So, what's the dealio, as people who haved lived a middle class lifestyle, had quite a good education and never ever been shot by their homies are wont to say? The plan is to talk about my favourite fictional characters whether from the world of film, TV, literature, comics, radio or any other medium.
I hope not to gush too much, but if I start to get too enthused it may just be because I have consumed a packet of Skittles washed down with Lucozade. Please rest assured that when they drag me off the ceiling (and make me put my clothes back on), I will have raised my overall risk of tooth decay (brush twice daily kids...It's important).
Day 1- Spider-Man
A while back while visiting with my father, my nephew approached me with his large shoe box full of Superhero action figures. He is 9 years old now and wanted to show them to me as I have developed something of a habit of buying him comics for Christmas and Birthdays. We went through the box carefully and played with each of the action figures, fitting any acoutrements which came with them and dutifully pressing any buttons (useful side note- Dogs can eat toy missiles if fired in their general vicinity. If this happens, offer to buy another action figure, don't try to reason with the dog for the safe return...and it's not worth it to wait for it's return any other way).
Then a serious look came over his face. To be honest, I was concerned. If there was something really wrong, I wasn't sure what to do. If he was being bullied at school, could I teach him how to drop a guy with an elbow to the throat? Or to set fire to his bully in the school yard. Would that be the act of a responsible uncle? Such matters are still before the courts and therefore I am precluded from commenting.
He looked at me with his big serious eyes and asked- "Uncle Simon, who's the best superhero?"
My mind was paradoxically relieved and panicked at the same time. I am by nature slightly obsessive compulsive and when asked a question like this I like to weigh up all of the options. Even with two little eyes looking at me, I wasn't sure that this was something that I could answer. Or at least it wasn't something that I could answer without the use of flow charts, several graphs and a highlighter pen.
I tried to explain the various skills of different superheroes- Batman is a skilled detective. Superman is a talented investigative journalist and is a selfless hero helping throughout the world. The Thing is strong and brave. Wolverine has awesome hair.
As my rationalising went into it's second minute, two little eyes started to glaze over. And then a second question came- "Who's your favourite superhero?"
"Spider-Man," I said.
"So, Spider-Man is the best superhero then," he said packing all of his action figures away.
Spider-Man is not only my favourite superhero, but also probably my favourite character in fiction. There is a very powerful story around his origin. The lonely kid, bullied at school finding power and with it arrogance only for that to be his undoing when he fails to stop the man who killed his surrogate father. Basically this guy becomes a superhero out of guilt. He's a little like Sisyphus forever rolling his rock, trying to make up for a mistake which he never can make up.
I started reading Spider-Man in the reprints in the old Spider-Man and Zoids comics back in the 80's. It was a year filled with the return of the Hobgoblin (a villain who was made all the more intriguing by the fact that we didn't know who he really was) and his kidnapping Mary Jane and Harry Osborn, and the Sinister Syndicate. A contract was put out on the life of Spider-Man and a millionaire assassin (and successful entrepreneur in the non-killing people for money world) called Puma came to collect. There was drama, suspense, excitement and above all a great deal of fighting. Young boys like that sort of thing. I probably would have read Pride and Prejudice at that age if someone had told me that Mr Darcy did Kung Fu and killed people with a samurai sword.
Peter Parker has been through a lot since then. Amongst other things he's been buried, cloned, married to a supermodel, had that marriage erased through a deal with the devil (don't' ask), his aunt died (in a beautiful JM DeMattheis story), was resurrected, was kidnapped, was shot and almost died, became a best selling photojournalist, became a paparazzo, went to jail, got out of jail, went to jail again, took on four other superhero identities, became a teacher, fought his future counterpart and discovered that he's part of a weird totemistic legacy thing (I didn't quite understand it, so don't ask me to explain).
Why do I still read after all these years? I guess that it's because I care about the guy.
I gave up reading once. During the nineties, there was a push to move to a hipper Spider-Man, thus leading to the now much derided Clone saga. The story being that there was a clone of Peter Parker dating back to a story from the seventies, but in the spirit of dramatic story reversals, the clone was the real Spider-Man and the Spider-Man we had been following for many years was in fact a clone. Except he wasn't. It was an experiment on the part of Marvel comics, but not a successful one. As far as I recall, readers hemorrhaged from the title and Peter Parker was returned to his rightful mantle of Power and Responsibility. I drifted back a couple of years later.
There is a lot of great stuff out there to read. A good gateway into Spider-Man would be the Amazing Spider-Man comics done by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr (my favourite comic artist). Paul Jenkins and Mark Buckingham also did good work on Peter Parker: Spider-Man (issues 25 and the story about Peter and his Uncle Ben's love of baseball in issue 33 are particular standouts). The original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko stories are still great, great value in huge black and white volumes.
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