[Meme] Five Essentials

[daretodo]

1) He is Spider-Man (and that is the official way to spell it, with a capital S, M, and a hyphen, so please spell it correctly): Peter comes from Earth-616, the primary continuity in which most Marvel Comics titles take place. He does not come from the movies or the televisions series or the cartoons or the Ultimate universe or any of the alternate time-lines Marvel's created over the years. He does not cry at the drop of a hat, and he graduated from high school a very long time ago. He is an adult with adult sensibilities -- a man, not a child. He has had more than one girlfriend in his life (and all of his girlfriends have been exceedingly attractive, thank you very much). He has loved more than one woman. He talks a lot, but rarely says anything of substance. He's annoying, a pest. There are few people whose opinions actually matter to him, because he's used to being widely despised. As such, he doesn't pay a lot of attention to other people unless they need his help. His outlet for frustration was kicking bad guys in the face. He has a fantastic sense of humor. He has complete faith in his own abilities, by turns confident and arrogant. In the same breath, he doesn't think much of himself. He's brilliant, which a lot of people forget, even if the smartest man on the planet has called him a genius on more than one occasion. Most importantly, though, he's a man of two identities forced into one, and the ramifications of being just Peter Parker are ones he's only now starting to realize.

2) With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Many stories have explored what Peter's life might have been like had Uncle Ben never died, and what's generally made of such a 'What If?' scenario is that Peter fails to grasp the significance of this insight until much later in life, if at all, making him a drastically different character because of it. As it stands, he's an immensely burdened man, hauling the weight of the world on his shoulders. His actions are motivated by guilt and a self-imposed sense of duty. From his application, "[t]he heroism of Spider-Man resides not in the mask but rather in the man behind it. The man who, despite struggling to make ends meet, dons a costume and thanklessly fights for the lives of strangers, simply because it is the right thing to do."

3) The Night Gwen Stacy Died: Here's the thing -- if you're not a fan of the comics, chances are you've never even heard of Gwen Stacy. She's often left out of other adaptations, partially because her death is so incredibly tragic that it changed the medium forever, and new creators looking to revisit the Spider-Man franchise in other venues often see it as too dark a storyline for children. When she is included, it's rarely, if ever, in her original romantic capacity. In the comics, however, Gwen's death is pervasive to the point where it's been featured through flashbacks in titles where Peter himself doesn't appear. The importance of her death is almost impossible to overstate. All women are compared to Gwen, regardless of whether he's conscious of it or not. After all, she was the first woman Peter Parker ever truly loved, and he feels guilt for his part in her death to this day, dreaming up new ways he might have saved her had he the chance to do it all over again. Peter is constantly caught up in his own personal history, and Gwen -- more so than Uncle Ben, even -- epitomizes this trait.

4) It's All Just a Little Bit of History Repeating: The Amazing Spider-Man just released its 618th issue this week. The first volume of The Spectacular Spider-Man ran 263 issues. Marvel Team-Up's first run? 150. Web of Spider-Man ran 129. Spider-Man went for 98. Peter Parker: Spider-Man was 57 issues. Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Marvel Knights: Spider-Man, and Spider-Man Unlimited were a breezy 24, 22, and 22 issues, respectively. There are still about ten in-continuity, eponymous, on-going titles I haven't even mentioned, let alone the miniseries, limited series, crossovers in other titles, and team books. He is ubiquitous. In short, Peter Parker has a lot of canon and a lot of contradictions in that canon, but if it is mentioned in a tag, it is because it happened somewhere in the course of nearly 50 years of Spidey history. I never, ever make things up, because the truth is infinitely more interesting than something I could write off the top of my head. Having lived such a crazy life for so very long, though, Peter is not someone who's easily fazed -- it's all happened before, he knows, and he's still here in spite of it.

5) There is Consistency to Inconsistency: Peter (or, more accurately, Spider-Man) has been written by pretty much every writer ever employed by Marvel Comics. Most of these portrayals are even canon, and therefore something I have to keep in mind when writing him. After all, it is canon that his narrative is all over the place, meaning that I, too, have to be equally as inconsistent. Some days I try for Lee, others for Bendis or PAD or JMS. Some translate better to prose than others; I recently experimented with the style of J.M. DeMatteis for a thread, something which I will never, ever do again. Over the past few months, I've developed a few loose rules as to how I approach his narrative, dependent on who I'm threading against. For example, if it's a Marvel who bolds, I, too, will bold. Indeed, when threading off Norman, I almost completely eschewed the use of dialogue tags like "I say" to keep it more in line with their comic book origins. I put a lot of thought behind word choice and punctuation, as well; it is a very rare day that you see a semi-colon in a Spider-Man title, which is why you will see a lot of "--" instead, regardless of whether or not it is grammatically correct. It's canonically correct, and ultimately, that's what I'm trying to accomplish.