things never change.

Basically Gwen Stacy's bikini phase in Roy Thomas' Savage Land arc is the only Gwen Mexicans care for.

If anyone reads Spanish, here's a link[1] to a pretty good article that explains the history of the Mexican Spider-Man comics. To summarize, soon after Spider-Man debuted, Spanish-language reprints of Amazing Spider-Man became popular in Mexico and the USA. The reprints became so popular that they started being published twice a month, instead of monthly as in the States. Because of this, the Mexican publishers got permission from Marvel to create their own content in order to pad out the reprints. This went on until 1972, when the Mexican comics spun off in their own direction and continued for about another year. (Apparently Nick Fury had his own Mexican series too.) The Mexican Spidey creative team did around 45 issues in total. Raul Martinez was the writer and Jose Luis Duran was the artist behind most of the Mexican comics. His art seems pretty good. He definitely liked to use Gwen for fanservice, and she and Peter were married in #128. Peter had black hair in order to look more Mexican, I guess. Not sure if the series still took place in NYC. After that series ended, Duran worked on a series of easy-to-read Spider-Man comics for young kids.

I'm really, really curious to read some of these comics. It's so weird to have a time capsule back into the past, with a series that was contemporary with but divergent from the 616 continuity.

Side note: The article shows the cover to the issue where Gwen and Peter get married. Are those... Star of David earrings Gwen's got? Cool.