“The stories are all about Peter Parker, mask on or mask off.”
J. M. Matteis, Spider-Man writer
"I don't want to think of a thwipless world, Maureen."
Dan Slott, Spider-Man writer and inventor of the Spider-Verse
Thanks to my Marvel Unlimited subscription, I'm attending Beyond Amazing: Celebrating 60 Years of Spider-Man, an online event celebrating the anniversary of Marvel’s friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. (To be completely accurate, Peter Parker’s alter ego makes his first appearance on June 5th, 1962, in Issue 15 of Amazing Fantasy, so we’re a bit early for his actual birthday, but what the heck, everyone loves a party.)
The event is competently and cleverly hosted by Marvel Creative Content Director and social media personality Lorraine Cink, and overall it’s certainly the best produced event that I’ve attended since the world made the move to virtual events two years ago.
The theme music and sound effects are effective, the animated screen graphics are well designed, the format for the trivia questions is cleverly done, almost all of the presenters have good webcams, the audio is excellent, and Ms. Cink keeps the event moving along smoothly and professionally. That being said, it's also just a fun and entertaining discussion, and the various participants - writers, artists, and editors - are uniformly dedicated, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and involved.
Spider-Man is arguably one of the best known Marvel
Comics characters, and certainly one of the most popular. Ignoring his
movie career and his various animated television appearances*, there
have been multiple comic book treatments of Marvel’s favourite
web-slinger since his creation by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko
in 1962: The Amazing Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, The Avenging Spider-Man, The Sensational Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man, Giant-Size Spider-Man (the comic format, that is, not Spider-Man himself), Spider-Man Unlimited, Untold Tales of Spider-Man, The Superior Spider-Man (and Superior Spider-Man Team-Up), Spider-Man's Tangled Web, Marvel Knights: Spider-Man, Spider-Man Family, Spider-Man/Deadpool, and just plain Spider-Man.**
Radioactive spider-bite victim Peter Parker has undergone every possible change in his life: he's been orphaned, married, divorced, rich, poor, cloned, mutated, vilified, hunted, hated, killed, reincarnated, possessed by an alien symbiote, turned into a cannibal zombie, made a deal with the Devil, gone public with his secret identity, and had his mind swapped with a dying Doctor Octopus. Poor guy, no wonder he's a bit neurotic.
And yet, at his core, he's remained the same person: a bit clumsy, a bit socially challenged, concerned about doing the right thing, worried that he’s not the person he should be, and terribly, constantly aware that with great power comes great responsibility.
It's this aspect of the character that the first segment of the event addresses, as Ms. Cink questions Marvel VP and executive editor Tom Brevoort, editor Steve Wacker, and Spider-Man writer J. M. Matteis (clockwise from top left) about Spider-Man’s origins and their perception of what makes the character tick.
For Matteis, Spider-Man is a profoundly personal character. “The essence of Spider-Man was right there in that first Romita story that I read. Huge story, but the stakes were personal - it was about Peter Parker.”
Wacker comments that it was Peter Parker’s youth that resonated with him, that he wasn’t a sidekick, but the main character, and that in spite of his youth he was responsible for his Aunt May. Breevort found that the relatability of the early Spider-Man stories are what made the connection to the character for him, that Spider-Man was the first superhero who was the audience. “Peter Parker was just this stupid kid trying to make something good out of this weird accident that happened to him.”
The other panelists agree that the story isn’t really about Spider-Man, it’s about Peter Parker, his problems and his struggles, which made the comic an intensely personal experience. Wacker adds that Spider-Man’s well-known tendency to make jokes is anchored in his back story: “Comedy is the way we deal with tragedy.”
When asked to sum up Spider-Man in one word, Tom Brevoort says, “Amazing”, Steve Wacker chooses “Everyman”, and J. M. Matteis simply says, “Human”.
There’s a brief break for some trivia and a give-away (sadly restricted to the US attendees) and we’re back for Part 2 – Spider-Man Beyond, featuring Spider-Man artists Joe Quesada and Humberto Ramos, and the legendary John Romita Jr., son of the equally legendary John Romita Sr., whose signature artwork on Spider-Man defined the character and his world.
Romita Senior’s
artwork is in some ways the basis for the conversation, as the artists
discuss the classic look of the Spider-Man costume and the way in which
it’s changed (and remained the same) over 60 years.
Quesada and Ramos
concur that the most distinctive thing about drawing Spider-Man is the
character’s ability to emote through his mask. For Romita, it’s the
character’s lack of grace – as Quesada points out, there’s a kind of
creepiness to the way that original Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko drew
the character. Quesada also adds that whenever he draws the the original
costume, he curses Ditko for his use of the webbing pattern - "It's
like a math problem, I hate that."
John Romita Jr. is very much the focus of this portion of the event. Cink asks what keeps drawing*** him back to
Spider-Man, and he replies that, “It reminds me of family. He felt like a
family member.” As a second-generation Marvel artist, Romita has a
unique legacy: he relates how when he was young, his father would explain what Stan Lee was
doing that morning to describe a story, and remembers actually seeing
Ditko drawing Spider-Man.
He describes Spider-Man as “...the greatest character. He's Stan Lee’s antithesis to Superman - he's not perfect. He gets beaten up, he catches a cold, he loses. It’s the greatest character of all time.” He adds that Stan Lee once said that the balance of fantasy and reality is what makes a character great.
To conclude their segment, Cink asks the artists who their most influential artist is. For Ramos, it's the two men he's sharing the screen with; for Quesada, it's John Romita Sr., who "took Spider-Man and made him an icon." Romita not surprisingly also says that it was his father. “I saw all of his work, but when he did Spider-Man, it sang to me."
The third segment lightheartedly looks at the Spider-Men (and Women) who are spinoffs (no pun intended) from the Peter Parker storyline, as represented by Maureen Goo, who writes the Korean-American character Silk, Spider-Woman writer Karla Pacheco, and Dan Slott, inventor of the Spider-Verse: or, as Cink cheerfully describes them, the trouble-maker group, a sentiment that they eagerly echo.
Cink asks this group what they think makes for "a truly great Spider character?" For Dan Slott, the answer is simple: "They're like you and me - they screw up all the time!", with the subsequent obligation of then fixing their mistakes. Maureen Goo feels that it's "their heart (that) stands out - it may lead to good or bad decisions, but that's their compass."
Karla Pacheco agrees with both of these observations: "There's a very human and relatable aspect to Spidey-characters - the most fallible in ways, the most "normal" if that makes sense. That's why the character has endured so long."
The final question for this group is what sound effect they would use if Spider-Man's distinctive webshooter "thwip"**** was banned. After they earnestly discuss options like "Weeebbbbbbb", Dan Slott wraps up the conversation by saying, "I don't want to think of a thwipless world, Maureen."
It's a bit of a marketing moment, but that's understandable under the circumstances, and fans do like to know what's coming up for their favourite characters.
Based on the catalogue of publications that Marvel has planned, 2022 is very much Spider-Man's year: several new comics, including one drawn by John Romita Jr.; and Issue 900 of Spider-Man, which will essentially be a graphic novel featuring Spider-Man in combat with with all of his traditional enemies as combined in classic Marvel villain the Adaptoid.
C. B.'s final statement provides the perfect summary of the character of Spider-Man to end the event: "Under that superhuman mask is the human."
- Sid
* The less said about his failed Broadway appearance the better.
**
Not including Spider-Man 2099, the Miles Morales Spider-Man, Mary-Jane,
Spider-Gwen, the graphic novels, mini-series, one-offs, guest
appearances, or any of the Marvel Age/Marvel Adventures comics aimed at a
younger audience, which I gather aren't part of the standard
continuity.
*** Apparently no pun was intended.
**** In the Spider-Verse animated movie, Peter Parker also uses this word as a verb when attempting to teach Miles Morales the fundamentals of web-slinging, it's obviously a key term in Spider-lore.
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