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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 7 years

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15) THE COSTUME

“The original Spider-Man costume is one of the all-time greats when it comes to superhero get-ups. Nobody’s arguing that. It’s barely changed since Steve Ditko first drew it back in 1962. Besides some tweaks to the under-arm webbing and the eyes on the mask, and besides a glowing spider on the chest here or a brief flirtation with a different color scheme there, nobody’s looking to go all “Project Runway” on it. It’s perfect. It doesn’t need to be redone. Which is also one of Peter’s weaknesses.”

Peter’s weaknesses include guilt, trying to do too much and a certain wholesome naiveté. Not changing his costume isn’t a weakness.

“Is it not getting a little dull to be still clad in the same costume after nearly half a century?”

Couldn’t we say the same thing about Miles’ costume if he was in it for half a century too?

And couldn’t we say the same thing of virtually ALL superheros? Apart from tweaks how significantly different is Superman or Batman’s costumes from when they began? Not much, they are variants on the same look.

When a costume is a great design and utterly iconic it doesn’t need to change.

But you know let’s pretend for a moment the statement was right and it is a ‘weakness’ that Spider-Mans costume hasn’t changed much in 50 years...what the fuck does the author think that black and white suit he wore on and off from 1984-1988 and then again in 2007 was?

What the fuck does the author think all of the variant costumes Slott has placed on Spider-Man to sell more action figures are?

If we want to expand our definition to include characters who are in some way shape or form like Peter Parker in the 616 universe and have occupied the space of being the main character of the main Spider-Man comic book title what the fuck does the author think Ben Reilly and Superior Spider-Man’s costumes were if not obviously different?

“Miles’s uniform, by contrast, is a modern marvel (pardon the pun.)”

If by modern Marvel you mean stale and generic because like half of Batman’s friends wear red and black and black being ‘kewl and slick’ is utterly cliché then sure it’s a modern marvel.

And it’s so unique compared to Spider-Man’s 1980s black costume (you know back when making a black and dark costume for a superhero wasn’t a cliché at all) because unlike that mostly black costume with some minimalist design elements Miles costume is mostly black with some minimalist design elements that are RED!

“More than a simple palette swap of the original, it inverts the color scheme while adding some more contemporary design elements, the red piping redolent of sportswear or stylish sneakers, the darker aesthetic suiting his stealthier approach. It works way better on a t-shirt, too, if that can be admitted as evidence in the case.”

If he can turn invisible why does he even need a costume that’s literally darker? And how does that even help him much if he fights someone out in the daylight? The costume would under those conditions be no more stealthier than Peter’s which already seems to work fine for stealth anyways.

Also his costume doesn’t ‘invert the colours’. If it did there would be some blue in the costume.

14) A MORE COMPELLING ORIGIN

“As with the costume, one of the most iconic things about Spider-Man lies way back at his inception: that origin story. “With great power comes great responsibility” is a phrase which has entered mainstream usage. The story of how an initially arrogant and self-serving Peter Parker dedicates himself to fighting crime after his lack of intervention leads directly to the murder of his Uncle Ben is nigh Shakespearean in how well-known it is. And that’s just the problem.”

First of all surely having a compelling origin and motivation shouldn’t be the second to last thing on a list making any character good.

Second of all having a Shakespearan origin story and motivation for a superhero can never be a bad thing if they aren’t otherwise a gag character.

“Similar to Batman’s patricide-fueled motivation, it seems like Peter should probably have found some closure at this point.”

Jesus....so much to unpack here.

First of all...Batman’s motivation hasn’t got anything to do with patricide. I mean...Jesus Christ that should be obvious to anyone who

a) Knows what patricide means and

b) Has event eh smallest idea about Batman’s origin which is pop cultural osmosis by this point

Batman is motivated by the death of his father AND mother so it cannot be specified to any single gender like male/father. More importantly Batman didn’t HIMSELF kill his father or his mother. Patricide is when someone kills their father. Read a dictionary.

But back to Spider-Man...what?

Peter Parker should have found some closure on the fact that his actions widowed his mother and killed his Dad who was the nicest guy in the world?

This is typical arm chair psychology spoken by someone who hasn’t got the first clue. People don’t just find closure after enough time passes. They have to work towards it but even then that is dependant if they could ever obtain closure.

If YOU basically killed your own parent when you were a kid YOU aren’t ever going to get over it either. It doesn’t matter how old you get you will always carry that pain and guilt inside you. You can live with it, thrive and be happy but it will always be there. And it being there is a constant source of drama, drive and sympathy for the character which if you know anything about good writing (which the author obviously does not) are GOOD things for your story.

Not to mention the author is being both hypocritical and misinterpreting the characters in question.

Peter isn’t MOTIVATED by guilt, he feels guilty because he realizes it was his responsibility to use his powers to stop the burglar who went on to kill his uncle. His motivation is his sense of responsibility which the author is criticizing the character for...not getting over.

This is idiotic because one shouldn’t get over that. It’s an important life lesson Peter took to heart and carried with him defining his life in a positive way by helping people. It’s a universal human moral message that helps Spider-Man relate to and inspire countless people across the world.

But more importantly the author is saying Peter Parker should by now find closure on killing his Dad but Miles is better because...he hasn’t found closure on his motivation. His motivation stemming from basically

a) Not trying to help Peter Parker when he was being killed and

b) Trying to live up to Peter’s legacy

Not only is it hypocritical for said author to basically put Peter down in favour of Miles when in their view Miles hasn’t got closure on his own motives but Miles SHOULD have closure on those motives already!

Miles has WAY less just cause to hold himself responsible for Peter Parker’s death. He had no training or experience as a superhero, let alone compared to Peter, and he had no way of knowing if his intervention could’ve done anything to help avert Ultimate Peter Parker’s death. In contrast Peter 100% KNOWS if he’d not been an asshole Uncle Ben would not have been murdered.

Between Ganke, Miles’ Dad, Nick Fury, Ultimate Jessica Drew, Mary Jane, Aunt May, Gwen Stacy and just about everyone else who personally knew Peter and has detailed knowledge of what happened the night he died Miles absolutely shouldn’t feel guilty about it.

Even his argument that he didn’t try to use his powers when he first got them so he could have been better trained and able to intervene and do something to avert Peter’s death is incredibly flimsy and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because of how incredibly hypothetical it was. Miles’ third issue even acknowledges that by having Ganke tell Miles that things could’ve gone exactly the same or worse. The comic arguably implies in that issue that he even believes that when Ganke follows that up by saying maybe Miles was meant to have his powers in order to replace Peter.

So basically Miles feels kind of guilty but for way less compelling reasons which actually lend less gravitas and tragedy to his character because there really is no clear cut proof he could’ve prevented someone from dying at all. But there is with Peter’s Twilight Zone/Aesop’s Fable style origin.

Even if you don’t think that Miles would have any closure over Peter’s death by this point er...hello PETER PARKER CAME BACK!

There was literally an entire arc detailing Peter Parker coming back to life.

And along with the 616 Peter Parker, Aunt May, Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane and other characters they all gave Miles their blessing and stamp of approval as Spider-Man.

So...literally everything from his origin was resolved.

He doesn’t live in Peter’s shadow. He doesn’t have to worry about filling his shoes. He doesn’t have to feel guilty anymore.

So the author’s statements about closure are bullshit.

Especially from a writing point of view. Why would you want there to be closure on something like that unless it is THE last ever story about the character? I mean what is the point of Miles’ origin to his character now anyway beyond granting him powers and getting the ball rolling on his being a superhero?

“There’s also not a great deal of complexity within that motivation, is there? Compare that to Miles, whose powers are the result of a spider stolen by his criminal uncle, who his more straight-laced father has all but disowned. ”

This is confusing complexity of character with complexity of plot.

Miles origin has more moving parts to it sure.

But at best this doesn’t make his origin inherently better, just different.

At worst his origin really isn’t AS compelling or as complex or elegant as Peter’s.

Peter’s origin is a universal human story for the ages. It’s simple yet packed with emotion, universal human morality messages and is slef-contained. There is a reason it’s regarded as one of the best Spider-Man stories of all time beyond merely kicking off the character.

You can explain Peter’s story in a few sentences and hit the emotional and moral idea of the character just like that.

It renders him as beautifully human yet at the same time a larger than life mythic figure.

His story renders a character who is inherently more realistic than Miles because he seeks to capitalize upon his powers selfishly like most people if we’re being honest would. This was utterly revolutionary for a superhero at the time and is even today still not exactly standard.

Its a story which presents us with a kid who’s got a life which sucks, who isn’t a million miles away from becoming a villain or nasty piece of work, who indulges in his gifts selfishly before paying a terrible price and learning an invaluable lesson and changing his ways, dedicating himself to loftier altruistic goals.

Miles?

Miles starts off as a nice kid, who early on uses his powers in an altruistic way when he tries to rescue someone from a burning building, something MOST people wouldn’t attempt to do, let alone a kid who’s only just hit puberty. Then he’s freaked out and hides his powers because he thinks his Dad would reject him otherwise and this all happened because of his criminal uncle whom his Dad doesn’t like.

It’s not that it doesn’t make sense or that there isn’t a lot of moving parts but absolutely none of that makes Miles half as rich or complex as a character as Peter’s origin.

��Peter’s origin showcases him as simultaneously a nice kid who loves his family and has things nice there, but like many people is ostracized and outsider mocked by his school peers and feeling resentful. Then he becomes an asshole albeit one you don’t entirely dislike because he’s been mistreated by the previously mentioned peers. Finally life reprimands him for his selfish irresponsible actions, he has an immense burden of guilt and learns a powerful life lesson.

On a metatextual level this is even more brilliant because it’s Stan Lee writing a character who’s the same age as the target demographic of most superhero comics, having him act the way MOST of them would realistically and then making the whole story a hard lesson about how they really should strive to be more like the most famous superhero ever Superman. Because that’s what Great power=great responsibility is. It’s basically ‘be a superhero for the same reasons Superman is one’. Peter Parker just had to learn it the hard way through a huge personal loss.

When an origin story is simultaneously, simple, succinct, elegant, relatively realistic, self-contained yet also powerful, has a universal human message, and generates a character with a lot of complexity and a lot of potential for future stories how the hell is it bad?

How the Hell is it not brilliant?

How the Hell can it actually be worse in any way than Miles’ origin which creates a character with complexities but not nearly as many nor as compelling. See above what I said about how Miles’ feelings of guilt aren’t half as potent as Peter Parker’s. See above about what I said about Miles using his powers heroically without needing a lesson instructing him to do so just because he’s just that heroic of a guy I guess.

There are flaws to him for sure, but not nearly as noticeable or as difficult to address as Peter Parker’s.

You could even argue Miles’ origin doesn’t even really teach him the lesson about great power and great responsibility, or at least not nearly as well as it does in Peter’s story.

And really why the Hell should Miles’ origin get praised above Peter’s when it is the origin of yet another teenager who’s really smart who gets accidentally bitten by another super science spider which then also gives him spider powers which he also chooses not to use altruistically and consequently somebody else who’s revered as another highly moralistic person tragically dies and the protagonist of this story also feels guilty about that death and decides to dress up in another webbed spandex costume to also fight crime?

I’m not saying it’s a beat for beat rip off of Peter’s origin but it is extremely derivative nevertheless, which grossly undermines any praise you could heap onto Miles’ origin creatively speaking. At least compared to the character he’s being copied from to a large extent.

“His early adventures as Spider-Man lead to the death of his actual mother, cementing his ambiguity about becoming a full-time vigilante.”

Yeah and Peter’s FIRST adventure lead to the death of his father. His most iconic story which ended the Silver Age resulted in the death of his first love which is something other stories and writers (like Bendis with the references story) replicated thereby turning into a mostly bad, cliché and to many people sexist trope.

And what the fuck is ‘cementing his ambiguity about becoming a full-time vigilante’ even mean?

He still acted as a vigilante AFTER his mother died and his mother isn’t even dead anymore, he might not even remember her being dead rendering the above point of praise entirely redundant if it ever made sense to begin with.

“It’s a far richer base which has begat far richer stories.”

HOW is it richer?

Because he’s got tension with his uncle and his Dad?

Maybe that’s true.

But that again is not really looking at the characters who are the subjects of said origins in the first place. Peter walked out of his origin story an intrinsically richer and more complex character than Miles did. Miles just had a better road map on where to go next.

But here is the thing if you bother to look beyond their origins...Peter’s stories are egregiously richer. Jameson, Flash Thompson and all those iconic villains gifted Peter early on with decent enough characters to be used in more stories.

If we are talking about casting our net farther though the idea that Miles’ origin has led to stories that are ‘far richer’ than:

The Master Planner Trilogy

Spider-Man No More

The Drug Trilogy

The Death of Gwen Stacy

The 1970s Clone Saga

Amazing Spider-Man #200

The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man

Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut

The Hobgoblin Saga

Mary Jane’s origin

The Harry Osborn Saga

Parallel Lives

Kraven’s Last Hunt

The Conversation

And so many more I could list is...words fail me.

There is no way I could articulate the raw ignorance inherent in that statement.

Many times articles like this talk a lot about how great Miles’ stories are, or yeah say things like they are better than Peter’s.

Here is a challenge for anyone reading this.

Name some?

Name some Miles stories which are better or if you like ‘richer’ than the best Peter Parker stories have to offer and then explain to me exactly why when one compares and contrasts them they are somehow better?

I’ll be waiting over here.

Moving on I notice that the author mentions how compelling and richer Miles’ origin is than Peter’s by citing his father and his Uncle. Really that’s just a compelling situation not a compelling character and even putting that aside it’s not recognizing that Ultimate Peter Parker’s origin invented plenty of characters and subplots to lay the foundation of future series too.

Sure that might not be admissible as evidence in this argument because it isn’t 616 Spider-Man, but shit the previous point was citing how kewl Miles costume looked on sportswear.

Also whilst 616 Peter’s origin maybe didn’t invent anything that at face value lent itself for future stories context is important, the character wasn’t a surething for an ongoing series so being self-contained made more sense and frankly a superhero’s origin SHOULD be self contained.

It should a distillation of their essence and the essence of the series, something that is perennial and relevant to the character(s) going forward at every step of their story.

You can’t say that of Miles.

Miles’ origin has been severely undermined and invalidated by virtue of Peter’s resurrection, by his stamp of approval as Spider-Man from people to whom it matters and now by being shunted into another universe where the events of his origin never even happened.

#miles morales #spider-man #Peter Parker #CBR #Comic Book Resources #Batman #Bruce Wayne #Superior Spider-Man #Ben Reilly #Spider-Ben #Scarlet Spider #Ultimate Spider-Man

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