SPIDER-MAN MANIA

Mood music.

I haven't seen the new movie yet, but I plan to do so as soon as I can. Virtually every review I've read says it's better than the first one, which makes sense because as far as I can tell, the film riffs on an early comic book story from the 1960s wherein Peter Parker suffers a major crisis of confidence after getting his ass kicked by Doctor Octopus. Indeed, Peter's Charlie Brown-like self-doubt, his very real sense of humanity, is what makes Spider-Man so great. But don't just take my word for it.

From an essay by longtime Marvel Comics writer and editor Danny Fingeroth:

The superhero's shoes we'd gladly climb walls in

When I was editorial director of Marvel Comics' Spider-Man line, we used to refer to Spidey as "the regular guy" superhero. He really could be any one of us. To be Superman, you had to come from another planet. To be Wonder Woman you had to be born a mythological Amazon princess. But to be Spider-Man, you just had to be bitten by a radioactive spider. (Hey, it could happen.) You didn't have to be from a superhuman race. You just had to have it happen to you, and we all have things happen to us.

And when the spider gave Peter Parker his superpowers, he did what any of us would have done. He didn't go out and fight crime right away. He set out to make some money to help his kindly aunt and uncle, and also to have a few bucks to enjoy life. He was just a teenager. But when his uncle was murdered, things suddenly got a lot more serious. Peter captured the killer and realized that "with great power there must also come great responsibility." End of fun, time to be serious forever, right?

Wrong.

Because no matter how bad things became for Peter/Spidey, he always approached his responsibilities the way we all do — ambivalent and complaining all the way. Sure, he felt a responsibility to use his powers for good. He was brought up right. But he wanted to have fun — because, really, how could swinging through the canyons of New York not be fun? Sometimes he loved being Spider-Man, sometimes he hated it. Sometimes he turned his back on it for a while. But his sense of responsibility always brought him back.

Click here for the rest.

God, I'm such a big nerd! I read that phrase, "with great power there must also come great responsibility," and tear up a bit: I must have read a reprint of that first issue for the first time when I was in the fourth grade; Peter's lesson has stuck with me to this day. It's a shame that our President was too old to read comics back in the day. Perhaps he'd be less cavalier about his penchant for making war.

As an extra added bonus, I've gone through the RetroCRUSH archives and found for your pleasure a collection of early Spider-Man covers. Man, I love that weird, old Steve Ditko art:

SPIDER-MAN COVER GALLERY

When Spider-Man first appeared in 1963, it was something truly unique to comic books. While previously created heroes were chiseled near perfect specimens of virtue, Spidey was a geeky teenage twit, with girl problems, money problems, and more angst than you could shake a stick at. Though comic art god Jack Kirby designed the costume, (which you can see in the first picture in the top row), Lee needed a freakier approach, so he went with Steve Ditko. Ditko's trippy style suited Spidey perfectly, and his run on the first 38 issues of the book, are my favorite. So before you go and spend $8 on the new Sam Raimi film, pay tribute to the men who started it all by enjoying the wild and amazing collection of covers.

Click here for the gallery.

Here's my favorite of the bunch:





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