“I grew up in Indiana,” writes Chris Huntington, “and saved a few thousand comic books in white boxes for the son I would have someday. . . . Despite my good intentions, we had to leave the boxes of yellowing comics behind when we moved to China.”
I grew up in Pennsylvania and only moved down to Virginia, so I still have one dented box of my childhood comics to share with my son. He pulled it down from the attic last weekend.
“I forgot how much fun these are,” he said.
Cameron is twelve and has lived all those years in our southern smallville of a town. Chris Huntington’s son, Dagim, is younger and born in Ethiopia. Huntington laments in “A Superhero Who Looks Like My Son”(a recent post at the New York Times parenting blog, Motherlode) how Dagin stopped wearing his Superman cape after he noticed how much darker his skin looked next to his adoptive parents’.
Cameron can flip to any page in my bin of comics and admire one of those “big-jawed white guys” Huntington and I grew up on. Dagim can’t. That, argues Junot Diaz, is the formula for a supervillain: “If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.” Fortunately, reports Huntington, Marvel swooped to the rescue with a black-Hispanic Spider-Man in 2011, giving Dagim a superhero to dress as two Halloweens running.
Glenn Beck called Ultimate Spider-Man just “a stupid comic book,” blaming the facelift on Michelle Obama and her assault on American traditions. But Financial Times saw the new interracial character as the continuing embodiment of America: “Spider-Man is the pure dream: the American heart, in the act of growing up and learning its path.” I happily side with Financial Times, though the odd thing about their opinion (aside from the fact that something called Financial Times HAS an opinion about a black-Hispanic Spider-Man) is the “growing up” bit.
Peter Parker was a fifteen-year-old high schooler when that radioactive spider sunk its fangs into his adolescent body. Instant puberty metaphor. “What’s happening to me? I feel—different! As though my entire body is charged with some sort of fantastic energy!” I remember the feeling.
It was 1962. Stan Lee’s publisher didn’t want a teenage superhero. The recently reborn genre was still learning its path. Teenagers could only be sidekicks. The 1940s swarmed with Robin knock-offs, but none of them ever got to grow-up, to become adult heroes, to become adult anythings.
Captain Marvel’s little alter ego Billy Baston never aged. None of the Golden Agers did. Their origin stories moved with them through time. Bruce Wayne always witnessed his parents’ murder “Some fifteen years ago.” He never grew past it. For Billy and Robin, that meant never growing at all. They were marooned in puberty.
Stan Lee tried to change that. Peter Parker graduated high school in 1965, right on time. He starts college the same year. The bookworm scholarship boy was on track for a 1969 B.A.
But things don’t always go as planned. Co-creator Steve Ditko left the series a few issues later (#38, on stands the month I was born). Lee scripted plots with artist John Romita until 1972, when Lee took over his uncle’s job as publisher. He was all grown-up.
Peter doesn’t make it to his next graduation day till 1978. If I remember correctly (I haven’t read Amazing Spider-Man #185 since I bought it from a 7-EIeven comic book rack for “Still Only Thirty-five” cents when I was twelve), he missed a P.E. credit and had to wait for his diploma. Thirteen years as an undergraduate is a purgatorial span of time. (I’m an English professor now, so trust me, I know.)
Except it isn’t thirteen years. That’s no thirty-two-year-old in the cap and gown on the cover. Bodies age differently inside comic books. Peter’s still a young twentysomething. His first twenty-eight issues spanned less than three years, same for us out here in the real world. But during the next 150, things grind out of sync.
It’s not just that Peter’s clock moves more slowly. His life is marked by the same external events as ours. While he was attending Empire State University, Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter appeared multiple times in the Marvel universe. Their four-year terms came and went, but not Peter’s four-year college program. How can “the American heart” learn its path when it’s in a state of arrested development?
Slowing time wasn’t enough either. Marvel wanted to reverse the aging process. They wanted the original teen superhero to be a teenager again. When their 1998 reboot didn’t take hold (John Byrne had better luck turning back the Man of Steel’s clock), Marvel invented an entire universe. When Ultimate Spider-Man premiered in 2000, the new Peter Parker is fifteen again. And he was going to stay that way for a good long while. Writer Brian Bendis took seven issues to cover the events Lee and Ditko told in eleven pages.
But even with slo-mo pacing, Peter turned sixteen again in 2011. So after a half century of webslinging, Marvel took a more extreme countermeasure to unwanted aging. They killed him. But only because they had the still younger Spider-Man waiting in the wings. Once an adolescent, always an adolescent.
The newest Spider-Man, Miles Morales, started at thirteen. What my son turns next month. He and Miles will start shaving in a couple years. If Miles isn’t in the habit of rubbing deodorant in his armpits regularly, someone will have to suggest it. I’m sure he has cringed through a number of Sex Ed lessons inflicted by well-meaning but clueless P.E. teachers. My Health classes were always divided, mortified boys in one room, mortified girls across the hall. My kids’ schools follow the same regime. Some things don’t change.
Miles doesn’t live in Marvel’s main continuity, so who knows if he’ll make it out of adolescence alive. His predecessor died a virgin. Ultimate Peter and Mary Jane had talked about sex, but decided to wait. Sixteen, even five years of sixteen, is awfully young. Did I mention my daughter turned sixteen last spring?
Peter didn’t die alone though. Mary Jane knew his secret. I grew up with and continue a policy of open bedrooms while opposite sex friends are in the house, but Peter told her while they sat alone on his bed, Aunt May off who knows where. The scene lasted six pages, which is serious superhero stamina. It’s mostly close-ups, then Peter springing into the air and sticking to the wall as Mary Jane’s eye get real real big. Way better than my first time. It’s also quite sweet, the trust and friendship between them. For a superhero, for a pubescent superhero especially, unmasking is better than sex. It’s almost enough to make me wish I could reboot my own teen purgatory. Almost.
Meanwhile the Marvel universes continue to lurch in and out of time, every character ageless and aging, part of and not part of their readers’ worlds. It’s a fate not even Stan Lee could save them from. Cameron and Dagim will continue reading comic books, and then they’ll outgrow them, and then, who knows, maybe that box will get handed to a prepubescent grandson or granddaughter.
The now fifty-one-year-old Spider-Man, however, will continue not to grow up. But he will continue to change. “Maybe sooner or later,” suggests artist Sara Pichelli, “a black or gay — or both — hero will be considered something absolutely normal.” Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield would like his character to be bisexual, a notion Stan Lee rejects (“I figure one sex is enough for anybody”). But anything’s possible. That’s what Huntington learned from superheroes, the quintessentially American lesson he wants to pass on to his son growing up in Singapore.
May that stupid American heart never stop finding its path.
Woah– I missed the news bit on Andrew Garfield’s bisexual Spiderman query… for anyone else who missed it, I found the interview where he expands upon this here. That said, I think saying that Garfield wants a bisexual Spiderman distracts from the more worthwhile question he’s asking, and is a little unfair to him as an advocate…
Here’s an excerpt.
Garfield: Very good question. Listen, what I said in that Entertainment Weekly interview was a question. It was just a simple, philosophical question about sexual orientation, about prejudice. I obviously long for the time where sexual orientation, skin color, is a small thread in the fabric of a human being, and all men are created equal — and women, sorry, women as well. To speak to the idea of me and Michael B. Jordan getting together, it was tongue in cheek, absolutely tongue in cheek. It would be illogical for me in the third movie to be like, you know what? I’m kind of attracted to guys. That’s just not going to work. That’s clear. It was just more a philosophical question, and what I believe about Spider-Man is that he does stand for everybody: black, white, Chinese, Malaysian, gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender. He will put himself in harm’s way for anyone. He is colorblind. He’s blind to sexual orientation, and that is what he has always represented to me. He represents the everyman, but he represents the underdog and those marginalized who come up against great prejudice which I, as a middle-class straight, white man, don’t really understand so much. And when Stan Lee first wrote and created this character, the outcast was the computer nerd, was the science nerd, was the guy that couldn’t get the girl. Those guys now run the world. So how much of an outcast is that version of Peter Parker anymore? That’s my question. ”
I just thought this was really interesting and wanted to share. And– would this kind of thinking have come out of Marvel Comics Publishing? I don’t think so. Maybe this is one very positive affect of the superhero genre’s move into film.
“And– would this kind of thinking have come out of Marvel Comics Publishing?”
Marvel comics has had gay leads in books such as Young Avengers and Runaways… which seems more meaningful than an actor talking about ideas that are not in the films…
Spider-man isn’t exactly a “revenge of the nerds” type story either, he becomes more popular by being less nerdy, it seems to me. Ditching the glasses and growing strong muscles.
I’m not really sure it’s about what Andrew Garfield seems to think it’s about.
I think it’s also confused to say that the downtrodden folks back then were nerds…I mean, there were black people and gay people back then, I’m pretty sure.
It also elides what I think is maybe the real source of Peter’s marginal status, which is that he’s working class poor. That’s quite a distinction from most other heroes, and it’s part of why a non-white spider man makes a lot of sense — because Spider-man is urban poor, and a lot of the urban poor are non-white.
There was a kerfuffle about the Garfield remarks after Stan Lee, when asked about them, responded that he’d “make some phone calls,” since, as he put it, “I figure one sex is enough for anybody.” Here’s the link:
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2013/07/stan-lee-reacts-to-the-idea-of-a-bisexual-spider-man/
The comments section begins with a quick discussion of whether Lee’s remarks were homophobic. I chimed in on that one, since it seemed like he might have been confused about the definition of bisexuality. But the whole thing degraded pretty quickly into name calling and some really sad confusion about the difference between sexual identity and sex, agendas, and a super weird rant about the media.
As for Peter’s status as an underdog, I always took that as having to do with his personality. As originally portrayed by Lee and Ditko it’s not just that he’s a science geek, but that he’s touchy, emotionally frightened, a bit self-centered, and has low self-esteem that his peers go after. The dude really just isn’t the kind of guy you’d want to hang out with given a choice.
While I think it is important for kids (white and black and other) to have characters like Miles Morales with which to identify, I also think that we (as fans of superhero comics, some of whom hope to pass them on to our children and other young folks) consider the problematic aspects of the superhero tradition as it applies to characters of color that want to participate in it. There is a profound disconnect between how those comics define heroism and how it may reinforce a culture of white supremacy imbricated with plutocracy and built on stereotypes of black and brown criminality.
I wrote briefly about this last week: http://themiddlespaces.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/invisible-watchmen/
I am less concerned with a Spider-Man who stays forever young than with a Spider-Man whose perspective on what is wrong with our society remains close to that first developed by white dudes writing and drawing Spider-Man in the early 1960s.
That’s a great essay. Thanks for linking it.
Given Ditko’s role in plotting Spider-Man, it’s not clear that it was Lee’s idea to “change that” by graduating Peter Parker…not that I have any information the other way; it’s just that we should be leery of attributing that kind of thing to Lee.
I think Nate and Noah are both right about Spider-Man: he’s a creep and a jerk, and he’s also working class. The latter does make him unusual among those early Marvel characters, who are otherwise eiher privileged or white-collar — celebrities (Fantastic Four), doctors (Strange, Thor), lawyer (Daredevil), industrialist (Iron Man), scientists (Hulk, Ant Man), private school students (X-Men) or military officer (Captain America). This explains why Spider-Man’s real arch-nemesis isn’t any supervillain, but his dickish boss. (The only other working-class types that I can think of are Sgt. Fury and, at least in background and outlook, the Thing)
…and I think Pallas is right, too, about how the character becomes more popular. It’s basically when Ditko is replaced by Romita, who drops Ditko’s misfit/anxiety stuff in favour of a slicker, more glamorous style. It’s interesting that something similar happened in the movies (albeit without a boost in real-world popularity) — creepy weirdo Tobey Maguire, directed by horror film guy Sam Raimi, gets replaced by pretty boy Andrew Garfield, directed by romance guy Marc Webb.
“…what I think is maybe the real source of Peter’s marginal status, which is that he’s working class poor.”
Peter (and Mary Jane Watson) being working-class poor is unique to the Sam Raimi films. It’s not the case in the comics. Lee, Ditko, and their successors on the feature had Peter and his aunt and uncle living in the Forest Hills section of Queens, which has traditionally been a pretty upper-middle-class neighborhood. In the Raimi films, they live in Sunnyside, which is nowhere as upscale. Peter’s uncle is also pretty clearly a blue-collar worker in the films, while in the comics I don’t recall his job ever being indicated.
I think Raimi and his screenwriters made Peter and Mary Jane working-class because it was a quick way to set up the tensions in the character relationships. It’s strongly suggested Mary Jane’s interest in Harry Osborn and, earlier, Flash Thompson has to do with their more privileged economic status. Peter’s rivalries with them, despite Harry being his best friend, is clearly based on the same thing. Peter and MJ’s class insecurities also appear to play a role in keeping them apart despite their interest in each other.
Robert, even if he’s kind of lower middle class, it’s still the case as Jones says that he’s way downmarket from most (all?) of the other marvel heroes (and kind of from the DC ones as well I think? Mostly scientists and industrialists…though possibly early Superman is an exception…)
He definitely starts having serious money problems after Uncle Ben dies though, right? Or if my memory completely faulty?
The Thing in The Fantastic Four has a working-class background. He pulled himself far enough up from it to get a college education and become a test pilot, but he kept his class identifications. Lee and Kirby played that aspect of his character up fairly heavily, too, as I recall. I’d have to go back to reread the comics to make a case for it, but I think one could argue that the tensions between him and Reed Richards and him and the Human Torch have a class element to them.
As I recall, Spider-Man’s money problems were directly due to his uncle’s death.
I don’t consider class characteristics entirely or even largely economic. They’re a set of cultural markers in one’s personality and values. One’s economic status at a given time really can’t change those.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. Cultural capital is cultural capital, but money matters as well.
Money matters, but it’s not defining.
The more I think about it, the more I think it’s rather odd to see Spider-Man in class terms. Ditko arguably did the most to shape him, and Ditko was (and is) a Randite individualist who would reject class as a marker of character. He would most likely see Peter’s economic problems, like Howard Roark’s in The Fountainhead, as just a struggle that comes with being alive and realizing oneself.
Just because Ditko didn’t intend him that way isn’t necessarily dispositive.
I don’t think any one thing defines class, but money is a pretty big deal. (Cultural stuff matters too…but Marx’s point at least to some extent is that economics has a big effect on what culture you can access and how you access it.)
“he’s way downmarket from most (all?) of the other marvel heroes”
…provided you restrict yourself to his contemporaries. I forgot in my brief list that, of those contemporaries, (a) Hawkeye, member of the Avengers but not originally a headliner, is downright lower-class (a carny!), and (b) Daredevil grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, raised by his single dad, who was a boxer. But Daredevil, for all his good work as defender of the neighbourhood, legal champion of the oppressed blah blah blah, didn’t really retain his class identity in the way that the Thing — who was actually vastly more financially secure — did. Even in the Fantastic Four, the Thing is the proletariat of the group.
You’re right about Ditko’s intentions not being dispositive. Spider-Man, like all of these corporate-owned properties, has become a vehicle for whomever happens to be working on him at the time. He can support a range of approaches and interpretations. Ditko most likely didn’t see his treatment as illustrative of class issues, but Sam Raimi and his collaborators obviously saw theirs that way, at least to some extent.
whatever Ditko’s intentions, it is true that money concerns were a constant for Spider-Man from the start, in a way that isn’t true for contemporary characters. The FF might get evicted once in a while, or Daredevil live on the street, but these are (eventually rectified) departures from the status quo; whereas the periods of financial security seem like they’re the departure for Spider-Man.
whether this makes him “working class” or not…perhaps rather a member of the middle class anxious of falling further down the ladder? in any case, the way that money, or lack of it, shapes his life, and the constant anxiety about not having enough to achieve basic living standards, or that he won’t have enough tomorrow — that certainly seems more representative of 1960s working class experience than middle class, although it will be all too familiar to the modern US middle class as well, such as it is
I think it is important to remember that readers bring a lot to their interpretations of characters, rearranging and re-collecting the variety of character aspects and character history that works best with the way that they identify with the character.
These days I (would) prefer black or brown Spider-Man because of my own skepticism about his privilege as most recently written and his cultural class signifiers (working for a successful newspaper and/or science teacher and/or researcher, married to a model/actress) and purposefully exploring the character’s attitudes to other people in his own class position (generally jerky and judgmental – I always think back to his refusal to side with student activists in his college days), but once upon a time what I really identified with was his money problems,his responsibility to a sickly relative and his social awkwardness among the fraternity of superheroes and his difficulty completing college, etc. . .
What I am trying to get at is that the serialized nature of the comic medium allows for not only particular incarnations of how the character is drawn/written (the Ditko-era, et al. . .) but also allows fans to construct a Peter Parker/Spider-Man from the various eras that seems like the ideal Spider-Man to them. The lives of these superhero serial characters are incongruent without a selective approach not only on the part of the writers/artists, but on the part of comic readers, who implicitly understand that omission and erasure are an important part of having a character they can ever hope to make sense of.
Osvaldo, those are great points about the malleability of these characters and the readers’ active cooperation in that “omission and erasure.” There was more than one Spider-man long before there was an Ultimate universe. These anachronisms and the audience’s blithe acceptance of them were only one mildly amusing aspect of the variation. To name one that has jumped out at me over the years, Flash Thompson has been a hero of three separate wars, but never more than one at a time. I think this method is a more organic and graceful way of dealing with the passage of time than a wrenching reboot. It gives the reader more credit, as he or she has to play along, and I imagine it’s more similar to how legendary heroes aged.
This thread has mentioned the overwhelming whiteness of most of these characters, but without explicit acknowledgment of the times in which they were created. I’ve appreciated both DC and Marvel’s attempt to make the second or third generation versions more ethnically and racially diverse and been frustrated when the stories or the marketing were inadequate. Most never achieve the popularity of their predecessors and are left by the wayside at the next reboot or turn of events. Miles is a notable and welcome exception. But if you’re doing a clunky reboot, why not change it up a little? There’s nothing inherently white about some of these characters. Admittedly, Bruce Wayne comes from old northeastern money, but vanilla whiteness is less essential to most of the other classics.
On a more positive note, does anyone else find the social mobility and class integration of these characters interesting? Captain America was dirt poor in the Depression. He now hobnobs with Presidents and kings — and also D-Man, who is occasionally homeless. Ben Grimm not only elevated his station, he became best friends with a bourgeois academic, and he still goes back to Yancy Street. Matt Murdock may be a snooty lawyer now, but he still lives and works in Hell’s Kitchen, which Marvel leaves ungentrified whenever it helps the story. There’s some Horatio Alger in these stories, and also an implicit message that people are the same regardless of class. Even the villains come from all walks of life, just like they do in real life.
Thanks. I feel better about my comics now.