With the new trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming now out everyone is excited to see a more comic accurate Spider-Man; a teenager back at high school doing high school teenage things.
However I have been left feeling somewhat indifferent.
Although the current Spider-Man comics exist only for Dan Slott to dredge up past characters, arcs or anything really, good or bad because he thinks he can touch everything and do it better (see the Clone Conspiracy). The classic read in what I would argue as un-filmable, or more accurately “un-movie-able” – that’s right I’m making up a word and sticking to it. Spider-Man needs to be developed into a CW-like TV series.
For the longest tie Spider-Man super hero-ed his way through the comics as a solo character. He rarely joined teams (outside of the team-up issues, that is to say the single stories and never a permanent member of a team.) and always sported a rather healthy and diverse cast of supporting characters. Spider-Man’s stories were never large, bombastic affairs, in fact, when referring to the “epics” his stories were longer than larger. Let’s take two of the most well known stories from the comics; Kraven’s Last Hunt and The (infamous) Clone Saga can provide an interesting insight to the way Spider-Man stories can be told.
Firstly, Kraven’s Last Hunt earns it’s place near the top of the Spider-Man’s best arcs list because it is a character study (Similar to Superior Spider-Man) of both Kraven the Hunter and Spider-Man. After twenty years of knowing these characters and their conflicts their appearances together had become stale and stalled. They had run out of steam, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it meant that any time they were together in a story you, the reader, knew exactly what you were going to get – Kraven; his motives, his voice, his actions – Spider-Man; his reactions, his problem solving, his quips. But this only occurred over time, time where we were able to learn these things so when the story was finally pushed to it’s conclusion the resulting resolve was amplified by the recurring fights between Spidey and Kraven. This is how Kraven’s Last Hunt was able to come out so strong, without the pre-existing stories between Spidey and Kraven, the climax of the arc together has no impact. This goes for most if not all of Spider-Man villains. They’re campy, ridiculous but have potential. They get to know each other and they become more dangerous, the villains get pushed to the point of desperation. Whereas, on the famously bad side of the spectrum The Clone Saga goes for big spectacle and sharp twists instead of character development (See Maximum Clonage). The arc strips Spider-Man of his grounded character stories for big plots about many different clones, fantastical new super characters who have no history with the experienced crime-fighter and very little substance in the middle of massive set pieces. I’m not saying The Amazing Spider-Man has a perfect comic run, far from it, but Spider-Man can’t fight two-dimensional villains because he’s too strong to struggle. He is unable to learn anything if he doesn’t know them. He needs to learn his villains the way they learn him.
Spider-Man builds relationships with his villains. Not in the classical arch nemesis way but they constantly worm their way into Peter Parker’s personal life. Which leads me to my next point…
Spider-Man’s villains are failures. Let’s take a brief look at Spidey’s most famous villains:
- Doctor Octopus: One of the Marvel Universe’s leading specialists on radiation, blows himself up, can’t outsmart a college dropout, he knows it and still has a crippling superiority complex.
- Green Goblin (in his pre-resurrected days): A terrible father despite trying his best until he snaps. Even snaps back to being normal Norman Osborne when he sees Harry’s drug addiction.
- The Vulture: Failed businessman who was swindled out of credit for his inventions.
- Mysterio: Failed Special effects artist.
- Kraven (as mentioned earlier.): Comes from a decimated Russian nobility and disgraced big game hunter.
- Venom: Disgraced photographer/journalist.
And the list can keep going and going.
Each villain fails at something they were confident they were the best at. They become disgraced in a way that parallels Spider-Man’s origin: confident in their abilities until their actions push them into being villainous. They all go into difficult situation and struggle, they don’t choose to be villains their actions put them in a situation where that was their only options. The only difference being that Spider-Man chose the hard way in order to better himself so it doesn’t happen again – the villains choose the easy way and constantly fail. They play against each other. Spider-Man even knows it and empathizes with his villains and tries to push them in the right direction, to push them towards the alternative. And it’s the successes that compels us to come back, compels Peter Parker to keep going. So when it comes down to making a Spider-Man film these themes can’t always be translated well. We lose our time with the villains, so we don’t know them, then it could be Spider-Man punching anybody, a bag with Michael Keaton’s face – Spider-Man doesn’t just punch anybody, he punches real people. The film that truly tried to create this feeling was the Amazing Spider-Man 2 that felt like so much was going on that it was a montage of a season of a Spider-Man TV series.
Lastly, these people bring in the final part of the Spider-Man equation: it’s a soap opera. It’s a full on romantic “turns out he’s my brother” soap opera. With Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s initial run on the Amazing Spider-Man comic Ditko coupled teenage anxieties through a large supporting cast with a insecure superhero. After Ditko left John Romita Sr. who was a well known romance artist further added the romantic lifestyle of early twenties parker attending college in the “swinging sixties” and his life through the cultural revolution, something that played more of a part on the character than the villain of the month punching him. The soap opera background was in full effect as the comic dealt with social issues such as drug abuse, civil rights through the supporting cast and not the super heroics. Amazing Spider-Man was even the first Marvel comic published without the Comics Code. Romita’s dynamic and expressive captured how Spider-Man storytelling is never about spectacle but about who we are at the core of our being. What makes us who we are, what defines us, the people and the world around us, how being a better person isn’t doing large things but looking after our friends and family. Themes cannot be portrayed in a blockbuster Spider-Man film. There isn’t enough time for everything and what makes a Spider-Man story truly great is always left behind.
Films rely on a tense quick succession of events that continually build up to an epic climax. And great Spider-Man stories rely on deep character development, a large challenging cast and most of all failure and persistence. It’s about learning, living and overcoming life’s obstacles in whatever form they appear not big action sequences, witty dialogue and cheap resolutions.
Spider-Man should be the number one contender for a TV series on ABC or whatever, a large season with lots of villains, supporting characters, love triangles, recurring characters, recurring locations, romance, betrayals, surprises, tonnes of Peter Parker over Spider-Man and of course the seasonal overarching plot.
But that’ll never happen so I guess I’ll just stick to The Flash.
- Antony.