Spider-Man and Me

I’ll be honest, for a long time I was in the same boat with a lot of people that craved Peter Parker and Mary Jane to be happily married with kids and I hated Marvel for divorcing them. It got to the point where I also stopped reading Spider-Man comics because obviously I didn’t like where his direction was going and I thought doing anything else but remarrying them was stupid. However, as I’ve gotten older, an epiphany struck me: Peter Parker forever being a 25-30 year old who’s still making sense of his life and can’t figure out being in a committed relationship is actually genius and more relatable than most would like to admit, and Marvel probably doesn’t know how genius it is either.

That age range that Peter is in now, that “zillenial” generation, is a weird age to be. People around you are either buying houses, having kids, and/or are married, or they’re in school getting degrees, or they’re trying to figure their careers out. The drastic shifts from one person to the next makes it really hard to pin down really what the hell you’re supposed to be doing in your life. Peter being in this age range and not having it all figured out is quite frankly, okay. I know a lot of readers look to comic characters as being symbolic of what we should strive to be, but Peter was never that. He’s the everyday man, and you’re going to find more everyday men and women nowadays who are in that age bracket and don’t know what to do with their lives.

Now, I’ll stop some of you before you even start: Yes, it is fulfilling and satisfying to see your favorite character grow up and be set up to be more in life. To succeed, and by every standard, “grow up.” It’s a good point, and I really can’t deny most people who have that line of thinking. You always want better for your favorite characters, why else would they be your favorite, you WANT to see them win. At the same time though, comic characters are so much more than a child that writers take care of. We’ve seen so many creators over the years take their personal favorite characters and use them to establish a story that means something extremely personal to them. Tom King is a good example of someone who excels at doing this time and time again, even with characters that may not particularly be his favorite but I’m sure he still loves them all the same. This ability to write a story that screams a message regarding something you believe so strongly. Strange Adventures is the most critically acclaimed iteration of this way of storytelling, however to some people may be more controversial. Personally I love that comic book, I think it’s a great commentary on what war can do to a person, how they can go to such extremes and profit off of it by spinning the story. Throughout the story you may not even recognize Adam Strange the character because he’s more of a stand-in, but I think that’s what makes it so special. Spider-Man is the same way.

To start, I’m in that 25-30 year old range at the time of writing this, and I very much agree, life is fucking weird at this age. I’ve gone back and forth over the years with which version of Spider-Man I prefer, and really it depends on which stage of life I’m in. As a kid, I loved that Spider-Man started in High School, it made me look forward to it. In college, in the 80s, those comics were my jam. The single and suave Peter Parker who was just cruising through life. Now, Peter is pretty much kind of reset back to that part, except that’s really only how One More Day and Brand New Day portrays it, this IS a new part of his life that none of have ever seen really. After college, Peter was pretty much married right away, so he didn’t get to live the single life, and he was married for almost 20 years, with no kids. On one hand, looking back without rose-tinted lenses, those were actually some of his most uninspiring years outside of when J. Michael Strazcynski took over the Amazing Spider-Man title. From around 1987 until the early 2000s, it was a revolving door of pretty okay to good stories and without Peter and MJ having kids, they were just two young married people who were kind of stagnant. The goal of marriage isn’t to have kids, but when looking at a character, especially Peter Parker, you have to make certain decisions to ensure that the title remains fresh and is able to produce quality stories, keyword being “able.”

Do I believe One More Day should have happened? Absolutely not. I believe that all marriages have their problems and getting divorced is very normal now, some people just don’t work out, and it may be unfortunate, but it happens. How it happened sucked, but if the goal was to bring in more readers and allow for Peter to be more relatable, then I’ll be quite honest, it worked, for me at least. I recently revisited the Brand New Day era of Spider-Man along with the Dan Slott run because I was curious how it held up, to my surprise it’s actually a very great string of years for Spider-Man until the 2013 relaunch, but even WorldWide, when Peter had a global corporation, had some gems.

I’ve read more Spider-Man comics than I’m willing to admit, honestly, and the current Zeb Wells run has really shocked me in a way that some comics have not. It’s a controversial mix of so many elements of Peter that feels lost to time since the 80s. I don’t love the run, but I do appreciate a good amount of it because it feels like Wells is challenging Peter, the character, instead of Spider-Man, the icon. It feels like Wells has been doing his best to incorporate the 25-30 year old relation that Marvel has kind of ignored over the years. He’s at a point in life during a terrible point for the US’s economy. He got the job from Norman because he was lucky, not because he applied and interviewed for it, even if he was extremely qualified. There’s this terrible trend going on lately in the US where you can be the most qualified for a position, but still you’d need an incredible amount of luck. It happens, very often nowadays and when you do finally find something, it doesn’t pay well or it’s temporary, or something happens that terribly interrupts it like Peter’s situation now since Norman was revealed to have gotten his sins back recently and has been evil. It’s the unfortunate tragedy of life at this age. 

Earlier, I said putting Peter in this age range is actually genius, but has been very untapped, and I believe in that. I think there’s an extremely interesting angle to show Peter as a bachelor navigating the working world again, managing a bestfriendship with his ex-wife, while also trying desperately to move on, even if it feels impossible. You tend to go through several existential crises at this age, from personal experience. My life lately hasn’t been terrible, but a lot of what Peter goes through, I kind of feel on a personal level. Obviously we all grow up, and life takes its toll on us and eventually allows us to evolve. Maybe when I’m 50 with 2 teenage kids then I’ll be shouting at Marvel to bring Peter and MJ back, or maybe I’ll just be happy to know that I had a character I was able to relate to way more than I ever expected I would, and helped me to heal, grow, and eventually prosper. 

Sometimes I think Spider-Man isn’t supposed to be the character we grow old with. Whether or not a major corporation selling comics should be able to cater to all audiences isn’t really the point, but more so looking at it holistically. Every era of Peter is a different era, that doesn’t necessarily mean Peter isn’t the only character stuck at a certain age. In fact, most Marvel characters have been stuck at a certain age for longer than Peter has. These are Marvel comics in the 21st Century, Peter isn’t retiring anytime soon, if ever, nor does he need to. Miles and Peter occupy different parts of NY as THE Spider-Men of their boroughs, and they both offer different perspectives into life as a young male.